I wake up every morning with death on my mind.
Most of the time it’s this steady, existential hum, easy to drown out with a little bit of effort and daily medication. Until the end of February that is, when the hum starts to build, growing louder and sharper and impossible to ignore, leading up to The Anniversary. On that day, it’s a thudding bass, a violently crashing crescendo pounding through my skull.
This year, the third anniversary of the shooting, was no different. I didn’t get up until a little after eleven, and even then, I was exhausted from a night of awful dreams. There was already a chain of text messages on my phone.
Beware the Ides of March. Is everyone okay this morning?This was from Ashley Chambers, who is always the first to check in.
There were six of us who witnessed the shooting directly and survived. Before that day, we’d barely known each other. I mean, some of us had classes together. We knew each other’s names. Virgil County is tiny and rural, after all. But we’d hardly interacted before that day. Since the shooting, though, we’ve all kept in touch.
Well, five of us have.
Eden Martinez and Denny Lucas had already replied. I’m all right. I hope everyone else is okay today and Okay over here. Take care today.
I typed out my own response, Still here. Glad to have you guys, before scrolling to the top of the chain and looking at the names of the recipients. I knew the ones I’d see there—and the one I wouldn’t—but its absence still made my stomach twist with guilt.
I put the phone aside and pulled on a hoodie and some jeans. I couldn’t eat anything. Not that day. I knew if I did, it’d just come back up. I’d learned that the hard way on the first anniversary. And then again on the second. So I went ahead and brushed my teeth and washed my face. When I was done, I walked into the living room and, through the front window, saw a boy sitting on my porch steps.
He was hunched over, his back to me. Dark auburn curls poked out from under his black beanie. I opened the front door, but he didn’t turn to look at me.
“Hey, creeper,” I said. “How long have you been waiting?”
Miles Mason looked up at me then, with his half-closed hazel eyes that always make him look sleepy. “Only a few minutes,” he said. Or mumbled. Miles almost always mumbles. You probably saw the one and only TV interview he did after the shooting, where the reporter had to keep asking him to speak up. “Just texting everyone back. We’re picking up Denny, right?”
I nodded and he stood up, following me down the steps to my truck.
Despite only doing one interview, everyone who followed the shooting remembers Miles. His story got a lot of attention after. He was “the unlikely hero.” Seriously. That’s the wording several articles used.
As the stories told it, he’d thrown himself on top of another student who’d already been injured, shielding her from any more bullets. The media made a big deal out of the fact that, prior to that day, Miles was on the verge of being expelled.
In the words of his grandmother, he was “a bit of a troublemaker.”
In the words of one national publication, he was “the sort of young man you might expect to be pulling the trigger, not protecting his peers.”
I’m not even kidding. That’s a direct quote from some journalist who thought it was an okay thing to say, only two days after this fifteen-year-old had survived a nightmare.
Miles has never liked talking about any of that, though. Not even with me.
I unlocked the truck and we both climbed in. We didn’t turn on the radio. We just listened to the white noise of the engine as we rolled down the empty streets of our neighborhood. It was midday. Everyone was either at work or school. Normally I would have been a fidgety, nervous wreck about skipping classes. I would have been paranoid about someone seeing my truck and telling my mom. Unlike Miles, I’ve never been much of a rule breaker.
But no one expected me, Miles, or Denny to go to school that day. No one would punish us or even mention the fact that we’d skipped. Everyone knew it was impossible for us to step foot in that school on the fifteenth of March.
It took us about ten minutes to get to Denny’s house. He was waiting outside, sitting on the porch swing, with his yellow Labrador guide dog, Glitter, lying at his feet. He stood when he heard us pull into the driveway, and once I’d parked, Glitter led him right to the passenger side of the truck, where Miles already had the door open.
“It’s tight quarters,” I said as Denny began to pull himself into the truck. “We’re gonna have to snuggle.”
“Why does Miles always get to be in the middle when we snuggle?” Denny asked with mock outrage. “Not fair.”
Miles slid across the bench seat, positioning himself so he had one leg on either side of the gearshift. The whole left side of his body was pressed against me. I shifted nervously, trying not to worry about what he might be thinking about us sitting so close. Instead, I looked past him as Denny hoisted himself into the truck and allowed Glitter to hop up onto the floorboard, where she sat between his knees.
“You know, Lee,” Denny said, yanking the door shut, “if you’re going to chauffeur me around, you’re gonna need a bigger vehicle. I’d like to request a limo. One of those stretch Hummers.”
“Yeah, I’ll get on that,” I said. “As soon as you can pay for it.”
Denny grinned, and for the first time that morning, I felt this fleeting moment of calm.
Of the survivors, Denny was probably the most photographed and interviewed. He’s a cute, slightly chubby black kid who’s been blind his whole life. After being shot in the arm, he had to go through a lot of physical therapy to relearn how to use a cane. The media made a big deal out of this, emphasizing his blindness over and over. As if that was his defining characteristic.
The truck took off and we headed straight for the county line. We were getting as far from this town as possible.
