The Lucky Ones - Liz Lawson Page 0,108

Miles leaves me standing there, alone again. I walk farther out into the yard and see that there are hundreds of white balloons spread out on Anne’s uncle’s huge sloping lawn. Anne’s in the distance, leading a few of my classmates from Carter around, barking orders, back to her old self. I smile at the sight.

They’re all carrying helium tanks, helping people fill balloons for their launch. When they’re full, the balloons look like doves. Anne explains that once the doves reach a certain height, they break apart and biodegrade into the atmosphere. I hang back, watch the first doves float into the air, beautiful and strange.

“Hey, May.” Zach’s at my elbow, holding two balloons. He looks uneasy.

All the things I planned to say to him fly out of my head when I look at him.

“I’m so sorry—” My voice catches. There’s a lump in my throat the size of the world. I lock eyes with him, trying to convey everything I’m feeling—everything I’ve experienced—everything I was and am and will be—with my gaze. I want him to know that I never would have done what I did had I known him. I want him to know that I’m not as angry anymore.

“I know.” His face softens. “I am too. I get it, though, I think. Finally. My mom had to help me understand….”

I open my eyes wide in surprise.

He shrugs. “I know. I didn’t expect it either.”

The moon comes out from behind a cloud, bright and bold, illuminating all the flying doves. As they rise, it becomes harder and harder to tell that they aren’t real—that they’re nothing more than shells and air.

“I thought maybe we could do this together?” Zach holds out one of his balloons. I take it from him, and my vision blurs with tears.

The last time I was around most of these people outside of school was at a very different party, under very different circumstances. I’ll never stop regretting that night and what I said. I’ll never stop regretting how Jordan and I ended, but there’s a tiny flicker inside me that’s beginning to grow—a small part of my brain that thinks maybe Lucy’s right, that Jordan did know how much I loved him, that he always knew.

I just wish I could have said goodbye.

Side by side, Zach and I hold our doves up in the gentle, warm breeze. I silently recite the seven names I’ll never forget: Madison Lee. Marcus Neilson. Mr. Oppenheimer. Juliet Nichols. Britta Oliver. Michael Graves.

Jordan McGintee.

Zach takes my hand, and together we let go and the doves float up, up, away into the night sky.

I started writing this book a year before Parkland (Alyssa Alhadeff, Scott Beigel, Martin Duque, Nicholas Dworet, Aaron Feis, Jaime Guttenberg, Chris Hixon, Luke Hoyer, Cara Loughran, Gina Montalto, Joaquin Oliver, Alaina Petty, Meadow Pollack, Helena Ramsay, Alex Schachter, Carmen Schentrup, Peter Wang) and Santa Fe (Jared Conard Black, Shana Fisher, Christian Riley Garcia, Aaron Kyle McLeod, Glenda Ann Perkins, Angelique Ramirez, Sabika Sheikh, Christopher Stone, Cynthia Tisdale, Kimberly Vaughan). Eighteen years after Columbine (Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Daniel Rohrbough, Dave Sanders, Rachel Scott, Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend, Kyle Velasquez). Five years after Sandy Hook (Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Rachel D’Avino, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Dawn Hochsprung, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine Hsu, Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Nancy Lanza, Jesse Lewis, Ana Márquez-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Anne Marie Murphy, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Lauren Rousseau, Mary Sherlach, Victoria Leigh Soto, Benjamin Wheeler, Allison Wyatt). I could go on and on, take up pages upon pages, listing all the schools where mass shootings have occurred. Naming their victims. In total, as of this writing on May 9, 2019, almost 250 people have died in school shootings since Columbine. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, 228,000 students have experienced gun violence at school in some manner. School-related violence has increased by 19 percent since the twenty-first century began. Schools are now regularly equipped with metal detectors and security, and practice active shooter drills. As May McGintee says in this book, “Now they are one and the same, the frightening places and the daily places.” This is our reality.

I wrote this book for all of you who are faced with this reality, day in and out. I wrote it for the people who have lived through the shootings that are mentioned above and the many other shootings that aren’t. The leftovers. The lucky ones, who are haunted by what they’ve faced and by what they have yet to face. The human beings who are collateral damage of these shootings, who have had their lives ripped out from under them, split open, used for media fodder, and then forgotten when the world moves on.

These people have had their personal memories splashed across the front pages of newspapers and discussed on twenty-four-hour news channels, and have then been left to pick up the pieces of their lives, somehow, some way, just like May and Lucy and others in my book—left to try to find a new normal once the dust has settled, if normal is even an applicable word in this context.

The world needs to remember survivors and their families. The effects of these shootings can reverberate for years. So, to all the kids who can’t move on because your pain is still with you and always will be—I see you. You are not alone.

Speaking of mental health: the shooter in my book is specifically referred to as psycho in multiple instances, throughout. And it’s important to remember that the majority of people with a mental illness are not violent. After mass shootings, political rhetoric often centers on the mental health of the perpetrators, simplifying a complex issue in a dangerously reductive way. The role that the unique gun laws in the United States play in these incidents cannot be discounted or ignored. I would also be doing a disservice here if I didn’t note that our country is in desperate need of better, more affordable mental health services, for all of its kids.

I wrote The Lucky Ones for those who have gone through horrific events like these, and for those who fear that they might endure a similar fate someday. For those who have made their way through painful, heartbreaking times and managed to find their way through to the other side. May’s story is one of pain and fear and loss, but also one of hope.

Without hope, we are lost.

Liz Lawson