for their phone numbers, and I’d ask for emails instead. That has all changed. Now they give their cell numbers out with barely a thought, so I didn’t feel bad about it. Over the course of the year, only a few kids said they would feel more comfortable giving me their emails, which I respected. Many kids rarely check email, so it’s frequently useless. (Of course I never share cell numbers. When someone wants to contact a particular individual, I send a message to the source conveying the request.) I came home from Tallahassee with forty to fifty numbers—more than I could ever follow up with. From there, one person recommended me to the next, and I kept bumping into more of them along the way. They generally gave me their cell number at that point, and we’d stay in touch. (In Jackie’s case, it was actually her dad who gave me his number in the Publix parking lot, and he conveyed the message to Jackie afterward, and she called me back.) Sadly, I never connected with a handful, which was mostly just odd luck. It was very hard to get to the kids through official media channels, because they were besieged. It was much more effective just to go to their events and connect with the kids in person. Even once we connected, it was sometimes hard to get a response, because they had so many more media requests than they could handle. But I found that when I actually flew down there—or wherever they were headed—they tended to respond. Showing up.
I obviously didn’t spend the night with them. Claire, Senator Book, and lots of the kids described the scene to me later. Everything else in this chapter I witnessed directly. (As in all cases, some of the quotes came in real time, and some were later follow-ups. It was a frenzied schedule, and impossible to get everyone’s impressions as they occurred.)
I rejoined them at the capitol as soon as they arrived, and I spent the day running around with different groups. Claire set up the same large chamber for both the kids and the press to stash our stuff and to use as a break room (and they ate their box lunches there), so we were really thrown together. In that room, I respected their need for downtime, and generally kept to the informal press side of the room. A few times—like right after they met with Governor Scott—I wandered over and asked, “Anyone want to talk?” (No one did then, because they were hungry, but several said they would come find me after they ate, and they did. That’s generally how it worked. They made it pretty clear when they wanted to talk, and they knew where to find us.)
5
“Seventeen bills that could have saved seventeen lives,” a mom told me, a senator told me, aides told me, and the incoming president of the Florida PTA told me.
6
Jackie was taking a brief respite from the press—and from everything—in Senator Book’s office. She was with just a few people, but Claire was one of them, who texted me to come confer with her about something I’ve now forgotten. So I happened to see Jackie playing with the babies, but I kept my notepad and recorder in my pocket, and gave her some space. Then I ended up playing with the babies myself. They were adorable, and we all needed a break. (Senator Book was there and handed one of them to me—sorry, I forgot which.)
Alfonso’s quote beginning “I’m extremely, extremely angry and sad” comes from “‘Look Me in the Eyes.’ . . .” (Miami Herald). He (and many others) characterized it the same way to me directly, but I thought he said it best there, so I used that version.
5. Spring Awakening
1
All the descriptions of Cameron’s childhood come from his mom, Natalie, mostly in our May interview. We stayed in touch by text through the end of November, and I followed up on small items that way periodically.
Natalie gave only a brief description of Cam’s stand-up set on the cruise ship. She let me know videos of the act were on YouTube, and I watched quite a few. I used the footage to re-create the specifics of that scene. As of November 2018, a video was still there, titled “Cameron Kasky-Norweigan Sky-040509-‘Jokers Wild’ open mike night.” (Note the typo of “Norweigan” to find it.)
French Woods was the name of the performing arts camp Cameron attended where he discovered