other students, including all the ones quoted here. That’s when Susana Matta Valdivieso filled me in on all her planning for the prior month. Rabbi Melinda Bernstein and Angel Lopez gave me the background on what they had been doing. I spoke to dozens of Douglas students, and most said they’d gotten wind of the plan early that morning, but none of them thought it was actually going to happen. Lauren Hogg and others showed me the Instagram and Snapchat messages from that morning, which were still on their phones.
We consulted local news reports just to fact-check the spelling of names (although most of the kids spelled them for me, sometimes I couldn’t read their writing later).
2
Jackie’s exchange with her math teacher was conveyed entirely by her, which she recited to me from memory the following day. (This was the same interview used in the prior chapter. We met after school, at a Starbucks nearby.)
I cringed when Jackie told me about the friendships. It made me sad that it was happening, and it scared me that Jackie was sharing it with journalists (for the reason stated in the text). I decided to put it off the record for several months, to see how it played out, and I struggled for days about whether to advise Jackie to consider keeping that from people like me. Eventually, I decided that would be too intrusive, but I still wondered whether I made the right choice. These kids have never been in this position, and sometimes those of us with more life experience are in a better position to see the potential ramifications of certain decisions. In the end, Jackie was right, and as I made near-final edits over Thanksgiving, I decided it was safe to divulge.
3
This is the same group interview as that described in the prior chapter. We met on the patio of the restaurant at the Heron Bay Marriott (the same hotel that was used as a rendezvous point on Valentine’s Day). Daniel arrived first and I chatted with him for a while, then the others came. The entire session lasted about two hours.
12. The Memes Men
2
I followed Jackie’s car to the MFOL office immediately after our Starbucks interview on March 15.
That was the first time I met Matt and Dylan. I interviewed Matt that afternoon and Dylan the next day. All the quotes from them in this chapter are from those interviews.
As soon as I met Matt and Dylan, I knew I wanted to feature them, at least in a magazine piece. In fact, I was in the final stages of a very different story for the online edition of Vanity Fair, to run less than a week later, as a preview to the march. I walked out so excited that I called my editor from the parking lot to say I wanted to drop that story and replace it with a much better story about these guys. He agreed. I would continue to interview them and chat with them at events over the ensuing months.
Pippy was also in the office that day, and I recognized her, because she had assisted Jackie on the Tallahassee trip and had helped me out before and during. (For what it’s worth, I wanted to feature Pippy as well. She said she doesn’t like to be the center of attention, and I could use little bits from her, but she didn’t want to be featured. She was very helpful over the course of the spring coordinating things. And she finally agreed to be part of my sit-down interview with the Duff family in May.)
I spent a bit under two hours in the office that day, and less than two the following day. The kids gave me permission to take photos to use to describe the space later, and I took dozens, including close-ups of the Post-it notes and anything written on the wall, which is how I was able to reproduce it here. I also kept the tape running as we toured and narrated some of it as we walked—and asked Jackie about things.
The photos were intended for documentation purposes, but Jackie later gave me permission to publish several on Vanity Fair’s website with my March 22 story.
3
Several of the kids told me about the Fight for Our Lives rebranding, under strict confidentiality. Not all of them were sure exactly when the change was going to happen, but I got the impression it was going to be at the DC march. As we were