and gently chastise serial chatterers in the back. It’s not easy to quiet a mob of boisterous teens, particularly without offending them, but it was the first of countless times over the coming months that I would watch Jackie pull it off.
She outlined the basics of the trip. Expect media everywhere, she said. Several TV cameras were trained on her as she spoke, and cell phones were raised high. Any random student could expect to be dialed into two or three lenses at any given time. It was day six.
Jackie asked the media to be respectful: If a student doesn’t want to talk, let him be. She asked if everyone knew which Publix grocery store they were meeting at—“the one by the Walmart.” (She didn’t mention that it was the same Walmart the killer had walked to after the attack. Everyone knew.) She called for questions.
“Attire?”
Oh, right. She’d meant to hit that. It had been a big topic with Lauren Book and Claire. Lots of the kids assumed they should dress up, but that felt all wrong. As soon as you start dressing up, you tend to match your speech and manner to that: formal and unnatural. The trip was about giving voice to high school students, so they should look like and speak like students. Jeans and T-shirts, Jackie said—no dresses, no ties, definitely no suits. And pack light: just toiletries, a fresh T-shirt, maybe a towel. There were shower facilities, but not much time to use them. Wake-up time was already predawn. The Red Cross had just come through with a hundred cots, so air mattresses could stay home.
The governor’s office called that night. Governor Scott was in. Dream fulfilled. The question was, where to fit him in? The schedule was packed, right up to five p.m., and if they got the buses rolling promptly they were already looking at one or two a.m. to Walmart, even later to their homes. But it was the governor offering two hours, in groups of a few dozen, rotating in and out. They added him to the schedule from five to seven p.m. It would be a very long night.
Jackie said the enormity of it began to dawn on her that evening. Not because of all the kids hushing each other to hear her, or a bank of cameras trained on her, following her every step. It was Google. “I used to google my name and nothing would come up,” she said a few days later. “I was just a little kid and nobody knew who I was. And now google even ‘Jaclyn,’ and ‘Corin’ is like next to Jaclyn Hill’s name.”
2
The Publix lot was mobbed by noon Tuesday. Cameron came to juice the crowd, though that hardly seemed necessary. Jackie was besieged by kids and moms lining up with last-minute concerns. Jackie’s mom, Mary Corin, shadowed her, frequently dispatched by Jackie on quick errands, and often turning to her for advice. Her daughter was clearly in charge.
The crowd swelled to hundreds, with parents, onlookers, and media. It was so much louder than the meeting: the buses were running, diesel engines lumbering, and a helicopter buzzed overhead. Jackie had to announce team assignments, so kids could link up with chaperones and board the right bus. They had no megaphone, no way to be heard. They needed a plan B, and they needed it fast.
“Let’s hop on a car,” Cameron said.
Jackie gaped. “You’re joking, right?”
While Jackie was assisting a mom, Cameron had found the owner of a big black SUV, asked if they could use it, and was already clambering onto the roof. Jackie followed him up. “I was terrified,” she said. “But whatever.”
Cameron, a natural, threw his whole body into his delivery. He lurched so far forward, I was afraid he might tumble onto the asphalt. When he hopped down, sweaty, those kids were ready to storm the Bastille. Then he turned it over to Jackie for the mundane practical stuff. Ten teams: first she called the chaperones, who raised their arms, then the kids, who gathered round.
Back on the pavement, kids were already lining up with new issues. Most were fixable, just relentless. Some kids just wanted to switch groups, to hang with friends. “No,” Jackie said softly. “Get on your bus.”
A school board member was chaperoning, and I caught him for a quick interview just as he was boarding. He stood in the doorway answering my questions with one foot on the first step, until Jackie whisked by, addressing