watched a newscaster talking to a kid in the drama room in the middle of rehearsal, which meant that Daniel would be there. And there was so much misinformation flying around, some of it incorrectly pointing toward drama kids. The whole family was texting Daniel, and it looked bleak.
Daniel’s iPhone battery had been running low. In a brief lull in the melee, he had decided he’d better charge it. He’d set it down, but panic resumed, and he’d run off without it. He hadn’t even had time to plug it into the wall. But it had enough charge to misdirect his loved ones all afternoon.
Daniel was in the drama room, along with most of the kids who would become March for Our Lives. All the leaders were juniors and seniors. All the kids had lost someone they knew, but the upperclassmen were less likely to have lost someone close to them. Daniel was a freshman. He lost seven friends.
As in all these tragedies, a weird hierarchy of victimhood reared up. Often it was about loved ones lost—how many, how close—but months later, Daniel’s dad described another aspect. “Some of Daniel’s friends have taken the attitude ‘Wait, you weren’t even in that building!’ There’s kind of a hierarchy of who was closest.”
That prompted Daniel’s mother to describe a moms’ therapy session she had just gone to. “I was the only mother there, of five women, who didn’t have a child in the building, so I kind of felt guilty. The woman next to me, her son still has a bullet in his arm, and shrapnel—they were very upset. She said he has like a tic now, he doesn’t speak. I almost feel guilty saying, ‘Daniel seems to be OK.’”
Psychologists discount that sort of reckoning—especially since trauma is etched into the psyche at the moment of terror, by the perception of terror. The norepinephrine flooding the brain is just as toxic whether the killer is five feet away or five miles—so long as the victim believes he might arrive momentarily. Actual danger is irrelevant. Rationally, most survivors realize this, but try telling that to the guilt center of your brain.
Daniel looked like a young Corey Haim, down to the brown curls, though he let them fall naturally and didn’t tease them out. He had looked up to Cameron since he was little. Cameron was tight with Daniel’s older brother Brendan, and when the Duffs went on vacation, Cameron looked after their dog. Brendan had graduated from Douglas in 2016 and was studying PR at Elon University in North Carolina. He had rushed home to look out for Daniel, and quickly landed at Cameron’s house, advising the group on media strategy. Brendan was a major player in Never Again behind the scenes. He helped the kids understand early on that the message was the mission, and they would get one shot at a public persona.
“Brendan was one of our great friends,” Cameron said. “So when his brother Daniel started high school, we said he had to join drama. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing there, but he’s trying.”
Daniel agreed and enjoyed it, to a point. The night before the shooting, he had had a long talk with his dad. Drama wasn’t for him. Cameron and Alex were so passionate about it. His loves were music and photography. He would finish out the year, but that would be it. (MSD offered a variety of different theater classes, and like most of the Never Again kids, he had it as a class as well as an extracurricular activity.) His dad was fine with his decision; he had given it a good shot. But what a fortuitous turn that he had connected with the group. Never Again felt like his therapy. It seemed to be getting him through.
But recovery is different for everyone, and activism can also serve as avoidance, a way to sidestep dealing with the fears, either intentionally or not. “I am so proud of them, but worry that it will be very hard when they settle into their grief and trauma recovery down the road,” said Robin Fudge Finegan, who led victims’ advocate teams at Oklahoma City and Columbine, then served as a senior FEMA official. “One cannot go end around grief and trauma.”
Exactly two weeks after the attack, MSD classes were set to resume. Most students were eager to get back but apprehensive about stepping inside. So the school set up an open house on the Sunday afternoon prior, and dubbed