On September 7th, a gunman pulled a revolver from his backpack and started a school shooting, leaving 11 injured and 1 fatally wounded. That’s the story that everyone has heard, the story that makes it to the records. However, beneath the blood and physical wounds, there are many more casualties of this tragedy, with school morale being at an all-time low, and an increase in narcotics-related school arrests.

We hope that these voices will shed some light on the crater left by this tragedy on so many people, beyond physical scars.

Mrs. Kono (Kit’s mom)

I remember being called by the principal on the day that everything happened. Her voice was strained. She was stumbling over her words. Eventually, she simply told me, verbatim, to “Come to the school. Right now.” And the precision and urgency in her words was enough indication to me that something had perhaps gone horribly wrong. I remember, at that moment, after hanging up the call, there was pin drop silence as I feared the worst. No, I said to myself, it can’t be. I remember at that moment I refused to believe it. But it came straight from her.

I frantically ran straight for the school at breakneck speed. By the time I got there, I was out of breath. But it didn’t matter. The principal escorted me to the back of the school, where an ambulance had already been stationed. And when I laid eyes on that white sheet, I…

I know it’s been a while, but the pain still lingers. The world has ripped away not just something from me, but a part of me itself. As it stands, there’s a huge hole in my heart. And it hurts, not just because you know he’s gone, but also that he was once alive.

Something that many overlook is that Kit had a life. He had feelings, emotions, aspirations of his own. He had passions and fortes, distinct from everyone else. And now that’s all gone.

Until that day, it never occurred to me that human life could be so fragile.

Leah (student)

I still remember it like it was yesterday. The shot rang in my ears like the shrill of the alarm bells blaring overhead. I didn’t think of anything else at that time, except to get to class as soon as possible. There was no time to think in the heat of it all. It was only afterwards, when we were all crouched under our desks, lights off, door barricaded, that I began hyperventilating and crying to myself. I wanted to scream so badly. I almost did.

I’m not sure what I was thinking, what there was to think. Was I scared to hear cries for help around me, as shots continued firing? Or was I hurting from being alive to think about it?

I’m still having nightmares about it. I’ve still yet to grapple with what it would mean for me to die. Am I prepared to accept it? What’s the chance that it does happen to me, that I won’t get to live and die on my own terms? And, most of all, how do I feel knowing that my life can so easily be taken from me with the pull of a trigger?

It’s also shaken my relationship with God. I’ve tried praying, soul searching, but nothing’s come back. I thought I could depend on Him for solace and answers, but now, when I look to the cross at the centre of the house, my head keeps coming up empty.

Are you there God? It’s me, Leah.

Mr Myers (teacher)

Just a few days ago, an officer barged into my calculus class and escorted everyone out of the classroom, before letting loose two dogs on leashes to roam around, sniffing everyone’s bags. I looked around to see other classes also spilling into the hallways. On their faces were looks of confusion, puzzlement and fear. It seems to have been a coordinated surprise so that no one could have been warned. They didn’t find anything in our class, but as we were ushered back into the classroom I saw several students from the other classes being led in handcuffs into police cars, as other officers held packets of fine white dust.

I ran into one of them the next day in the hallways before class. Thank goodness he was only hit with a warning from the looks of it. His eyes had black rings around them, and he avoided my gaze as he tried to walk past me. I took him to my office for a chat. It turns out his mind is still on edge from the gunshots, and now he’s afraid of loud sounds. The drugs? His mom used it regularly as a medical painkiller, and he hoped getting high on it would help numb his own pain.

These are teenagers, not criminals. We can do without exposing them to the harsh realities of the outside world before their time. We don’t need metal detectors and police officers in our schools. They don’t belong in schools, and their presence only dodges the bigger issues of school morale and student mental health.

I’ve been trying my best to identify struggling students, but there’s only so much I can do on my own. There are probably many more that have slipped through the cracks that I don’t yet know about. I can only hope that what I can do will help someone in a small way.

Trev (student)

I visited my sister in the hospital yesterday. She’s been recovering well, though the doctors still aren’t so confident she’ll ever walk again.

Just a few weeks ago, she was near unconscious, with a red crater in her leg, wheeled off on an ambulance as I clasped her hand, reassuring her in a monotonous, frenzied repetition of “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…” as she smiled weakly back at me, wincing at the pain from her leg.

She’s crippled now, and she could very well lose her left leg. But at least she’s not dead. She’s here, alive, with me. We weren’t particularly close before this, but now I’m regretting all the times I’d lashed out at her, that I’d told her to mind her business whenever she stepped into my room to ask about my day.

I’m working to rebuild my relationship with her now. It’s going slow, but progress is being made. As I checked up on her yesterday, she decided it was a good time to quote Rupert Brooke. She was in a poetic mood that day, it seems. “If I should die, think only this of me: that there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England…”

Dear America, your children are planning their own funerals.