March 5, 2001

Usually when someone starts a story about something that happened to them, they can detail every event leading up to it. I can't. I have no idea how my morning started. I don't remember what I had for breakfast (probably nothing), I don't remember if I got to school on time (probably not). My memory of that day doesn't exist until 9:21 am. It was a Monday, the first bell had already rang and I was walking with Sarah. Slowly. We wanted to be late. We were heading to lockout.

Lockout was their version of a one period in-school suspension. Located in the very last room of the 100 building, lockout was a way to confine both the bad kids and the tardy kids in one tiny room, deprived of posters and colors to make it feel like punishment, but still on campus so the school could collect the attendance funds. It didn't take me long to figure out that often, staring at a blank wall was better than going to a hated class. Nor did it take long to realize that going to lockout the day after ditching was an easy way to get away with not having a signed note from a parent excusing your absence. I performed the ditch-then-lockout trick frequently.

The Friday before had been Donald's birthday. His parents hated him and we all knew it, so Michelle and I ditched second block and walked across the street to Albertsons. The narcs didn't notice, that time or any of the hundred or so other times I strolled off campus those first two years. We returned about an hour later with the best our combined $13 could come up with. A few balloons and a lopsided teddy bear. He loved it, and I knew going to lockout the next Monday would be worth it.

I don't remember why Sarah was going to lockout. I don't remember what we were talking about. I do remember a sound I'd never heard before, a sound I couldn't place at first, drowning out our conversation. A fraction of a second later we saw the cause. Hundreds of pairs of sneakers hitting polished concrete, the sound reverberating and echoing down the halls. They flew out of the breezeway and spread like a spill. We stood our ground; neither of us were knocked over. They parted to go around us and regrouped immediately after, a sea of panicked teenagers rushing, screaming, wailing. The flow slowed. We spotted Christine, the first face that wasn't a blur. She was crying hysterically, but she was prone to crying fits. We asked what was happening. She didn't know; everyone was running, she was terrified. Someone said something about fireworks. She continued past us, jogging. Sarah and I looked at each other, then looked down the hallway. Nothing was coming, we heard no sounds. We were both subdued people, and being together kept us calmer. The entrance to the small quad from the large quad, the breezeway between the drama room and the library, was the closest we got to it. We turned and walked back the way we had come.

We reached the student parking lot. Still a couple hundred people, panicked, swarming. Kids jumped into other kids' vans, piled into strangers' cars. Cliques and races were no longer an issue. They moved as a single unit with a single object in mind. Get out. I saw three guys and a girl chase a truck that was already speeding away. The driver noticed, stopped. The runners jumped into the bed. A few more caught on and did as well. One was still only halfway up when the driver hit the gas. She fell, got up, ran again. All inexperienced drivers, all terrified. There were no accidents, no pedestrians run over. I commented on the amazing luck of the situation to Sarah. She nodded. Had nothing to say.

My parents had set up a code for my sister to use with any pay phone in the event of an emergency, and kept it active for me. This was an emergency. I went to the pay phone by the gym and used the code. I called my mom. “I don't know what's happening, everyone just ran past us screaming.” The whole large quad is empty. We're not going in the small quad. Sarah and I watched the lot empty. The band room door opened, a head peeked out. “Get in here! The whole school is on lockdown.” I repeated that to my mom, ignored her screamed demand that I get home now. Another exchanged glance with Sarah, another calm, slow-paced walk to the door.

We had joined the band director, Sipos, and about fifteen other students. I don't remember the faces. I just remember Sarah, and Sipos. I remember waiting. Fifteen minutes in, maybe twenty and I stepped out of the room. We hadn't heard anything, we still didn't really know what was going on. I went back in. Relocked the door. I had nowhere else to be right then anyway.

We didn't know what was happening. Surburbia is known for its overreactions to typically urban incidents; every time a burglary or a police chase happened nearby the school went on lockdown. We had also seen a few pranks as well; bomb threats, the occasional abandoned package. Sarah and I knew something had happened, something crazy enough to horrify hundreds of teens and send them not just out of the area but off the campus, but we still didn't know what. Not for sure anyway. We weren't idiots. Sipos had gotten a call about five minutes before from the office, saying the school was on lockdown. They didn't say why, or if they did he didn't tell us. The kids who had been in the band room were students that were about to begin class, or those who were ditching theirs to get in more practice time. The room was at the opposite end of the school from where people had run from, and only Sarah and I were newcomers. The little information we had was the only information.

We were sitting in a circle, mostly silent. Something banged against the door. An unintelligible yell. Sipos cracked the door open and all we could see was a rifle. The owner yelled again. This time we could make it out. “SDPD, SWAT! How many students present?” We told him. The door shut. Opened again a moment later. We were to follow him, single file. We were going to the shopping center parking lot across the street. I think he took names, I don't remember. I just remember the huge gun, the intensity of his voice. There were three more just like him outside. The school was being evacuated and we were in the last building. We followed out the door, single file as we were told. We tried to ask questions. They pretended not to hear.

We got as far as Second and Magnolia before I heard my mother's voice. After my call she had called the school, then the cops, then the neighbor. The neighbor was her taxi driver. My mom was screaming my name from the passenger seat. I looked over, dumbfounded. Started to walk towards the car. Mr. SWAT grabbed my shoulder and told me I needed to remain with the other students, that we were all meeting at the shopping center. I didn't get a chance to say a word, my mother did. “LIKE HELL SHE IS, THAT IS MY DAUGHTER AND SHE IS COMING WITH ME.”

I didn't go with her. She told me to walk home. I don't remember why. By the time I walked in the door the news was on, a helicopter view of the Albertsons' parking lot, a thousand swarming people in a mob. The image switched to ground coverage and I saw people I saw every day at school with tears streaming down their faces. Kristin, Pam, Erin. One girl was crying so hard she was hiccuping. You couldn't understand a word she was saying, but the camera kept rolling. The image changed again, this time an aerial view of the football field. Clear enough for me to recognize the senior from up the street, the one who had been picking on me since we moved in eight years before. He was being loaded into a LifeFlight chopper. I didn't know how I felt about it. I didn't know how I felt about any of it. The ticker scrolled across the bottom. Shooting at Santana High School in Santee, California. One confirmed dead, eight injured.

The count rose as the day progressed. 13 wounded, two killed. They began showing names as the families were notified. I recognized all of them. Scott Marshall from my elementary school. Heather Cruz from my history class. Trevor Edwards was that quiet guy that hung out with some of my friends. Matt Heier's little brother sat next to me in English. Melisa McNulty was one of the first people I started talking to freshman year. Triston Salladay was in band with me. Ray Serrato shared a limo with us at the winter formal. Karla Leyva was in the drumline. Barry Gibson lived up the street. James Jackson was one of those nerdy guys that hung around the band room because he associated with the geeks. Travis Gallegos-Tate was on the football team. Tim Estes was a student teacher, Peter Ruiz was the narc everyone hated. The two killed were Randy Gordon, 17, and Bryan Zuckor, 14. Bryan was in the PE class that ran at the same time as mine. I didn't know Randy, but I knew his younger sister.

It was two weeks before my sixteenth birthday and I learned that there is a coldness in some people, a calculating cruelty that enables them to step into a bathroom, shoot someone in the head and then continue firing out the door. He reloaded four times. He kept shooting until there was no one left to shoot.
The school was closed the following day. They had to mop up the blood.


It opened again on Wednesday. Teachers sat in desk chairs while professional counselors on teen tragedy took over. They tried to get us to do group activities. Sit in a circle and hold hands. Some of us did, some of us didn't. Some of us walked out. No one stopped us, as long as we didn't leave campus.

The school was surrounded by cameras, by reporters, by big news vans. We were plagued by well-wishers and crazy people alike. Two crying men stood at the entrance to the student parking lot, handing out pocket-sized new testaments and trying to give each of us a hug. I declined the hug. I still have the new testament.

It was at this time that I realized there really are people who would stop to watch a train wreck, and I think I met every single one of them. A man from El Cajon drove past multiple times a day in a converted U-Haul with gory blown-up abortion pictures plastered on the sides. The Westboro Baptist Church came and staged a “God Hates Fags” protest across the street at the Mobile station. Bloodthirsty reporters chased students walking to school, hoping to evoke an emotional moment that would get them in the first five minutes of the broadcast. Governor Grey Davis' wife came down from Sacramento and talked about how she used to go to our school. People from other states drove in just to mull out front and talk to us. The whole two blocks in front of the school, from the entrance to Albertsons to Second Street were impossible to get through. People drove around picking up friends so they wouldn't have to walk through it. Others added half an hour to their route just so they could get in a lesser-known back entrance. A friend of mine broke a reporter's nose after he chased him and some girls onto campus. Every evening we held a candle-lit memorial in front of the marquee and every evening our tears were filmed. I avoided the cameras like the plague and threatened more than one news reporter. I still found two images of me from the rear on the internet. My hair was orange and flowed all the way down my back. I had traded out my usual black t-shirt for my mom's baby blue sweater. Only I know its me.

This went on for two weeks before it finally began to dwindle. A group of Chargers in full gear showed up. A few of them scrawled their names in one of my notebooks. I don't remember which one. POD claimed their song “Youth of the Nation” had been written about our school, and dedicated it to us. Despite the fact that the album had been released the year before, their popularity soared. Someone paid for t-shirts for every student. White, with the words “One School, One Heart” across the chest. The back said “In Memory of Randy and Bryan.” A couple weeks later a church organization sent us 1,000 donated teddy bears. Both girls and boys carried them around. Mine is tan and spent the next two years beside my pillows. The state declared us an emergency site and donated funds to support a full Elite security staff until the end of the school year. Standardized testing was cancelled. Education was put on hold while we wandered around like zombies, donated teddy bears clutched to our chests. Tough guys, seniors, hugged and cried openly a month later. We cried for our friends, we cried for each other, we cried for ourselves.

Everyone who was injured returned to Santana, except student teacher Tim Estes. I heard he changed his mind about becoming a high school teacher, but maybe that was just a rumor. For a short time the injured kids were not just popular but almost holy. The few younger ones that hadn't been well-known were suddenly known by everyone, and were subject to awed stares from the shy, and hugs or pats on the back from the bold. We underclassmen were suddenly interested in the upper classmen who had been involved. Everyone knew the story of how Barry had reacted; hearing the shots, he grabbed two friends who were frozen and pulled them to safety. Turning back and realizing some were still there, he actually ran back for them. He was shot in the leg during this second trip. Similarly, Peter Ruiz became a celebrity. Before the shooting he was an ex-cop on an authority trip. After the shooting (and he returned to work surprisingly quickly for someone who had taken five bullets) no one could get enough of him. He still never smiled, and he still strolled around with his bulldog expression and the fuck-you air of a bouncer, but every student and staff member imagined they were looking past that into the deep soul of a hero.

The younger siblings of both Bryan Zuckor and Randy Gordon attended Santana afterward.

I was never a cheerful teenager, never one who was particularly open about my feelings. In the weeks and months after the shooting I used this skill to my advantage. I wasn't one of those girls who cried constantly and had to have her friends accompany her to the restroom. I internalized everything and delt with it on my own as I always had. I built up my shell and chose to make myself less conspicuous. I wore my hair down in my face more and wore the same black sweater every day. I was a smartass to some, silent to others. Everything else the rest of the year was brooding, dark, somber.

The group healing activities were a joke; outsiders trying to talk to discuss it with me were coldly shot down. The most therapeutic thing I did that semester was bring a deck of cards to school and play speed with Cassie. Constantly. We didn't talk, and when we did it was about something else. Boys, music groups, band, whatever. It was never about the shooting; it was always about the shooting. I wasn't mourning Randy and Bryan so much as I was mourning our collective loss of innocence. I felt betrayed. High school wasn't just our social organization but our protective glass case which held us in limbo between the adult things we weren't ready for and the childhood things we were too old for. The safety glass shattered at 9:21 AM on March 5^th of that year. The illusion that bad things didn't happen to people I knew was shattered. The illusion that bad things couldn't happen to me was shattered.

I hate loud popping noises, not because I heard the gunshots myself but because I heard so many other people's descriptions. I don't trust therapists, counselors, grief counselors or any other specialist with a similar title. I absolutely despise news reporters, and I think there's a special place in hell for bottom-feeders like the guy driving the abortion mobile and my friends at the Westboro Baptist Church who make a mockery of serious tragedies. I respect cops and response teams, and I believe wholeheartedly in a community's ability to heal together.

I also believe I was lucky.

The shooting happened out of the bathroom on the back side of the 200 building. My next class, the class I would have been going to if I hadn't been heading for lockout was directly across the hall.

I don't remember crying at school until two years later. Mr. Gushwa, my Government teacher, was the funniest and coolest teacher I had in high school. He had to be in his sixties and was pushing retirement age but seemed as active, cheerful and lively as a man in his twenties. One day he told us his story. Students had come into his classroom yelling about someone having a gun. He stepped outside. The halls were mostly clear, everything was silent. He saw a student, a thin boy crawling across the sidewalk. Dragging himself to safety. Gushwa reacted quickly, grabbing whatever he could from his room and trying to stop the bleeding with pressure. He screamed for someone to call an ambulance. He held the boy, put pressure on the wound and tried to talk to him until the ambulance came. He didn't know the student but he was the last person he ever saw. Randy Gordon died in Mr. Gushwa's arms, and he put his hands over his face and sobbed uncontrollably as he described it to us.

One image from the news feeds effects me more than the rest: a still shot of a teenage girl hugging her mother in the Albertsons parking lot. Her left arm is draped over her mother's shoulder and you can see how she painted each of her fingernails a different color. You can also see the frozen expression on her face, you can see the wail she's halfway through and you know she isn't going to be done crying for a while. I see that picture and I wonder if she was ever happy or carefree enough to paint all of her nails a different color again.