Freshwater Literary Journal 2021

Emily Schwartz 2019 Memories are strange. They exist in fragments for you to piece together into a story. And then you hold onto them, and they become a piece of yourself. You hold onto them, you define yourself by them, and yet I always wondered if I’m entitled to them. I’ve lived a privileged life, a good life. It wasn’t without its faults, but I’ve been blessed with wonderful parents, friends that came and went, a perfectly stable home, a warm meal every night, a bed to sleep in. I went to school, an opportunity I was always reminded to be thankful for. I went to school, just like any other kid, and I didn’t always love it. And that was normal.

And I didn’t have any fear. That was normal, too.

I grew up in Stratford, Connecticut. It was a peaceful, suburban town. It was the type of place where you could chat and laugh with your neighbors while you watched your children play on your vast green lawn. It was where teens would complain that there was nothing to do, it was the place that held little fairs with questionably safe rides and greasy food. It was a comfortable place, a little community where children grew up together. It was a little community where children went to school together.

Most of my earlier school days, especially my days at Eli Whitney Elementary, blur together in my memory. But there is that one day that exists as a separate entity. It’s a fragment so clear, so easy to recall as opposed to the jumbled and twisted pieces of memory that are nearly impossible to untangle. I was in the sixth grade. It was Friday. I had a trivial argument with my father that morning. I went to school. I had a normal school day. Everything was normal.

But there was nothing normal about that day.

In the middle of the day, over the intercom, we were instructed not to go outside. I thought nothing of it, and soon after our teacher then explained to us that there was inappropriate graffiti sprayed onto the playground. It was a believably innocent explanation; we just had to stay inside while the janitor cleaned it up. It was also a mockingly innocent, bold-faced lie that a boy destroyed with a single sentence. He held his phone in his hand as he spoke, and I remember my teacher’s shock and horror as it happened. I remember the panic in her voice after he announced the truth for us all to hear.

“There’s been a shooting.”

Before anything more could have been said, before any more information could have come to light, our teacher stopped the entire conversation in its tracks. I thought nothing of it.

At the end of that day, we were given sealed envelopes we were explicitly told not to open. They were for our parents, who picked us up as normal. They were the ones who were tasked with telling us what happened in a school not unlike ours.

19