That's Not What Happened

by Kody Keplinger

  “Let’s be honest,” I said. “The only one here looking good is Glitter.”

  The Labrador looked up when I said her name. She was lying next to Denny’s chair, her leash tethered to the leg of his desk. She gave a couple of quick tail wags before lowering her head back to the carpet.

  “Yeah, well.” Denny pulled a set of earbuds from his pocket and began untangling them. “Unlike you and me, she slept like a baby last night. And snored. Did I tell you she snores? Loudly?”

  “Maybe it just sounds loud to you because you’re blind and have better hearing than the rest of us,” I said, knowing it was the kind of thing that would get under his skin. Over the past couple years, Denny has told me dozens of stories about ridiculous things people said to him or believed about blind people. The idea that he had superhero-like hearing seems to be the most common misconception.

  “Ha-ha,” he said. “You want to be an actress, right? Stick with drama. Comedy isn’t your thing. Speaking of that, though.” He’d just gotten the earbuds untangled and was plugging them into his computer so he could use the screen reader. “I have a favor to ask.”

  “A favor that involves me being an actress?”

  “Not that. About me being blind. And … the anniversary. I was going to ask you yesterday, but it just …” He shrugged. He had one earbud in now, while the other dangled in midair. His fingers zoomed across the keyboard, though the monitor was blank. He always turned it off so our classmates wouldn’t look over his shoulder while he worked. I didn’t blame him. Our classmates were nosy, and neither of us liked when people stood too close behind us.

  “What’s up?” I asked, already wary. I was trying really hard not to think about the McHales or Sarah or the book. I wanted to keep my head down, pretend none of this was happening, and make it to graduation, when I could get out of this town, move across the country, and make a living being someone else. Talking about yesterday’s anniversary wasn’t going to help with that.

  I know I was being selfish. I was also lying to myself. If the McHales really published that book about Sarah, there would be no escape. For me or anyone else.

  I wondered if Denny had heard the news. He didn’t know the truth about Sarah and Kellie. No one did, except me, but I imagined he probably wasn’t keen on the shooting being all over the media again. And God forbid a movie actually got made …

  “I’m applying for scholarships,” he said, snapping me out of my thought spiral. “This one I’m working on requires a letter, explaining to the committee why I deserve the money. I talked to Mr. Halpern in the guidance office, and he thinks I should write about—”

  “The shooting.”

  “Ding ding.”

  “Well …” I sighed. “He’s not wrong. Being a VCHS survivor would definitely get the committee’s attention.” I’d done it on a couple of scholarships myself, and I knew exactly why Denny seemed hesitant.

  “Yeah, and I’d be a fool not to use it.” He grimaced. “I feel gross even saying that. But anyway. I wrote the letter and it … went in an unexpected direction.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “I think it’s good, actually,” he said. “It’s not what they’ll be expecting, but I think it’s something I needed to write. I don’t know. I sound ridiculous. But I was going to see if you’d read it over to make sure it’s not too … accusatory?”

  “You’re worried that your letter to a scholarship committee is accusatory?”

  “You’ll see what I mean when you read it,” he said. “If you will. And I hope you will because Miles isn’t exactly my top choice for a proofreader.”

  “Hey, now,” I said. “He’s going to pass Senior English this semester with at least a C.”

  “Only took him two tries.”

  We ignored the real reason Denny wasn’t asking Miles to read the letter. Miles has never liked talking about the shooting. I mean, it’s not as if the rest of us are eager to chat about it over snacks or something, but it has always been different with him. Any mention of the details of that day and he just shut down completely. And we didn’t push it.

  “Deanne said she’d read it, too, but I’d really like the perspective of … you know. One of us.”

  Deanne is Denny’s older sister. She was a senior when the shooting happened, the same age as Ashley. She’d been in a classroom under lockdown, on the other side of the school, so I understood what Denny meant. Deanne was great. She’d give good feedback. But she wasn’t really there. She wasn’t one of us.

  “All right,” I said, trying not to let the reluctance leak through my words. “Email it to me. I’ll read it tonight.”

  “Thank you, Lee. You’re the best.” He popped in the other earbud and went back to typing. “Maybe I should’ve led with that instead of telling you that you looked like crap, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  A minute later, the letter was in my inbox. I went ahead and opened the document since I had nothing better to do and, no offense to Denny, I wanted to get this over with. It was … not what I expected.

  Denny’s letter changed everything for me. It was the catalyst. The thing that made me do all of this. You can decide whether that’s a good thing or not.

  Dear Ms. Mulgrove and Members of the Horton Scholarship Committee,

  As part of your application materials, you requested a letter explaining why I should receive a scholarship from your organization. I thought about this question a lot, about what I could say that would make me stand out from the rest of the applications you’ve read. I know one story I could tell. It’s the story everyone expects me to write in these applications and essays. And I’ve written and deleted that version several times.

  I’m assuming the committee has already reviewed my application. If so, then you know a few things—I’m black, disabled, and from Virgil County, Indiana. And a bit of googling will reveal some pretty embarrassing YouTube clips from the local news, where fourteen-year-old Denny talks about the shooting and relearns how to use a cane during physical therapy.

  So the story you probably thought you’d find when you opened this letter was something inspiring. Poor kid from tiny town, blind since birth, survives school shooting and now strives to rise above—or something like that. But that’s not my story.

  I mean, I guess it is—all the pieces are right—but it’s also not. The facts are there, but the framing is all wrong.

  So, instead of giving you the expected version of this letter, I’m going to give you the less inspiring but more honest version. And then I can tell you why I still deserve this scholarship.

  Even before the shooting, I stood out at VCHS. I was one of only two black kids in a mostly white school (the other being my older sister), and, on top of that, the only blind kid. And people didn’t really know what to make of either. My classmates weren’t so bad. I’d known most of them since first grade, and, yeah, some were racist assholes (sorry, I probably shouldn’t say asshole in a scholarship letter) and some liked to steal my stuff and hide it since I couldn’t see. But at least they were up front about it. And my peers also weren’t scared to ask questions, “Is this racist?” and “But how do you do this if you can’t see?” being the most common. It could get exhausting, yeah, but it was better than the teachers.

  The teachers just made weird assumptions or said really awkward things. Like the English teacher who told me how “well spoken” I was after I gave a presentation on Lord of the Flies. Or the band instructor who begged me to join because he was certain I’d have musical talent. Because I guess every blind guy with dark skin might as well be Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles reincarnated. (I don’t have any musical talent, by the way.) Oh, and let’s not forget the social studies teacher who asked me if I’d “seen the news,” then immediately stuttered out an apology before changing “seen” to “heard.” And all of this was on top of the assumptions they made about what I would and wouldn’t need help with in class. Because asking me directly was an outrageous concept, I gues
s.

  There was one teacher, though, who didn’t make me want to smack myself in the forehead with my own cane. And that was Essie Taylor.

  Ms. Taylor started teaching the computer science classes at VCHS my freshman year, and she was amazing. She was young and funny and smart and, yes, I definitely had a crush on her. But don’t worry. This letter isn’t going in some weird, pervy direction. Ms. Taylor was my mentor and nothing more. And I wasn’t the only one who adored her. For a lot of us nerdier types, Ms. Taylor’s computer lab quickly became our second home. We spent every lunch, every free period, every chance we could get in her classroom. It was our geeky haven.

  It obviously did not stay that way.

  One of the reasons I loved Ms. Taylor—on top of her just being awesome—was that she knew her stuff when it came to tech. These days, assistive tech for blind folks is kind of amazing and, for some, life changing. Sure, screen readers are great—I use one every day—but it goes way beyond that. Did you know there are devices you can hold up to an item of clothing and it’ll tell you what color it is? There are apps that allow you to take a picture of something—like a label or even just a random object—and within seconds, you’ll get a voiced response telling you what the picture was of. And they can get really specific, too. Once I snapped a photo of my guide dog and I got “adult yellow Labrador on blue blanket.” There are video games for blind people, where the gameplay is entirely audio driven. There’s so much out there.

  But there could be more.

  Ms. Taylor was the first one to suggest I try building an app. She sent me links to articles and podcasts and helped me brainstorm ideas. She even said that if I finished it by the end of the semester, she’d count it as my final project. She made a nerdy freshman believe he didn’t have to wait until he grew up to start doing the things he dreamed of.

  And then the shooting happened.

  Ms. Taylor’s class was an elective, which meant there were students from all grade levels, but mostly freshmen. It was also a very small class. Most kids at VCHS preferred to take Ag classes, so there wasn’t even a dozen of us in the first period computer applications class. I was sitting near the front of the class with my friends Jared Grayson and Rosi Martinez.

  Jared was a stealth nerd. He acted like your typical midwestern farmer’s son, but in reality, he knew more about video games than anyone I knew. He didn’t just play them—he knew all about the different developers, what engines they used, and graphics. He’d go on forever about graphics and frame rates, not seeming to grasp that the blind kid didn’t really care about that stuff.

  Rosi, on the other hand, was not a nerd. She was on student council, sure, but she was also freshman homecoming queen and the only underclassman to get picked for VCHS’s cheerleading team. But we’d become friends earlier that semester when she’d offered to tutor me in Spanish if I helped her with Ms. Taylor’s class.

  For me, the weirdest part of thinking about that day is remembering how normal it started. It was toward the end of the period and most of us had finished our classwork (building a database) and the room was a mix of chatter and keyboard clicking. Like it always was.

  “I’m really excited about the new Age of Dragons game, but I can’t decide if I want it on PC or console,” Jared was saying. “It’ll look way better on PC, I know. It’s supposed to look amazing in 4K. But my computer’s been running slowly lately, and I’m worried it’ll lag. It’ll probably run better on my console, but it won’t look as good. I mean it’ll look fine but not with the kind of resolution you can get on a PC. But also—”

  “Denny,” Rosi interrupted. “I’m trying to find a birthday present for my abuela. If you were a seventy-year-old woman, would you rather get a comfy sweater or a pretty necklace? Keep in mind I’m broke, so it’ll probably be coming from Walmart.”

  “Hey,” Jared said. “We were talking over here.”

  “No, you were talking,” Rosi said. “And Denny doesn’t care about what resolution you play your stupid game in. He’s blind.”

  “Yeah, but he really cares about what you buy your grandmother,” Jared retorted.

  “He does. Because he’s a thoughtful guy. Unlike some people.”

  “I’m thoughtful!”

  “Now kiss,” I said. Because to this day, you cannot convince me that those two weren’t in love with each other. Yeah, they argued constantly, but whenever the other wasn’t around, they pined. The only thing Jared talked about more than video games was Rosi. She wasn’t quite as transparent, but I knew her. She liked him. Even if she would never admit it.

  “Okay, guys,” Ms. Taylor said. Her voice came from the front of the room, just a few feet from where Jared, Rosi, and I were. “The bell is going to ring in a few minutes. Please don’t forget to log out and …”

  Her voice trailed. I don’t know how to explain this, but I could feel everyone’s attention shift. I remember the sound of a collective gasp, but I’m not sure if that really happened or if my brain just planted it there, because it seems like what should have happened.

  This loud, popping sound started, and there was yelling, and two hands—one on either side of me—grabbed me by the arms and yanked me down, out of my seat and onto the floor. It was so fast that I bumped my forehead on the edge of the desk. For a weird second, I thought this was some sort of bizarre revenge from Rosi and Jared for teasing them. But that didn’t explain all the loud noises, or why they’d be climbing under the desk, too, legs tangling with mine.

  People always assume those few minutes of chaos were the scariest of my life. They weren’t, though. They were the most confusing. I hadn’t seen standing in the doorway with a gun. I didn’t know what the popping sound was. I just knew it was loud. I raised my hands and pressed them against my ears, sure it would pass in a second and someone would explain.

  I felt Jared slump against me, and I lowered one of my hands to ask him what was going on, but he didn’t answer, and I figured he couldn’t hear me over the noise. Even when the bullet went through my arm, just below my elbow, it didn’t register. I felt the pain and I knew I was bleeding, but I still couldn’t connect the dots. Maybe it was shock or adrenaline or just denial, but I wasn’t scared. This was school. I didn’t need to be scared.

  Then the popping got farther away. I heard it echoing in the hallway outside the computer lab, heard a voice on the intercom telling teachers to go into lockdown. I knew something was wrong then. We’d been doing lockdown drills since first grade. And yet, as crazy is this is going to sound, I still didn’t get it. I remember sitting there, under my desk, my arm bleeding, and wondering why I hadn’t heard Ms. Taylor shut the classroom door yet.

  And then there was quiet. The heaviest kind of quiet. I don’t know how else to explain it. But it was so quiet that I wondered if all the popping had messed with my eardrums. I reached over to where Jared was leaning against me and nudged him, but he just slid limply down, away from me. I thought he’d been knocked out. Maybe he’d hit his head, too. I could feel a knot forming on mine, and I was thinking that I’d give him and Rosi crap for jerking me down so fast later.

  Then I heard someone moving across the room. And breathing. I don’t usually notice how people breathe—being blind doesn’t mean you have superpower hearing—but this was fast and loud. And in a room this quiet, it was alarming.

  “Hello?” I said, because I really couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Hush.” The voice was sharp and ragged and I didn’t recognize it, which seemed kind of weird. I thought I could recognize the voices of pretty much all of the people in that class.

  Then there was more shifting and what sounded like someone crawling toward me. I wondered why anyone would crawl in a classroom. Were we supposed to crawl during a lockdown? Was that part of a drill I had missed? I know all of these thoughts probably seem strange, but at the time, nothing was making sense.

  “Stay quiet,” the voice said, much closer now. “I heard sirens. The cops should be�
�� Oh no, Rosi.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why are cops coming? What’s wrong with Rosi? What’s going on?”

  But the girl—it was a girl’s voice—just kept repeating “Oh no, oh no, oh no” in a broken whisper.

  I found out later that that girl was Eden Martinez, Rosi’s cousin, and she was saying “oh no” because Rosi was dead. I’d never even heard Eden speak before that day. She’s quiet and reserved. Basically Rosi’s opposite. But suddenly, we were the only two people alive in that classroom.

  I didn’t know that then. It was after the cops came, after I was put in an ambulance, after I learned that the pain in my arm was a gunshot wound. I didn’t know the full extent of what had happened until I was safe and sound in a hospital room with my parents and sister.

  Shortly after that, the camera crews showed up. There must have been a dozen news stories and TV segments about me over the next few months. I wasn’t just the blind kid anymore. Now I was the blind kid who survived a mass shooting. And with that came this assumption that, somehow, my story was the most interesting. Or the most tragic. Like things must have been so much worse for me because I was the disabled kid in that computer lab, scared and lost in the chaos.

  But I don’t think that’s true.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the shooting didn’t affect me. I lost my two best friends and my favorite teacher. Physical therapy and relearning to use my cane again sucked. And I still jump at loud noises and sometimes have nightmares and all the things you might expect. But I can’t help thinking I got off relatively easy compared to the others. Because I didn’t have to see any of it.

  Look, you don’t have to see things to be traumatized by them—I know that, obviously—but most of the pain and horror for me came in the aftermath. It came from learning what had happened. I didn’t have to witness it the way others did. I didn’t have to see the bodies of my friends. To this day, I don’t know where Rosi or Jared or Ms. Taylor were shot, and I don’t want to know. The other survivors didn’t get that choice.