They keep seeing the people falling, the blood pooling. And they feel the panic, feel it in their still-tensed muscles, of students running for their lives, running so hard they crashed into trees and into lockers and out onto Magnolia Avenue, forget about looking both ways. As they told their stories yesterday, some of the victims of Monday's Santana High shooting were still shaking their heads in disbelief, trying to comprehend how they wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And feeling lucky to be alive to talk about it. Friends get together and make plans for lunch.
Boys open their lockers and give sidelong glances to the girls.
The girls pretend not to notice. Usually that means making sure the kids aren't wearing baseball hats, a dress-code violation. She skipped breakfast so she could get to geometry on time. He wished he was still at Universal Studios, where he'd visited two days earlier. Now that his economics class was over, he would be heading soon to a film course.