Never Again Until...

It has been almost 13 years since Sandy Hook. It has been one day since America’s last school shooting.

Taped outside every classroom was a list of names printed on varying colors of pastel paper. As a third grader, I’d read them while waiting silently in the hallway, lined up and ready to learn after recess or coming back from math in a different classroom. Charlotte was my favorite name on the list of twenty-six. Each time, I’d stay stuck on it for a second longer than all the rest, always coming back to those perfectly aligned nine letters. I loved the way the name sounded in my head. Charlotte was in first grade, just two years below me.

Charlotte was shot and killed in her classroom, only three hours away from mine.

It was 12 years later, in my junior year of college, that I took a Multimedia Journalism class where we were shown reporting done by Steve Hartman of CBS, a project called Unmade Beds and Overdue Books. Hartman photographed the bedrooms of children who fell victim to gun violence in schools. As my professor went through each room, each moment frozen in time, it was as if everything went silent because there on the screen was Charlotte Bacon and her bedroom. The name on the pastel paper all those years ago now had a face. Much like my own in 2012, Charlotte’s room had flip-flops in the closet, a pillow pet on the bed, dolls everywhere, and scattered arts and crafts. But unlike Charlotte’s room, mine no longer resembles what it once was. There are stickers from my college, articles I wrote for the high school newspaper, a new coat of paint, and flip-flops switched out for Birkenstocks because, unlike Charlotte, I grew up. I got what she never had the chance to do, and for no other reason than dumb luck.

I never met her, but I will always remember Charlotte Bacon. Forever, I will carry her name with me. There will always be someone out there who holds her memory, but I shouldn’t have to. She shouldn’t be something to remember. A name on a pastel paper. She should be here. A child who was safe at school. A child who got to go home and hug her parents and complain about homework and grow up and realize how silly those complaints were. One man and one gun took that from her and 19 other students. He killed them and 6 staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School that day. We all said never again would something like that happen.

Never again until 2018.

This time, I was in 8th grade and less naive. Old enough to realize why we practiced hiding in the dark. Old enough to be scared. On Valentine’s Day that year, 17 lives were cut short at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. That was the same year my school’s lockdown policy changed. Now, instead of just hiding, we were told to memorize the slogan “avoid, deny, defend.” Teachers told us we could barricade doors with desks. Use pencils and scissors as weapons.

Never again until 2022.

I was a senior in high school when 19 children and 2 teachers were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Fear, anger, and heartbreak were all overshadowed by a feeling of defeat. My education had been marred by violence. Geometry teachers telling us to use water bottles as weapons. Fourth-grade teachers saying they’d throw us out windows to protect us. Homeroom teachers saying if we didn’t get inside quickly enough when that alarm went off, then we would be locked out. Countless and countless school employees ensuring all students knew how to stand on toilet seats, lock classroom doors, and quickly find exits. These messages, this fear, had been drilled into me before I knew how to multiply. Reading interrupted by lockdown drills. And yet, this time felt different because I was graduating, but my siblings weren’t. Because every time we said never again, there was always a new headline.

It is terrifying to be a student, but it’s almost scarier to love one. During Ulvade, my sister was in second grade, a year younger than I was during Sandy Hook. One night, shortly after the shooting, she called me into her room and told me she was scared because big kids at school told her that children her age were killed in their classroom. She is my heart walking, and yet I could not tell her that it wasn’t true. I could not tell her not to worry. I could not tell her she was safe at school. I could not tell her I was able to protect her. All I could do was hold her and go over the steps I could recite in my sleep. “It’s okay, my love. If something happens, you know what to do,” I said. Eventually, I had to call my dad in to talk to her the same way my parents had already done with me and my brother. Three children spanning across ten years, and still the same conversation.

Never again until 2025.

It was their first week of school when Annunciation Catholic School students heard shots fired through their church window. Thoughts and prayers? I have been thinking for 13 years every time I walk into a classroom. Every time my siblings get on the bus. Every time an act of violence shows up in the news. Every time a new school year starts. These children were praying. Two of them are dead. Schools will never be safe until policy is changed. Until lives are valued more than a gun.

I am now a senior in college, months away from graduating. It has been almost 13 years since Sandy Hook. It has been one day since America’s last school shooting.

Photo by Chip Vincent