You see, I write.

I’ve been waiting and looking for who knows how long for a story to write, but the odd thing is – the only story I’ve ever been compelled to sit down and write from start to finish is neither a finished story, nor my story to tell. There’s a lot of pressure to be felt when something belongs to so many people. But you know what? I do own a small corner of this story, and I have a feeling I’ll also own a little more peace of mind after telling it.

It’s been three years – to the day. I know one day I’ll wake up on the 16th of April and realize what day it is. I’ll feel it for a moment when I reach to turn off my alarm in the dark. I’ll remember that smile while I feed my kids, and I’ll move on.

That day won’t be this year, though. Nevertheless, with every simple, peaceful day that has passed and will continue to pass, I can feel that day coming.

Let’s back up three years.

It started with the wind.

It was the kind of wind that forced you to just stand still for a minute – tired of pushing against it. The kind that pulls tears out of your eyes and knocks even the strongest looking trees to the ground. The kind that blows snow clouds so quickly by that the flakes never had a chance to settle before the sun could shine again. The kind that carries the sound of gunshots miles away.

It’s hard to imagine that it had been so cold that morning, considering it had already been hot, and would be again soon. Considering the things happening, the things to come. Winds of change? Sure. I don’t know about anywhere else, but in Blacksburg, sometimes the wind blows so fast it’s hard to breathe – it was one of those days.

I couldn’t tell you what the weather was like for the next few days, whether the sun shone or not – I wasn’t there. I never left town, but I couldn’t have been all there and lived through it. All I know is that when I helped lift that wooden box into the back of that hearse and leaned in to say goodbye with a kiss, I was there, and it was raining.

It didn’t rain hard or for very long, but it was enough. It couldn’t wash away the week, but it was enough to rinse away the traces on the sidewalk and maybe a few media. It was enough to soak the grass and allow those 32 stones to sink a little further into their new places on the ground, become a little more permanent. It needed to rain, even for just a day, just to get it out.

It might not ever rain hard enough to let it all out, though. Remember, the rain falls, but the drops disappear and rise up again, the same rain – just a different time. The same water that washed away the blood has since washed away melted snow, pollen, frustration. So it becomes a cycle – it always has been. Every time it’s just a little different. Still, two things remain the same for me:

The rain reminds me of who I am.

The wind reminds me it can all change.

******************************************

It always starts with a dream doesn’t it? I don’t know why we’re always much more brilliant when we’re asleep than in our waking moments, but that’s the way it seems to happen.

I dreamt about Caitlin. It wasn’t the first time, and I know it won’t be the last, but it had been a while. Caitlin is my friend. Caitlin is my sister. Caitlin is not alive, but there’s certainly nothing past tense about her. In this dream I walked into a room of the sorority house that I had lived in for the past three years and saw Caitlin moving into it. Without saying a word I ran up to her and wrapped my arms around her, starting to cry. They weren’t tears of joy, really, maybe tears of relief, after so long to see that she was alright. She turned to me and began to cry too, only because I was. Her crying turned into a quiet laughter. She didn’t have to speak – I knew she meant I shouldn’t cry. As other girls passed through the house, they saw me crying and stopped, concerned. The strange thing was, none of them saw Caitlin there with me. They couldn’t see that she had moved her things in, planning to stay for a while. I was the only one.

That was when I realized that although this story is woven into so many people’s lives, I might really be the only one to tell it.

So here goes:

I put my hand on the wall, tightening my fingers to the white cinderblock as I listened.

“Thanks. I’ll call the others. I’m so sorry,” I said. At least, that’s what I remember saying. I looked blankly forward and closed the phone, dropping that hand to my side. A girl stepped out of her doorway into the hall in front of me, hearing that I had been on the phone. She must have seen my face start to twist, my eyes clouding over. I didn’t say anything yet. She just gasped, put both her hands over her mouth and hurried back into her room. I heard a sob or two break out behind me. I didn’t need to say anything. One girl came to hug me – my arms did not meet hers in any kind of embrace. We had never really been friends; I couldn’t understand why she was hugging me. My hand still on the wall, I slid down onto my knees.

I had always wondered why they did that in movies. The truth is – there was no reason to stand. Sorrow seems much more natural closer to the ground. And so, to the floor I sank, kneeling, crumpled. I know sisters stood in doorways behind me, scattered, stunned.

Responsibility sobered me. I said that I would tell everyone else, so I had to keep to that.

“Oh, God. How can I tell them?”

I started with Jake, I think. I honestly don’t know anymore. Jake and I had taken AP History together back in high school, we had been in band together, grown up in the same town. Now here we were, years later, miles away from home, and closer than we had ever been before.

I stayed in the hallway, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, hugging my knees, sometimes face down, calling the ones I loved to tell them our friend, our Caitlin, had died that morning. And we couldn’t even know until now. Some people I didn’t even know. I feel bad that I had to be the one to tell them, but somehow I had been given phone numbers, responsibility. Thank God for the chance to be able to do something, though. There’s nothing worse than being powerless, and even in this moment, even after the past 12 or so hours that would change my life, I had some little bit of power left.

I kept calling this wrong number looking for Kristen, not knowing it until some woman answered angrily, telling me not to call that number anymore. I guess it was pretty late by then. I shouted, sobbing into the phone, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It’s an emergency and I need to find Kristen,” and then hung up. Sometimes I wonder about that woman – if the next morning, while she sat eating toast in her kitchen watching the news . . . if she saw and understood.

Every now and then I would feel someone next to me on the floor – I would be cradled by loving arms, arms trying to comfort, and then I would continue calling. My memories of all of this are mostly scrambled at this point, and were filled in by Melissa, who was constantly near me at the time.

Kiera was there. I just remembered. I might not have remembered it except for the soft orange hoodie she was wearing. It stands out in my mind just as it would in a crowd. I don’t even know how she found out, but suddenly she was there. Just for a brief moment – to hold me, offer anything she could, before leaving. I really do love her.

She knew I had to do what I had to do. That’s all I could think about, what would I do when that was done?

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself again. It’s hard to start at the beginning of a story when you’re living in the middle. I almost said end, but Lord knows it’s not over.

Let’s back up just a little more and come back to this moment a little later – when you can understand how to hurt just right from it.

*****************

I woke too early that morning. Honestly, I didn’t shower, so it didn’t take very long to get ready. I just slid my “KKG is for Lovers” shirt over top a long sleeve white t-shirt and jeans. I slid my Converse on without tying them. After all, it was 9 am on a Monday morning, and I really couldn’t be bothered to try to impress anyone in my class, especially since most of us were girls. I sat at my computer wasting a little time before going downstairs to wait for the bus. I had an IM from Caitlin at 2:43 am.

CaballosdelVuelo: are you still awake?? I am!

CaballosdelVeulo: love

I smiled.

I waited in the great room, looking out the large windows waiting for the bus which stops right outside our house. I say “house” – it’s usually just referred to as “the house,” or “the Kappa house,” but is really just a very small, very homey dormitory made for housing girls bound by Greek letters.

A dove smacked into the windowed wall outside and I stepped back with a yelp. The blinds were open, but the windows really weren’t that clean, so it couldn’t have thought it could fly in. I stood baffled as the bird hopped a few hops and flew off. Was the wind really so strong that it blew the dove straight into the window in front of me?

It’s funny how we think we’re so clever putting symbolism and what not into stories, wondering if the readers will be able to decipher our meaning.

I can see God looking down hoping we’ll see his symbolism in this very long, very complex story. He threw that bird into my chapter, and I’m still not sure why. I’ve studied English Literature for four years, and I can guess, but after all, I’m not the author of that piece of foreshadowing, and life is neither a short story, a novel, or a poem – those are all just reflections on little portions of the real deal.

Stepping out of the airlock, the freezing wind scraped across my face. I pulled up the hood of my coat and it battled just to stay on through the strong gusts. Katie met me at the bus stop, which luckily was not far from our front door, and we huddled in the corner of the glass shield.

“Have you checked your e-mail this morning?” Katie asked with her chin tucked down to keep her neck warm and to see me a little better.

“No, how come?”

“There was some e-mail about someone in AJ who shot himself. It was really vague. . .” AJ, meaning West Ambler-Johnston, a dorm on campus – the dorm Katie and I had both lived in as freshman.

“Oh. Wow.” I never really know how to respond to things like that.

I could tell Katie was worried. It wasn’t so surprising though, Katie got worried if the bus was a minute late. You have to love her for it. “Well,” I started, trying to figure out something to say to quell that worry, “I mean, if someone killed themselves I guess they aren’t dangerous to everyone else then.” It may seem like a strange, heartless thing to say – but not too many months ago we had a crazed escaped convict on the loose near our campus opening fire on policemen. At least this gunman seemed to be done.

God, he hadn’t even started.

As we waited at that bus stop, as we stepped into it and sighed from the relief of the heat inside, as we sat and let thoughts of a suicide in our old dorm mingle with thoughts of classes, assignments, breakfast – our lives were changing and we had no idea. Maybe about a mile away, other lives were being ended.

Blacksburg was such a small town. Don’t these sort of things only happen in cities? People moved to Blacksburg to be away from all of that. Caitlin moved to Blacksburg from New York to be away from all that.

Tiny snowflakes hit the bus windows. Snow in April. We’d had stranger weather before – and we’d have stranger weather in a few days. I peered out as the bus stopped, letting a few people off. We didn’t start moving again, though. The driver had the radio in his hand and was talking to someone.

Sirens.

The scream of sirens penetrated the cold winter air. The intersection in front of us was soon flooded with police cars, streaming towards us and turning to our left, where we would have turned had the bus kept moving. There seemed to be a hundred – they just kept coming.

Confused murmurs spread through the bus. A few sounded merely inconvenienced.

“We’ve been told to stay here,” the bus driver stood and turned to the passengers, looking sideways to the source of the sirens.

A few people started getting out their phones – asking questions. A few people started to ask if they could get out and walk from there. The bus driver couldn’t keep them.

I watched, almost angrily, as a few people stepped out into the snow, walking towards campus. What were they thinking? Yeah, I had a paper due, but there was obviously something going on that would excuse that.

I still wonder what those few people met when they got into the heart of campus. Were they stopped by police and told to get inside before they got far? Did they make it all the way to the drill field before they understood?

I hope they didn’t. I hope their innocent desire to get to class, and slight impatience didn’t drive them to have to witness the ambulances, the police cars, the students who had jumped from the second story windows. I couldn’t describe what they would have seen because I wasn’t there. If I had not wasted time on my computer that morning and taken the earlier bus, as I had considered, I would have been two buildings over, waiting in the hallway before class, or one building over, still getting that bagel I had contemplated if I got to campus in time. I would have been in earshot.

I’m very thankful I had taken that later bus, but distance wouldn’t soon change that I wouldn’t hear those shots.