I didn’t know Eden before the shooting. Her cousin, Rosi, was in my grade and we were friendly, if not friends.
Rosi and Sarah had sat next to each other in several classes throughout the years, a side effect of alphabetically arranged seating charts, and they’d always gotten along. So once every couple of weeks, Rosi would sit at our little table during lunch. I’m not sure she ever sat at the same lunch table two days in a row, honestly. Rosi had friends from every clique, which meant there was always an empty seat for her, no matter what side of the cafeteria she was in the mood for.
Rosi was the first one who suggested I cut my hair short. We were sitting at the tiny round table near the vending machines, and she just looked at me, very seriously, and asked, “Have you ever thought about a pixie cut?”
“No way,” I said. “I’d just end up looking like a boy.”
“I don’t think so.” She leaned in, almost uncomfortably close to my face as she tilted her head from one side to the other, examining me. “Your face is very … angular. And you’ve got amazing cheekbones. I think you’d rock some super-short hair.”
I can’t say I didn’t think of her that spring, the day I took a rusty pair of scissors and began hacking away at my hair. When Mom saw what I’d done, she rushed me over to her friend Gretchen, who worked at the local salon in town. We ended up buzzing all of my hair off, and as it began to grow in, I thought of Rosi.
In some ways, keeping it short now feels like a tiny memorial to her.
But this was supposed to be about Eden.
Eden came to Sarah’s funeral, and I’d gone to Rosi’s. We’d gravitated toward each other at both, as everyone around us tried to say how sorry they were and how glad they were that we, at least, were okay, and how God had a plan and so on and so forth. Eden was the only person there who I knew understood. Ashley and Denny were both still in the hospital, and this was before Miles had started climbing onto my roof at night.
We didn’t even say anything as we exchanged numbers after the service for Rosi. She’d just handed me her phone and watched as I typed in my number. Mom had pulled me away almost as soon as I’d handed it back to her. But later that night, she texted me. It’s Eden.
We started spending time together after that, particularly as the spring began to warm into that lovely space before summer when the air is still dry and the breeze is still cool and it feels nice to just lie in the grass. She’d pick me up in her van and we’d drive down to Wargin Park, where we’d sit by the pond all afternoon. She’d draw and I’d read plays—that was the summer I decided I wanted to be an actress—and no one bothered us there.
Most of those days by the lake have blended together in my mind now. Like a collage of pictures with no real chronology. We were there to escape, after all. To try and not feel or think for a little while. To fade into the background and leave this version of ourselves behind.
I could tell Eden was struggling with that, though. And in my collage of memories there’s this one that stands out, in the center of the other pictures, larger and clearer, while the rest have tattered and faded with time.
We were sitting by the lake, under a large willow tree. I was on my stomach, eyes focused on the flimsy paperback copy of The Crucible I’d purchased at a thrift store a few days earlier. I could hear Eden’s pencil scratching against her sketch pad a few feet away. I was trying to disappear. To lose myself in the text so that Lee didn’t exist in that moment. But the sound of her vigorously erasing pulled me back to reality.
I could tell something was wrong, though I didn’t want to ask. It was in the way she gripped the pencil, just a little too tight, and in the speed of her eraser scrubbing the page. When she was finished, she blew off the eraser dust and began sketching again. I went back to my book without a word.
But a few minutes later, she was erasing again, harder this time. And when I looked up at her, the pencil in her hand looked like it might break.
“Eden?” I asked tentatively.
“It’s not perfect,” she said, less to me and more to the page she was furiously scrubbing against. “I keep trying but it’s not perfect.”
“I’m sure it’s great,” I said. “You’re a great artist.”
But she wasn’t listening to me. Her entire focus was on that paper, and it seemed like she was trying to erase everything she’d done, not just a messy line or two. I didn’t understand. Why not just start on a new page if the drawing wasn’t working?
“I don’t … know … why … I bother!” She screamed the last word and dragged her eraser so hard against the drawing that the page tore beneath it.
I could sense the eruption before it came. I sat up and scrambled backward, toward the base of the tree. As Eden’s eyes darkened and her lips pressed into a tight line, I fought my own urge to flee. Nearly everything set off my flight instinct back then. But I was trying to stay calm, stay logical and rational. Eden was just upset about her drawing. Eden wasn’t a threat.
One of those things was correct. Eden wouldn’t hurt me—I don’t think she could hurt anyone, not physically—but this wasn’t just about an imperfect drawing.
With a sharp tearing sound, Eden ripped the page out of her sketchbook. Then she was on her feet, running toward the water just a few yards away. I jumped up, not sure what she was planning to do.
“Eden!” I shouted.
But she stopped at the edge of the water. Then she unleashed this deep, pained yell that sent the ducks on the lake scattering and made me recoil, pressing my palms into my ears to black out the sound and the panic that came with it. I could see Eden’s arms moving, tearing at the sheet of paper with large, violent motions. Then she hurled them all into the water, the tiny white slips floating across the dark surface of the lake. Like flower petals.
Eden kept screaming and her hands raised to her hair, grasping fistfuls of long, dark waves and pulling. It was the middle of a weekday and there was no one else around, thank God, but I knew I couldn’t let her go on like this.
With my hands still covering my ears, I approached her. “Eden,” I said. Then yelled. “Eden!”
When her screams quieted to heavy pants and her hands slowly unclenched from her hair, she turned to look at me. And it was like she was seeing me for the first time that day. Like she’d completely forgotten that I’d been there, right next to her, all morning. She stared at me for a long, silent moment, then, gingerly, stepped around me, moved past me, and headed back to the willow tree. She picked up her sketch pad and the backpack she used in place of a purse, and walked away. Leaving me alone at the park with no ride home.
I called and texted her, but Eden didn’t respond. Eventually I had to call my mom and ask her to come get me after work.
Mom was angry. “What kind of friend just leaves you there?” she demanded. “Anything could have happened to you.”
“I’ve already lived through a school shooting, Mom,” I said, not hiding the annoyance in my voice. “What worse could happen in the middle of the day at Wargin Park?”
“Plenty,” she said.
I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk to her about Eden. She didn’t get it. Didn’t understand what it was like to live in our heads.
I saw Eden a few days later, but neither of us mentioned what had happened at the park. We went on like that day had been wiped off the calendar. A missing moment in time.
To this day, despite all the conversations we’ve had, all the hours spent together, all the emails and text messages exchanged, it’s never come up.