I found out my best friend was a martyr from a bulletin board at the drugstore.
It was in April, almost a month after the shooting. Mom and I were on our way home from my therapy appointment, and we’d stopped by the pharmacy to pick up my medication. I stayed near the front of the store while Mom went back to pick up my prescription. It was one of those days where I needed space from her. Where every word she said, every move she made, irritated me.
It was also a Death Drum day. Most days were back then, but I distinctly remember that day being worse. Every fleeting thought, no matter how mundane or innocuous, somehow led me on a nihilistic brain spiral. This was most evidenced by my reactions to the various flyers and posters tacked and taped to the community bulletin board near the front of the store.
A flyer encouraging people to recycle? What’s the point? Eventually the sun is going to explode anyway, and then the planet and all of humanity will be gone and nothing we did will have mattered.
A missing cat poster? Do animals have any concept of death? That each day we creep closer to nothingness and there’s nothing we can do about it? I bet they don’t. I bet it’s nice to be a cat.
An advertisement for the upcoming Little Miss Virgil County contest? Why do people even bother having kids? They’re going to die one day, too. Why doesn’t anyone else seem to realize that everything is pointless and death is unavoidable and all of this is just a distraction?
You get the point. It was a Bad Day. And it only got worse when I saw the picture of Sarah.
It was the picture—the school photo with the braids and the cross necklace she wore just that one time. It was the first time I’d seen it since the photos had been handed out at school months ago, when Sarah had taken one look and grimaced, swearing she’d never wear her hair in braided pigtails again because it made her look like a toddler.
But there it was, smiling down at me from this community bulletin board, with big, capital letters announcing:
YOUTH RALLY IN HONOR OF SARAH MCHALE, THE GIRL WITH THE CROSS NECKLACE.
Then in smaller letters, just below her image:
Come, Worship, Remember.
I stared at the flyer for a while, reading it over and over, sure I was missing something. The rally was being held at Hillcreek Christian, a church all the way across town. If it was at Virgil County Baptist, Sarah’s church, I might not have thought twice about it, aside from that weird label. I had no idea why anyone would call her “the girl with the cross necklace.”
But why would there be a rally for Sarah at a church she’d never even attended? Nine people, not including the shooter, had died. It wasn’t just Sarah. In fact, I was pretty sure two of the other victims, Brenna DuVal and Aiden Stroud, had gone to that church. Why wasn’t this for them?
And didn’t a youth rally seem kind of inappropriate?
Keep in mind, this came shortly after my first internet spiral breakdown, when Mom was still trying to do what she could to keep the news away from me. I’d only left the house a handful of times since the shooting. I hadn’t even seen Denny or Ashley yet. Miles hadn’t climbed onto my roof. And I’d only run into Eden at Sarah’s and Rosi’s funerals.
I’d been largely isolated, and nothing about this post-shooting world, especially that flyer, made sense to me.
“Prescription filled,” Mom said, joining me at the bulletin board near the door. “Let’s go home, Lee baby.”
I pointed to the flyer, to Sarah’s face. “What’s this?”
She glanced at it, then looked away quickly. She knew something. I knew she knew something by the slight downturn of her lips, by the darkening of her brown eyes. We had the same eyes, and I remembered Sarah telling me how the color of my irises seemed to shift when I was lying.
“Don’t worry about that,” Mom said. “Let’s just go home.”
She tried to put a hand on my shoulder, but I pulled away. “What is it about, Mom? Why is some random church having a youth rally for Sarah?”
“We can talk about it in the car.”
“No!” I stomped my foot, like a child. I was so mad. So mad that she kept trying to coddle me. I didn’t want her to hide things from me. I wanted to know everything. Even if it hurt. Even if it was bad for me.
“Leanne.”
“Tell me!”
I screamed it so loud that people nearby stopped and turned to look at us. The cashier, standing behind the counter a few yards away, raised an eyebrow, clearly wondering if he should say something.
Mom waved a hand at him, then took me by the elbow and steered me out the glass doors, the cheery bell jingling obnoxiously overhead. As soon as we were outside, I smacked her hand off me and curled in on myself, refusing to move any farther until she explained why my best friend’s school photo, the photo she hated, was on that bulletin board, and why people gave a damn about her necklace.
Mom sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “There have been a few rallies around the state in Sarah’s memory,” she said, her voice resigned. “That’s all.”
“But why?”
Mom shrugged. “Why do churches do anything? You’re asking the wrong person.”
My lack of religious inclination comes from my mom. She was raised Baptist, but after the way her congregation treated her when she got pregnant with me at sixteen, she lost interest in organized religion. To this day, I’m honestly not sure if she lost faith in a higher power or just in the church. She doesn’t like to talk about it. She always says that whatever relationship she does or doesn’t have with God is her business, and no one else’s.
“But why Sarah?” I demanded. “Why just Sarah? And what was that stuff about a necklace?”
“I … I think it’s about what happened in the bathroom, baby.”
“The bathroom?”
She chewed on her bottom lip. Another expression we had in common. “A lot of people are talking about what Sarah … what she said to him.” My mother has never, not once, said the name of the shooter aloud. “The police found her cross necklace at the crime scene. And with him asking her about what she believed before she died and her standing up to him …”
She trailed off, tears springing into her eyes as she looked at my face. I’m sure I looked startled. Or maybe even sick. I felt sick. And confused. Sarah hadn’t had a necklace on that day. She hadn’t said a word to anyone but me in that bathroom once the shooting started.
But Mom must’ve thought my expression meant something else. She tried to rush forward, to hug me, but I dodged her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping the wetness from her eyes before wrapping her arms around herself. “Talking about this must be … I can’t imagine. I’m sorry. We don’t have to … Lee?”
I had already started storming off, away from the store and to the parking lot. I didn’t want her hugs or her tears or her explanations about Sarah. I didn’t want to turn everything into death in my mind. I didn’t want, didn’t want, didn’t want.
That day, I wasn’t thinking about how the story must’ve gotten started. Or where it had come from. Kellie Gaynor didn’t even cross my mind. All I could think was that I hated everything about this world I was living in. This post-shooting reality. My brain was making me miserable. My mom was driving me nuts.
And now, not even my memory of my best friend felt safe or real.