Page 93 of Ugly Duckling
“This was my son,” I said quietly. The chatter died down. “He’d be fifteen right now. We’d be thinking about colleges. What he wanted to do with his life. I’d probably be touring colleges with him as he tried to figure out which school he wanted a full ride to for baseball.”
I’d said the same things so many times to so many people. Given the same story to everyone who needed to know why I did it.
Jett was always my why.
He’d forever be my why.
“He loved baseball,” I went on. “Loved it so damn much that he slept with his hand in a glove, and a ball under his pillow. From the moment he learned to walk, he was out on a baseball field with me. He fell asleep to the sharp ting of my bat cracking against a ball. He lived, breathed, and slept baseball. He was my little sidekick. My confidant. My encouragement. My breath.”
My voice cracked on the last word.
“Sometimes, I wake up, and I can’t breathe. I panic because it’s such a horrible feeling. While I’m asleep, I can forget that I lost him. But when I’m awake, it’s like I have this piece of my heart that will forever ache, because that piece was ripped away from me the day that my little boy was shot along with thirty-three other little boys and girls in their elementary school.”
I looked around at the room, taking in all the men who had been so opposed earlier.
I had their attention now.
“That day was supposed to be a day of celebration. One hundred days of school. Their first one hundred days of school.” I smiled as I remembered making that stupid shirt with a hundred dots of paint on it. “The day before, I’d picked him up early from school so we could go grab a t-shirt from Hobby Lobby. When we got home, we made a shirt for him to wear. A hundred dots to mark each of his first one hundred days.”
A woman in the crowd covered her mouth as tears began gathering in her eyes.
“He couldn’t stand the feel of it that morning that he died. He shoved it into his backpack, though. His plan was to slip it on over his t-shirt when the party started.”
I flipped to the next photo. It was the picture of his face as he wore the shirt.
“We got a little heavy-handed with the paint. He could feel it through the fabric, and he was so particular about his clothes.” I skipped to the next photo. It was of Jett ripping it off in disgust, his hair a curly, wild mess around his cherubic face.
“My Uncle Parker took him to school that day,” I said. “The last time I ever saw my son was when I was getting into my Jeep and leaving. I waved at him and told him to be good.”
The next photo was of the classroom.
“This was my son’s classroom,” I said softly. “His teacher, Mrs. White? This was her first year teaching. She was so freakin’ excited. She loved her kids.” I smiled. “She made all of them their own little desk nameplates. For Jett. For Kyle, Allen, Jacob, Merena, Rainie, Marren, Carly, Alex, Honor, Nevaeh. Sixteen of the sweetest, most innocent souls.”
There was a sharp inhalation, and I looked over at the one man who was holding this meeting up with his denial of the budget.
I switched to the next slide, and everyone inhaled sharply then.
The photo that was displayed on the screen was of all the desk plates scattered throughout the room. There was so much blood on the floor that the carpet was stained a dull red. Jett’s shoes were in the middle of the floor.
I knew they were his because they had little baseballs on them. His favorite.
“Eleven little bodies were carried out of that classroom after a gunman opened fire in the school,” I said. “They started in the west wing. Aiming for a class that was at PE. Or trying to. The PE teacher was a former Green Beret. He knew what to do. He lost one child before he barricaded himself in the locker room, then went even further to barricade the equipment room.”
I switched to the photos of what the coach had been able to do.
“He had to pile eighteen bags of balls between the door and himself and the kids,” I said. “How do you think those balls held up to a bullet ripping through them?”
I switched to the next photo of all the balls.
There wasn’t a single inflated one left after the bullets had ripped through them.
“The gunman, once he’d shot up that door, unloading a whole magazine of .223, stepped over the body of Darren, the first little boy that he killed, and into the hallway. There he shot three more children. Peter, Paul, and Alcede. They were heading to the office to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
“The final act of violence before the shooter moved to my son’s classroom was Corrine. She was in my son’s class, but had asked to use the restroom,” I said softly. “She was gunned down in the hallway outside of her classroom before the gunman came around the corner.
“And I want you to take into account that the school was put into lockdown after the shooting was heard in the gym,” I said. “But the problem was, just like your school, my son’s school wasn’t prepared. They had opened the front doors to anyone and everyone who wanted to come in that day. When the shooting started, protocols were enacted, but it didn’t matter. Everything was utter chaos. No one knew who was doing the shooting. Classes went into lockdown with a bunch of random people. That day, Mrs. White let the shooter into her classroom because she thought he was just a scared kid. A teenager who was terrified. She let him into the classroom, thinking that she was doing the right thing. And in the end, it would be the one thing that got her entire class of five-year-olds killed.
“She was the first one shot the moment he got into the room.” I switched to the photo of her. The little board in her hand, so much like Jett’s first day of school picture, read: first day of teaching kindergarten. I am five foot six. I want to be a teacher when I grow up. “She was shot in the belly and had to watch as the shooter killed every single one of the kids in her room. Starting with Jett. Then Kyle, Allen, Jacob, Merena, Rainie, Marren, Carly, Alex, Honor. And ending with Nevaeh.”
