The day Lana Stanley brought a 9mm semi-automatic gun to Townshill High school, it was tucked tightly inside her navy blue backpack, sitting idly between her four pound history book and a half empty bottle of water. The early October heat was rising in what the meteorologists' and local media outlets would call "Stanley's Inferno". 

The temperatures rose to a record setting high of 103 degrees that Friday morning, and all of the families owning private parking lots alongside the lake pulled out plastic beach chairs and orange cones, sitting doubtfully in summer shorts and long-sleeved shirts, country songs crooning statically from their radios. They were charging beach-goers five dollars to park—claiming it a bargain—because the coveted spots were priced at fifteen during the summer. But most people parked their cars at the Mandarin restaurant across the street nevertheless, where parking tickets were an empty threat and Crab Rangoons were half priced after six PM.

Even now, I only remember the most arbitrary details about that day. The smell of burnt coffee permeating through our hallways, my Dad still perplexed by the complicated method of the new state-of-the-art machine Anna had gotten him for his birthday just days before. I left the milk out that morning after trying to overcompensate the blistered bitterness of the brew with extra creaminess and sugar. When I came home later that day, the cap was still off,  and the mostly-full gallon was still perched in a puddle of it's own condensation--like some kind of rancid moat surrounding a forgotten castle.

That morning I stood at my closet, and for the life of me, couldn't decide what to wear.  Later I felt so odd with the morning sun beating down my back, a wool scarf grazing my bare legs, and a pair of broken-in flip-flops molded to the exact architecture of my feet.

Besides the heat, nothing seemed out of place that morning. Alex, my best friend, was ten minutes late—a daily occurrence I was used to by then. Just a week before, I would have been wearing a fleece jacket because the first frost left me with a runny nose and a prelude to a cold.

But not on October 9th. 

As usual, I could hear the sound of Alex's car approaching rapidly above the speed limit before I could see it, although we'd stopped hearing complaints from our neighbors who apparently believed you couldn't teach an old dog new tricks. And Alex was never the one to take kindly to being told what to do.

It happened one afternoon just minutes before I had to be at track practice. 

Alex texted me, asking me to meet her near the science labs, and when I got there, her lips were turned up in one of her trademarked devious grins. Our friends Alison and Seamus were gathered around too, so when Alex first took out the can of spray paint, I couldn't exactly see what it was. When I realized we were congregated around Lana's locker, I immediately wanted to sprint away, but for some reason, my feet stayed glued to the floor as all of my other body parts were screaming at me to do one simple thing: To run.

You know that feeling? The kind that starts at the bottom of your stomach and shoots up your throat like bile? And then it heavily weighs down on your tongue like a paperweight, and you just know something bad is about to happen? That's exactly how I felt as I stood there motionlessly at first, doing nothing but watch Alex quickly etch out a four letter word on Lana's locker. Seconds after when she grabbed my hands, my legs were finally forced into action as the group of us sprinted away.

Once in my Biology class, we watched a documentary about birds experiencing declined mobility due to lead poisoning. The gradual paralysis of their muscles ultimately left them with the inability to fly. Sometimes I wonder if spoken words were concrete and tangible, that's what mine would look like: Broken wings with the powerlessness to launch. After all, by not saying anything to stop Alex, I was loading my own gun with words as ugly as the ones she chose, and offering it to her to pull the trigger.

It was just four letters: Three consonants, one vowel. But it was that word sprayed brilliantly in red paint across Lana's locker that was the first vision that burned the inside of my eyelids during the precise moment I heard the pierce of the first shot.

Retrospectively, I had no sense of time as it passed through its seasons during the rest of my Senior year. Melodramatic? Maybe. But for me, particularly then, everything—the days, seconds, and weeks—all sort of thawed into one another with no lucid transitional periods, where only the biggest changes and significant moments could possibly make it out of the muddle alive. When can you really start to see the warnings signs? The infinitesimal presages you notice once the game is over, after the score is settled, after people's lives are forever changed.

Now, after everything has happened, I should've known better. All this time I thought I was missing the forewarnings, but they were there all along. After all, the sun was towering higher than we were used to, it's heartbeat pulsating stronger than usual. 

It was an Indian summer, with a high of 103 degrees.

Even with my eyes closed, I could tell the sun was coming up.

I always hear the birds first, and that's when it sinks in: Another sleepless night, another event-less day to begin. Usually around this time, I surrender my efforts in trying  to sleep and just go through the motions of the day. Before—say, seven months ago if we're being precise—my daily routine was  different. My life revolved around clocks.

Starting with my alarm harshly ringing through my room at 5:00, I'd lace up my sneakers and head outside where the world was still sleeping, and start off my day with a five mile run. When I got back—sweaty and awake—I'd hop in the shower then head to the breakfast nook in our kitchen—usually to eat avocado toast and drink too much coffee. I'd read and re-read my planner until I was 100 percent confident I'd accomplished every school-related task for the day: Proof-checking papers. Going over my flash-cards one last time before an exam. Making sure everything was in place and in order—usually for the fourth or fifth time.

When my hair was properly finished—a forty minute effort in itself involving a blow-dryer, straightening-hair products, and the generous use of a flat iron—I 'd get dressed in the outfit I laid out  and dewrinkled the night before. In the damask floor length mirror that stood next to my closet, I'd carefully apply makeup: A stroke of a neutral eyeshadow. A soft, smoky line of pencil framing my eyes. Just one coat of mascara on my already dark lashes, and a rosy lip-balm to finish it off. And when I was sure I looked presentable enough, I'd make up my bed with same amount of diligence, open my shades, and turn my radio off—which for most part was always on. I needed a consistent stream of songs to execute the sound of silence as often as possible.

Silence could be deadly, after all.

By 7:15, I'd be sitting on the curb, waiting for Alex to show up, two to-go cups of coffee in each of my hands. I'd put almond milk with extra sugar in her's though, knowing how she took her coffee like the palm lines on the back of my hand. Even though I also had a car, Alex driving the two of us was just an easy habit we kept even though her usual struggles with punctuality regularly left me looking at my clock, hoping it wouldn't be one of the rare times we'd actually be late for homeroom. 

And then there, in Townshill High , I'd settle into my Honors and AP classes, a place where I felt at ease with what I was saying and thinking, confident by default because my level of assurance stemmed from the fact that I always tried to kill it academically. Outside of the classroom, that's when I'd fall into step with Alex and our group of friends—who never seemed to care as much about grades as much as I did—sitting at our table stationed in the middle of the cafeteria, boldly and securely.  It was there—with them—that I felt the most comfortable. But not for the reasons you probably think.

You see, when I was with Alex, she was the guaranteed center of attention: If she was the sun, then we were just the planets orbiting around her. Alex Lopes had a way of drawing people to her, entrancing you at first with her catching laugh and the rare ability to make you feel that when you were around her, you belonged. Like you deserved to be there, that she chose you. For some people I guess, that kind of social dynamic might be repellent. But for me, I was drawn to the identity I assumed simply by being her friend. I wasn't Thea Garrity: the Straight A Student, or Thea Garrity: the Girl Who's Mother Left Her. I was Thea Garrity: Alex Lopes' Best Friend, Side-kick, Minion—whatever you wanted to call it—and those were shoes I was entirely comfortable with filling.

Getting out of bed and putting on my running sneakers is pretty much the only thing from my old routine, my old life—the girl I was before everything happened—that's stayed the same. Sometimes when I accidentally catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror next to my closet, I see fragments of the old me: The stretchy fabric of my jogging clothes. Earbuds to my iPod (yes, I still use an iPod) wrapped around my neck. That uncertain expression so visible in my hazel eyes, wondering if I was where I was supposed to be.

Taking two stairs at a time once I was ready to jog, I stopped in the kitchen to use the back door. Opening the French doors that led to our backyard, I put an earbud in each ear, and headed towards the new jogging route I had adopted in the woods.

I started out briskly walking, until the glossy grass of my lawn ended and the dirt path leading into the acres of woods felt patchy beneath my feet. That's when I started running as fast as I could: My lungs hammering against my chest, the trees a series of blurs blotting past me, my white house just a speck in the background that vanished with every step I took further and further into the woods.

Running was a sport I unintentionally fell into, and only kept up with because it directly related to  the exact thing that introduced me to running in the first place: My love for listening to music. With the volume turned to the highest setting, the path of the woods unfolding out before me, everything else around me—the distant sounds of cars on the highway, the beat of my own heart pounding against my chest—were drowned out by melodies playing in constant spells of time, one song starting immediately after the next.

When the music is all that I can hear, it's nearly impossible to think about anything else. So that's what I do: I run.