may shatter on impact (tronnor)

59. Twisted Words & Demeaning Quotes

TRAGEDY & RECOVERY: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE VICTIMS OF THE TRAGEDY THAT STRUCK THE NATION?

By Amelia Simmons

Clarke Lake. This time last year, the only people who had ever even heard the name of this small town in California were the few thousand people who lived there. It had never gotten much attention outside of the town boundaries, the people inside very much closed off to the rest of the world. The kids all go to school in one building, the fifty kids per grade all knowing one another intimately, their parents all friends, their teachers often their best friend's father or mother. So why did Clarke Lake suddenly become a household topic, the subject of worldwide discussion on not only safety and gun control, but homophobia and the effect of divorce on children.

Tyler Oakley. Everyone in Clarke Lake knew his name, he was an outsider, the one kid in the class who was left without a partner, a "...stereotypical gay guy," Aiden Smith, a sixth grader in Clarke Lake, described him as. "He didn't have many friends," Smith continued, "except for his boyfriend, Troye, and Troye's friends. He was nice enough...but...no one really knew or cared that he existed."

Oakley was the kind of guy who got good grades and passes through hallways unseen. So, perhaps, it was the desire to be known that prompted him to bring a gun to school and begin the worst school shooting in the United States - no other comes even close. That now well-known fact just makes the entire incident even more disturbing. Oakley killed fifty two people, including his friends and himself.

When asked if his friends were killed, Troye Mellet (Oakley's boyfriend) responded with a confident, "Yes. Five...Leah, Mariah, Maya, Blessing, and Simon...almost all of [my friends] were [injured]." Why did he think that his friends were targeted? "Tyler was just sort of ignored by everyone. Like he didn't exist. Everyone except me and a few friends really ever acknowledged his existence...."

Mia Coven, a friend of both Oakley and Mellet, elaborates on this. "Only people who never cared about him were hurt. Anyone who got in his way, and anyone who had ever hurt Troye [Mellet]." So perhaps it was a desire for revenge, or recognition?

Clara Vance, now a senior, was in the room where Oakley killed himself. "He kept talking to Troye [Mellet]...saying...he was sorry and that this would make things better...set them free...and that he had to do it." So not recognition, but revenge for all of the things that were done to Mellet?

"[I was being] bullied...[and] getting hit and such," Mellet says. So was it was fault of the bullies, or maybe even Mellet himself?

The many victims of this horrific attack can't agree on this. "It was Ty [Oakley's] fault. Not Troye's [Mellet's] or anyone else's," Coven insists.

Rachel Ganza, a freshman who's sister was killed, has a different opinion. "It was Troye's. Someone should have noticed that something was wrong, and as his boyfriend, Troye should have."

Mellet seems to agree with Ganza. "I was supposed to be taking care of...him," he says. So what are the general opinions on Mellet? Well, he's still in contact with Oakley's family, and all of his friends from Clarke Lake, so it might appear that they have forgiven him. But what else are they doing?

Contrary to popular belief, most of the victims are living life just as they used to. "We wake up, go to school, avoid all of the hallways and classrooms that it happened in if we can, go home, convince ourselves to not to look at old yearbooks, and do our homework," Ganza explains.

Smith agrees. "Personally, I just try not to think about it [and] just go about my day as normal. I avoid the memorial in the hallway and refuse to look at the rugs that cover all of the [blood] stains."

So it is possible to move on, to forget and recover from the horrific disasters that have struck places like Clarke Lake, just as these students have done. "[It] happened [and] it ended," Mellet said, elaborating later that yes, tragedy happens, and yes, we can get through it - it's not that hard.