That's Not What Happened

“‘What?’ The word came out as a cough. My throat felt tight all of a sudden. The way it does after I’ve been stung by a bee, before Mom gets out the EpiPen. I tried to breathe through it, but overhead, the bell rang, sharp and loud, startling all four of us. Which didn’t help.”

With this metaphor in an early flashback, Lee likens her emotional reaction to the news that Kellie has moved to the physical sensation she experiences during a bee sting reaction. While an EpiPen’s medication brings relief from this feeling of impending suffocation, Lee cannot find any relief trying to “breathe through” her guilt. The passage increases suspense, as the reasons for Lee’s guilt are yet unknown. The clanging bell is an example of auditory imagery; the survivors’ reaction to the noise is a reminder they experience lasting fear months after the trauma.

“Eventually I ended up reading a series of message board posts about the shooting and how it was a conspiracy. There were dozens of commenters, trying to show ‘proof’ that none of it had happened. That this was just the government trying to trick us so they could take everyone’s guns away. And all the teenagers running out of the building—including me—were just crisis actors. ‘It’s so obviously fake,’ one comment said. ‘Use common sense, America.’”

In interior monologue, Lee discusses her compulsion to follow “fandom” and true crime sites about the shooting; this passage highlights the irony of comments that confidently assert the shooting didn’t happen. The author does not shy away from this disturbing idea; the theory that the shooting was staged is an allusion to similar reactions from some groups after historical shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and others.

“These little lies kept us both sane.”

Lee is upfront regarding her mental health struggles throughout the early chapters, mentioning her difficulty with maintaining positivity and coping with almost constant thoughts and fears of death. Consequently, the reference here to “sanity” has a double meaning; Lee uses the colloquial expression “keeping sane” somewhat lightly and self-deprecatingly to explain her behavior (staying awake all night but faking sleeping when her mother checks on her). She also, however, relies on “little lies” like this one to assuage her mother’s deep anxiety about her mental health. In this way, lying helps her feel better. “Little lies” is an oxymoronic phrase, since all lies can have significant consequences, as Lee learns throughout the story.

“I’ve come a long way since then, but I still feel as though I’m walking a tightrope. One misstep, one wrong move, and I could go spiraling back to where I was three years ago.”

Lee’s metaphorical tightrope refers to her mental health since the shooting. She still lives with daily and nightly anxiety, stress, fear, and intrusive thoughts. She references the comparative progress she made since the shooting in these interior monologue comments, noting that she must take care if she proceeds with telling the truth about Sarah to Detective Jenner. Indirectly, these comments characterize Lee as a careful, cautious young woman cognizant of her health.

“Gunshots and screams. They were like sounds, but I knew I wasn’t hearing them. They were more in my mind than my ears. I could smell copper and gunpowder and the smoke from a cigarette. Every step toward that doorway pulled me further into these flashes of the past.”

The author uses sensory imagery to convey Lee’s traumatic memories from the girls’ bathroom during the shooting. Sensory imagery often suggests sounds and smells as well as visual images, as in these interior monologue comments from Lee’s flashback to the walkthrough. That the images overcome Lee and she flees suggests that memories can defeat her intentions to tell the truth. Her reaction helps to develop the theme of The Complexities of Truth and Perspective.

“Even so, when Valentine’s Day came around, just a month before the shooting, Richie showed up at school with a teddy bear for Sarah (one she’d have to lie to her parents about) and a bag of Skittles for me.”

Lee must turn to others for portraits of some of the victims, but she writes about Richie McMullen herself. Her anecdotes about him serve as another connection to Sarah, and Richie’s actions are indirect evidence of Sarah’s devotion to Lee. To stay in Sarah’s good graces, Richie brought Lee Skittles so that she would not feel left out. This incident shows not only Sarah’s loyalty to Lee but also Sarah’s strong convictions and the influence she had over others.

“We spent almost every night that summer on top of my house. […] Other nights, though, we stretched out on our backs, looking up at the sky. But only when the moon was bright and there were plenty of stars. On black, cloudy nights, I couldn’t stand to look up.”

Lee’s interior monologue flashes back to the aftermath of the shooting and the beginning of her relationship with Miles. The description she offers conveys indirectly how fearful Lee is of the open, dark sky. Later, Lee feels the sky’s darkness symbolizes death and loss, including the loss of herself. The dark imagery and mood of Lee’s description help to build the theme of The Impact of Trauma on Individual Identity.

“The voice was strong. Not quivering or scared. And I knew it was Sarah’s voice. It could only have been Sarah.”

Ironically, Ashley made a terrible assumption that permanently impacted the way others think of the shooting and Sarah. Even when Kellie attempted to correct the record of public opinion and let others know it was her who spoke to the shooter, Ashley refuted it—her only rationale an unfair and ironic stereotype about Kellie’s lack of faith. In a deeper irony, Ashley’s words appear in the letter Lee wanted so that an honest account of Ashley’s version of events would be recorded. Ashley’s past and present actions build the theme of The Complexities of Truth and Perspective while her rationale is evidence of the theme of The Role of Stereotyping in Shaping Narrative.

“I dunno. This Brother Lloyd dude and the McHales…just be careful, okay? Don’t get chased out of town or anything.”

Miles’s comments to Lee when she finds a note from Brother Lloyd foreshadow her impending struggle with the McHales’ church. With the note, Lee begins to face the ironic conflict that telling the truth brings more trouble than living a lie. No one who feels inspired by Sarah’s final actions wants to be told that they did not happen; this increases her external and internal conflict and causes her to question her motives in revealing the survivors’ true stories.

 “Do you have any idea how ignorant you sound when you give those speeches? You think taking away our guns is the answer?”

The nameless young man’s crude comments to Eden at the college party showcase his ignorance of Eden’s true message. He alludes to the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms,” but Eden’s speeches call for improved campus safety and never mention changing the Bill of Rights. The boy’s reaction represents a common misunderstanding that surfaces against activism, often due to The Role of Stereotyping in Shaping Narrative.

 “I could see Eden’s arms moving, tearing at the sheets of paper with large, violent motions. Then she hurled them all into the water, the tiny white slips flowing across the dark surface of the lake. Like flower petals.”

Juxtaposition exists in Lee’s flashback description of Eden’s emotional breakdown at the park: Eden’s movements are sweeping and frantic, even “violent,” but her actions result in nothing worse than ruined paper in water. The stark contrast of white paper against dark water contributes to the sensory imagery of the scene, and Lee’s simile—the pages are similar to petals—conveys a mood of sadness for beauty lost insensibly. In an unspoken metaphor, this lost beauty compares to the shooting victims.

“But I was doing something good. […] That made this all right. Kellie would be glad to hear from me when I told her about the letters. Yes, I know. It felt flimsy even to me. But it was just enough to keep me from feeling sick with guilt.”

Lee’s words and introspection in these opposing interior monologue comments demonstrate the development of indecision and hesitancy. After assuming and insisting that telling the truth about what happened is the best path, Lee is already having doubts.

“I want to be a warrior.”

Eden’s simply worded wish belies the importance of the underlying sentiment. In her letter for Lee’s project, Eden discusses feeling like a fraud in her presentations, having stepped up to the microphone only because of Jenny and Misty’s extensive support and a personal yearning to make her family proud, the way they were with Rosi. This line symbolizes Eden’s realization that she must change her path and develops the theme of The Impact of Trauma on Individual Identity.

“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.”

Lee’s descriptive phrase for her days with dark, intrusive thoughts about death is not meant to be sarcastic or comedic. The allusion to a drum provides imagery of a relentless throbbing, and the label “nihilistic” refers to nihilism, a school of thought that suggests morals, values, social constructs, and life itself have no real meaning. Flashing back to finding the rally poster about Sarah, Lee finds no positivity or hope in anything from recycling posters to her future. With this description, the author sets up a particularly dark day for Lee even before she learned the reasons for the rally.

“But over the last three years, with a combo of therapy and time, we’d slowly learned to work through those moments, learned what buttons not to push and when to step away.”

Lee’s trauma is not something her mother, to whom she refers here, can understand firsthand. Her buttons metaphor suggests they each had to relearn how to avoid sparking conflict after the shooting. Reflecting on their relationship after she tells her mother the truth about Sarah, Lee thanks her mother for her support and understanding; this moment indicates the start of deeper character growth toward more maturity.

“She could have slapped me and it would have been less startling.”

In a flashback, Lee describes the moment she and Kellie make eye contact in the grocery store a few weeks after the shooting with hyperbole, but the moment leaves a significant impression on her befitting of the exaggerated line. Though strangers are the ones harassing Kellie for lying, she glares at Lee in this moment with such animosity and resentment that Lee feels it as a physical slap. Each aspect of this event—Kellie’s blame of Lee, Lee’s fear of the truth, and the strangers’ antagonistic treatment of Kellie—helps to develop the theme of The Impact of Trauma on Individual Identity.

“I was the one holding her hand when she died. It didn’t happen. Not the way you remember. I’m sorry.”

Lee’s heartfelt lines to Ashley connect with the theme of The Complexities of Truth and Perspective. Lee bravely faces her biggest internal struggle when she finally addresses the question of truth versus assumptions with Ashley, who inadvertently spread the false narrative about Sarah. Lee’s tone is sincerely apologetic for her role in letting the narrative grow larger than life.

“People don’t want to hear my truth. Especially not you.”

Miles’s excuse for not wanting to write a letter conveys a tone of bitter resentment. When Lee asks him why he won’t contribute, his cryptic answer helps to build suspense and interest in Miles’s story and background. Miles’s choice to avoid writing a letter is based on the stereotypes he assumes others use when judging him, developing the theme of The Role of Stereotyping in Shaping Narrative. The line also foreshadows his inner motivation for ultimately writing a letter: to share the truth with Lee because of his deep feelings for her.

“Instead, all I can remember hearing is Sarah. She was barely making a sound, her whisper so silent I probably wouldn’t have heard it normally. Her eyes were squeezed shut as her lips mouthed a prayer.”

The situational ironies amass as the novel nears its conclusion. In Lee’s flashback to the girls’ restroom during the shooting, she relays that Sarah wears no cross and does not speak to the shooter. Lee shares, however, that Sarah does turn to religion in her final moments. In doing so, Sarah shows her faith is strong—but not in the storified ways others assume to be true after her death. This suggests that religion does not need to be glorified to be meaningful, and Sarah’s final moments are just as valuable even without facing the shooter because one does not need to earn a legacy.

“Maybe I was no better than Brother Lloyd.”

It is not until Lee sits in the café with Kellie—now Renee Marks—that she comes to the significant realization that truth may not be the best outcome for everyone. When Kellie refuses flatly to participate in Lee’s truth project, Lee suddenly sees that her texts, calls, and emails harassed Kellie, who just wants to carry on the new life she tried to establish for herself. Lee compares her insistence, assumptions, and attempts to control others to Brother Lloyd’s recent actions in this metaphor.

“Turns out, I really like history. There’s something about putting the puzzle together, figuring out how we got here, who and what led us to the point in time.”

Miles’s metaphor for history in his letter to Lee highlights his growing perspective. Miles sees after the shooting how history has lessons for the present based on the past and that hard answers can be found in its study. This quote from Miles’s letter to Lee demonstrates his changing mindset and cognizance of the way tragedies like the shooting fit into and impact the bigger historical picture.

“No matter what happens with Miles, I’m comforted to realize that we’ll always be connected. That he’ll always be the one I can all when I’m at my most nihilistic. When the starless sky feels like falling into nothingness.”

Lee’s sensory imagery for the sky echoes their earlier roof experiences as she surmises possible futures for herself and Miles. However, instead of a persistent lost and hopeless sensation, Lee’s greater emphasis focuses on the comfort a close ally and companion like Miles can bring. The juxtaposition between Lee’s earlier pessimistic tone on the roof and her more optimistic tone here suggests that she is starting on a healing journey long years after the shooting.

“Not my cross. Not the one they found in the bathroom—the one Sarah McHale had never even seen but somehow ended up being buried with.”

This line from Kellie’s letter first refers to the cross Sarah in the school photo used on her biography cover, then to her (Kellie’s) cross that the shooter found and many assumed belonged to Sarah. The quote involves chilling imagery of Kellie’s necklace buried now with Sarah. This cross symbolizes the false narrative that gained traction based on many people’s stereotypical beliefs and assumptions.