A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MAY 23 , 2022
She spotted Olivia with her
freshman brother and their
mom, Jennifer Curtis. Helicop-
ters whirred overhead, and po-
lice cradled guns in their arms.
Buses of students pulled into the
parking lot.
None of them carried Hana.
When her father arrived,
Reina went inside the grocery
store with Olivia’s family. Men in
FBI jackets moved through the
aisles, seeking information.
Steve continued searching for
Hana outside.
At one point, Olivia’s mother
asked the service counter to call
Hana’s name over the speaker, in
case she was afraid and hiding
somewhere in the store.
There was no response.
The crowd waned, until only a
handful of families were left.
They looked just as scared and
anxious as Reina’s dad. He, along
with the rest of the parents, was
called into the store manager’s
office.
Moments later came the
sound of cries and screams.The ‘healing process’
It had been 48 days without
Hana when Reina opened a mass
email from Oxford Community
Schools Superintendent Tim
Throne.
For several weeks, the sign
outside Oxford High had been
covered in tributes for the four
victims: Madisyn Baldwin and
Justin Shilling, both 17, Tate
Myre, 16, and Hana, who at 14
had been the youngest. There
were votive candles and sports
jerseys, dozens of plastic-
wrapped flower bouquets and
stuffed animals, and a giant
canvas with hundreds of hand-
written condolences.
But in less than a week, stu-
dents were returning to school.
The building had been re-carpet-
ed and repainted in “calming
colors,” with white “therapeutic”
lights installed in classrooms.
Encouraging messages on paper
snowflakes and hearts were
taped to the lockers.
To “further their healing proc-
ess,” Throne wrote in the Jan. 17
email, the victim memorial
would be taken down.
Reina was furious.
Hana would have celebrated
her 15th birthday on Jan. 29 —
five days after classes were to
resume i n the building where s he
was killed. So far, the school had
done little to take responsibility
for her death or even apologize
for it.
In her notebook, Reina copied
the lines from Throne’s email
that most outraged her, under-
lining those sentences in purple
marker, then penning her own
thoughts underneath to share
with the school:
“The only reason why the me-
morial ‘should not be there’ is
because Hana should be here.”
“Hana did not choose to be
murdered in school but we can
choose to honor her and her
memory in the best possible way,
even if it may be hard for some.”
If anyone was going to pre-
serve her memory, Reina knew it
would be her. She had been the
one to curl Hana’s hair in the
casket and to select the lineup of
speakers at her funeral.
“Hana being remembered is of
the utmost importance to Reina,”
said Jennifer Curtis, whom Reina
considers family.
It was why she was falling
behind on her homework, why
the Christmas tree was still up in
the living room months after the
holiday, why a plastic-wrapped
pink teddy bear and blue-and-
yellow volleyball signed by
Hana’s teammates were in the
garage — items taken from the
first memorial.
Reina wanted photos of her
sister and the three other teens
hung in a prominent location in
the school, with tributes to each
beneath them.
Administrators worried that
putting pictures of the four vic-
tims in the building might be
triggering to the 1,800 students
who’d survived the shooting.
They suggested a far less visi-
ble memorial in the Performing
Arts Center, with short epitaphs
and 8-by- 10 photos — the size of
something you’d display on an
office desk, Reina thought.
She sent dozens of text mes-
sages and emails to administra-
tors and the seven-member
Board of Education. She attend-
ed meetings inside the school she
could barely stand to enter.
She conducted a poll of the
student body — receiving more
than 700 responses — and re-
ported that 57 percent preferred
that the memorial be located
close to the cafeteria or in the
academic area, near a mural of
the school mascot. Only 3 per-
cent supported the location sug-
gested by the administration.
“I can see how much dedica-
tion you placed into gathering
this student feedback,” Oxford
High Principal Steven Wolf
emailed Reina in April, after she
delivered the results. “... There
are a lot of stakeholders to in-
volve in this temporary memori-
al, and our students obviously
have representation.”Olivia paused at the intersec-
tion near the neighborhood bus
stop, where a Norway spruce
topped with a big silver star was
planted in honor of Hana, who’d
loved Christmas.
Reina w as acutely aware of her
absence, especially on this day.
They’d planned to make Oxford’s
varsity lacrosse team together,
even picking out the jersey num-
bers they’d wear: 12 for Hana a nd
14 for Reina.
But now Reina was here and
Hana was n ot. She felt the cruelty
of that so much that she’d nearly
skipped lacrosse season. Then,
just before the tryouts were s et t o
begin, she changed her mind.
She’d do it.
The SUV’s turn signal clicked.
“I don’t even know who’ll be
there,” Reina said.
She watched the electrical
lines rise and fall outside her
window, the blue village water
tower appearing on the horizon.
They passed Meijer, the grocery
store where Reina had learned of
Hana’s death, and turned at the
sign for Oxford High, where a
memorial for the victims with
white crosses, teddy bears and
holiday wreaths had stood for six
weeks before it was taken down.
Its removal had become a
source of smoldering resentment
for Reina.
School administrators had
been accused in lawsuits filed by
Oxford parents of ignoring red
flags about the boy charged in
the shooting — allegations
they’ve repeatedly denied.
Reina’s father was considering
legal action, too.
Meanwhile, Reina kept press-
ing the principal and other offi-
cials — who did not respond to
repeated requests for interviews
— to put a temporary memorial
inside the school until a perma-
nent one could be built. So far, it
hadn’t happened, leaving little to
indicate that Hana had ever been
a student at Oxford High.
You don’t get to forget her just
because remembering is hard,
Reina often fumed. My family
doesn’t get that privilege.
Olivia parked the SUV outside
the familiar building of tan brick
and glass. Half of Reina’s friends
had decided to return to Oxford
for the spring semester, but
Reina was taking her six classes
online. There was no way she
could watch her classmates talk
and laugh in the hallway where
Hana was killed.
“Water, goggles, stick, cleats,”
Reina said, slamming the car
door. “I have a feeling that I’m
missing something.”
They walked across the lot and
descended the metal bleachers to
the football field. Soccer players
clomped by in their cleats. Reina
propped her backpack — dark
cloth amid the clear plastic ones
that the school now required —
against the fence.
“I can’t believe you’re here!”
one girl shrieked.
“Oh my gosh, hey!” said an-
other classmate, in unison with a
friend. “Reina’s here!”
They complimented her short-
er haircut and pierced ears,
changes she’d made a while ago.
Most of them hadn’t seen her in
months.
Reina knew that other kids
didn’t a lways know w hat to say to
her. To avoid making her uncom-
fortable, they often didn’t bring
up Hana at all, even though she
was the only thing Reina wanted
to talk about.
Head coach Trevor Marshall
shouted for each grade to sepa-
rate by jersey color. Reina, who’d
played junior varsity the previ-
ous spring, pulled a gray o ne over
her baggy pink sweatshirt, then
pinned on a paper number: 45.
Standing with the other juniors,
she noticed that the line of
freshmen, where Hana should
have been, was in yellow.
On the turf, the girls circled
the coach, who’d promised to
remember Hana in a way that
Reina felt the school was refus-
ing to do. The players would
wear silicone wristbands with
her initials, HSJ, and a patch of a
flower — the Japanese transla-
tion of her name, which was
pronounced Hah-nuh — on their
jerseys.
Reina joined her teammates
for warm-ups, dark ponytail
whipping from side to side as she
jumped and kicked. She knew
what came next and dreaded it.
She played midfield, the fast-
est position on the team. One of
the last times she’d run, though,
had been the day gunfire erupt-
ed, when she’d sprinted the mile
from her fifth-period SAT prep
class to the safety of Meijer,
where she’d waited in the phar-
macy — amid bottles of painkill-
ers and multivitamins — for
news of her sister. She’d lost 11
pounds since then and hadn’t
been practicing.
Marshall announced that the
timed mile was about to b egin. At
his signal, a cluster of girls
leaped across the starting line.
For two laps, Reina held pace
with the quickest runners, but by
the third, she had slowed to a
walk.
OXFORD FROM A
Grieving sister pushes a schoolto recognize failings in shootingFAMILY PHOTO
Hana and Reina in Imlay City, Mich., last summer. Reina would often stand on her tiptoes to make herself appear slightly taller.born.
The siblings spent every other
summer with their grandparents
in Fukuoka. At home, they spoke
and texted in Japanese. Reina
and Hana liked speaking the
language at school, too, so that
their t eachers couldn’t e avesdrop
on them.
The girls were loud and chatty,
sometimes finishing each other’s
sentences. But while Reina was
always in trouble for talking in
class, Hana’s timing was better.
She got away with more.
They were rivals as well as
sisters. When Ai told Hana that
she’d make an exception to the
family rule and allow her to
pierce her ears before her 16th
birthday if Reina agreed, Reina
said no. Hana would have to wait
like she did.
And Hana’s growth spurt —
she was about 5-foot-7 — was a
constant annoyance to Reina.
When they’d jump to reach the
high beam in their kitchen,
Hana’s fingertips always
touched. Reina, at 5-4, missed
half the time.
In photos — at the sunflower
fields west of their home or the
deep blue waters of Kitch-iti-kipi
in the Upper Peninsula — Reina
would stand on her tiptoes or
drape an arm over Hana’s shoul-
der to make herself appear
slightly taller. In an image on
Hana’s Instagram, the girls are
framed by tidy rows of lavender,
bodies intertwined and faces
smooshed together. Reina in-
structed Hana to add the caption
“best sister ever.” Hana did, then
added her own t ouch: an emoji of
a grimacing face.
“Hana was in Reina’s shadow
for the longest time,” said their
dad, Steve, 52, who w orks in sales
for an automotive parts supplier.She wanted to go home. She
hated overhearing everyone
else’s conversations, their lives
seemingly back to normal again.
But if Reina left now, she knew
that she’d never return.
“I’m dying,” Reina told Olivia.
“Yeah, me too.”
They rounded the last bend in
the track. Overhead, geese
wedged the pale sky as they
migrated north.
“A lmost done,” the coach
shouted. “C’mon, you’re so
close!”
Reina’s legs moved faster.
She would make the team for
Hana — even if it meant donning
a uniform emblazoned with Ox-
ford High across the front.The final walk
On their last day together,
they’d gotten bored in class and
texted about meeting up.
It was fourth period. Reina
was in physics. Hana was in a
college prep class. Both girls
asked to use the bathroom.
Then they walked empty hall-
ways that would soon resound
with gunshots, gossiping and
laughing. Hana had worn her
pink Converse sneakers and
green pants, which Reina had
attempted to steal the night
before. After Hana had caught
her, she’d promised that Reina
could wear them later in the
week.
The sisters shared clothes, a
friend group, a sarcastic sense of
humor and a second language:
Japanese. Their father, Steve,
was from Michigan’s Upper Pen-
insula. Their mother, Ai, had
grown up in Yokohama, Japan.
Though the girls were born north
of Detroit, their family had spent
21 / 2 years in To kyo, where their
10-year-old brother, Noa, wasFAMILY PHOTO
The St. Juliana family, Steve, Ai, Reina, Hana, Noa and their
dog, Finn, on Nov. 27, three days before the shooting.Thanksgiving 2017 — had been
from Reina, then 11.
“I’m so glad that you are my
little sister,” she had written to
Hana. “I know we fight a lot but
know I always love you. I
wouldn’t know what to do with-
out you.”‘Where are you?’
The sisters finished their stroll
through the high school. Reina
returned to physics. Then it was
time to change classes.
As she was walking out of the
bathroom and toward SAT prep,
a group of students hurried past.
They shouted that there was a
shooter. Reina wasn’t sure if it
was true — she hadn’t heard
gunshots — but she joined about
15 other students hunched in a
corner of Robbins’s classroom.
It was just before 1 p.m. Reina
texted her parents. Then she
messaged Hana: “I love you. Are
you okay? Heard there’s bullets
in the doors. Where are you?”
No reply.
Reina used Hana’s school log-
in to look up her schedule. Hana
was s upposed to be in history — a
class where the teacher took
away students’ cellphones. May-
be that’s why she wasn’t respond-
ing.
About half an hour later, a
sheriff’s deputy jiggled the door-
knob of Reina’s locked class-
room, then banged on the exteri-
or.
Is it the shooter? she thought.
The deputy instructed the
teens to drop their backpacks
and evacuate. Reina joined a
wave of students as they rushed
out the school’s front entrance.
At Meijer, Reina looked for
Hana in the garden center. I’m
going to hug her so hard when I
see her, she thought.“It was a little hard for her, but
the last couple of years, that
changed. They became very
close. They would always be
outside practicing one sport or
another with each other.”
Jessica Robbins, a mentor for
Oxford High’s early college pro-
gram, which both girls were
enrolled in, was struck by their
connection.
“Hana just idolized Reina, and
I think Reina idolized her, too,
which isn’t as normal for an
older sibling,” Robbins said. “I’ve
seen a lot of sisters, and their
relationship was unique.”
With Reina already starting to
consider colleges, Hana knew
that she’d soon be losing her
older sister — that the distance
between them would be greater
than the few feet of hallway
separating their bedroom doors.
So when it was time to decorate
their Christmas tree after
Thanksgiving, Hana insisted
that she, Reina and Noa do it
together.
On Nov. 27, three days before
the shooting, they’d pulled their
artificial spruce out of its card-
board box, wrapped it with a
garland of white beads and
hooked blue and silver bulbs on
the branches. Hana stood on a
stool to hang the tallest orna-
ments, which their mom inspect-
ed with military precision. When
they were done, the family posed
in matching plaid pajama bot-
toms for a photo. Finn, their
Labradoodle, was stuffed into a
red-and-blue sweater.
Hana appreciated moments
like this. Even at 14, she was
thoughtful in ways that adults
noticed. On the bureau mirror in
her yellow bedroom, she taped
old letters from family and
friends. One note — fromFAMILY PHOTO
Reina and Hana, then 6 and 4, in their kimonos in Tokyo in 2011.
Their family spent 2½ years in the Japanese capital.