A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 29 , 2022
Texas school shootingCamille, now 18, flashed back
to the moment she stumbled out
of the building, her hands on the
shoulders of the girl in front of
her. Her mother soon found her,
and began shouting when a TV
reporter tried to shove a micro-
phone into Camille’s face.
For years, Camille’s trauma
surfaced through debilitating
panic attacks. They would hit her
during swim practice, because
the moment she felt short of
breath, her body would unravel.
She’d sit on the edge of the pool
deck, crying and shaking.
Their freshman year, on the
day of the Sandy Hook anniver-
sary, a threat to the elementary
school forced students there to
evacuate. When Camille found
out, she collapsed to the floor in
her French class and couldn’t
move. She couldn’t see or hear,
either. She felt like she was
suffocating.
Lately, migraines and nausea
have replaced the panic attacks,
and Camille suspects she knows
why. She’s leaving Newtown, and
with it, all the people who under-
stand the day that shaped her.
She’s sensed the discomfort that
strangers feel when they hear
about what she’s been through,
and she worries that the people
she meets in college will react the
same way.
Rayna, now 17, understood.
She was the girl whose shoulders
Camille held when they were
fleeing. Tuesday took her back to
the brick firehouse just up the
road from Sandy Hook. The peo-
ple in charge were trying to
figure out who was accounted for
and who wasn’t. One whole class,
Rayna noticed, was missing.
At first, Rayna couldn’t stand
to be by herself. She couldn’t ever
shower with the door closed or
walk down the stairs in her own
house alone. She could never be
left there without someone, even
if her mom was only leaving for a
five-minute errand.Rayna still can’t go inside
anywhere without thinking
through how she would get out —
at restaurants, she notes the exits
before she decides what to order;
at school, she plots how she
would escape if another gunman
showed up.
For Maggie, Tuesday had been
a difficult day even before she
heard about Uvalde. She works
at an ice cream shop in New-
town, and another girl who is a
fellow survivor was passing her a
pint when someone else dropped
a box. The slam against the floor
sounded like a distant gunshot, a
noise she knew well.
The pint slipped from her
friend’s hand, and Maggie, 18,
felt the air rush from her lungs.
The girls held hands, waiting for
the fear to subside.
It wasn’t until that evening,
past 9, that she checked her
phone. A batch of voice mails and
texts about Texas awaited her. She
rushed home to be with her
parents and all of them cried
together. They’d done that before.
Maggie’s best friend in 2012
was a boy named Daniel Barden.
She was in third grade and he
was in first, but they liked to
dance to Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite”
and play pirates together on the
Bardens’ swing set.
On some evenings, when he
was learning to read, they sat
together on a big rock near their
homes and she pointed at the
words in a Little Critter book.
By nightfall on Dec. 14, Daniel
still hadn’t been found, so she,
her family and the Bardens all
gathered at another neighbor’s
house. They wouldn’t go home,
they’d decided, until Daniel did
too.
Then the call came, and Mag-
gie learned that she would have
to go home, even though Daniel
never would.
The most enduring conse-
quence of the shooting for Mag-
gie was what his killing did toNo one understands that bet-
ter than Samantha Haviland,
who for years directed counsel-
ing services for Denver Public
Schools. One day in 2008, she sat
on the floor of a school library’s
back room, the lights off, the
door locked. Crouched all
around her were teenagers pre-
tending that someone with a gun
was trying to murder them.
No one there knew that Havi-
land, then a counselor in her
mid-20s, had survived Colum-
bine nine years earlier.
On that day, April 20, 1999,
Haviland ran from gunfire and
heard some of it, too, but she
didn’t get shot or see a bullet
strike anyone else. The shock
and grief solidified her plan to
become a counselor, though
Haviland didn’t get counseling
herself for a long time.
The nightmares — always of
being chased — lingered for
years, but she didn’t think she
deserved help, not when class-
mates had died, been maimed or
had witnessed the carnage first-
hand. She would be okay.
But now there she was, a
decade later, sitting in the dark-
ness, practicing once again to
escape what so many of her
friends had not. Then she heard
footsteps and saw the shadow of
an administrator checking the
locks. Her chest began to throb,
and suddenly, Haviland knew
she wasn’t okay.
SURVIVORS FROM A1 On Tuesday, Haviland did all
she could to avoid the details of
what had happened in Texas. She
didn’t want to know. Years of
therapy had helped, but the pas-
sage of time was no cure. On
Wednesday, she turned 40.
Noah was only 10, but his
father and mother were already
worried about what this would
all mean for him decades from
now. It tortured Oscar and his
wife, Jessica, to know how close
he’d come to escaping it.
They’d been at the school on
Tuesday morning to watch Noah
win an award for art and music,
sitting in the front row for the
assembly. They felt so proud.
Noah was a quiet kid. He spent
much of his time playing Mario
and Pokémon games on his Nin-
tendo Switch. For his birthday
earlier this month, the family
drove him to San Antonio to go
bowling and pick out Pokémon
cards. His parents had seen
glimpses of him growing up,
though. He’d started ordering
steak for dinner, medium-rare,
just like his dad. And he wanted
to become a dental hygienist,
just like his mom, when he grew
up.
Now here he was, receiving an
award.
His parents told him to smile
for a photo, but Noah didn’t like
to smile for photos, so he held the
certificate up to his nose. His dad
laughed and told him to put it
down. Finally they coaxed a grin.
They also took a photo of Noah
For the survivors,
life after a shooting
is forever different
JOSHUA LOTT/THE WASHINGTON POSTMATTHEW STAVER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
S amantha Haviland at her home in C olorado in 2018. Haviland, now 40, survived the Columbine
shooting in 1999 when she was in high school, and still faces lingering trauma from the massacre.with his friends, and later, his
dad would fear that his son was
the only child in the image who
survived.
“Can I go with y’all?” Noah
asked after the pictures were
taken.
Oscar hesitated. Noah’s class
was planning to go outside that
afternoon to blow bubbles in the
grass. His parents had given him
extra so he could share. They
didn’t want him to miss that, his
dad told him.
“Okay,” Noah replied, and off
he dashed down the hallway,
back toward the classroom
where the shooting began an
hour later.Sandy Hook’s survivors
The three seniors at Newtown
High School had nearly made it.
They were less than a month
from graduation, two days from
the senior dinner dance and
spirit week had just begun.
Tuesday’s theme was “countryvs. country club,” and each of the
girls took it seriously. Camille
Paradis already owned cowboy
boots and a hat, so that made her
decision easy. Rayna Toth also
picked country, sporting a flan-
nel shirt and a bandanna around
her neck. Maggie LaBanca
couldn’t resist the visor she spot-
ted during a shopping trip, so she
added a tennis skirt and a sweat-
er to complete her country club-
themed ensemble.
It was a fun, silly day, the sort
that it had taken them a long
time to enjoy again after Dec. 14,
2012, when they’d huddled in
darkened classrooms while 20 of
their schoolmates were shot
dead in another at Sandy Hook
Elementary.
And then came the news of a
school massacre in Texas, and all
of them felt as if they were in
third grade again. It was the year
that had defined their young
lives. They’d never escaped it, at
least not for long.FAMILY PHOTO
TOP: People at a memorial for the Robb Elementary School
students and teachers i n Uvalde, Tex., on Thursday. ABOVE: Noah
Orona, 10, shown with his relative Elijah Holcek, was struck b y a
bullet in his shoulder blade during the attack at Robb Elementary.STAN GODLEWSKI FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTFrom left, Camille Paradis, Rayna Toth and Maggie LaBanca were third-graders at the time of the
shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. They are soon to graduate f rom high school.