0
SPEAKER_00
I do remember I was at home that day, and I heard you on the phone, but I could tell that something was wrong.
0
SPEAKER_01
How could you tell?
0
SPEAKER_00
Just by what you said.
0
SPEAKER_00
I think you said, I could kill him or something like that.
0
SPEAKER_00
You were really upset with the guy that was driving the car.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I heard it, and I said, oh, let me go up and see how things are going.
0
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And when I got up there, you were laying on the bed, prone, face down.
0
SPEAKER_00
And you said, I forgot the kid s name, but so-and-so killed Alicia.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I said, what?
0
SPEAKER_00
I said, what do you mean?
0
SPEAKER_00
He said he was driving the car, and he ran into a pole.
0
SPEAKER_00
And you said, I could kill him.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then you sort of sat up.
0
SPEAKER_00
And he just punched a big hole in the wall.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I knew at that point you were really upset.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I stayed up there with you and we just talked.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then you said you need to go out and just get some fresh air.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I let you go and you walked around and came back.
0
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, that was that day.
0
SPEAKER_01
I think of my junior year of high school as the year when life got real.
0
SPEAKER_01
Because that s the year when death got real.
0
SPEAKER_01
The voice you just heard was my dad talking about the day I found out my best friend Alicia had died in a car accident.
0
SPEAKER_01
I know people lose people all the time.
0
SPEAKER_01
I know kids lose people all the time, but this is when it happened to me.
0
SPEAKER_01
Nothing for me ever compared to that first time that I learned someone who I relied on, who I cared about, who I talked to almost every day, that person was gone.
0
SPEAKER_01
That rocked me.
0
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Cause I was just, I was so off guard.
0
SPEAKER_01
My high school was basically in Pleasantville.
0
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It was this place called Montgomery County, just north of Washington DC.
0
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And at first glance, I think some people would say it was like the ideal suburb.
0
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It was diverse, middle-class, educated population.
0
SPEAKER_01
Some people literally had white picket fences.
0
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It was just close enough to a major city to feel like that urban buzz, but it was far enough out to look up and see stars at night, to have big backyards, bonfires, crickets, dogs barking.
0
SPEAKER_01
But if I had the wisdom to really pay attention at that age, I would have seen that tragedy was moving closer and closer to our pleasant American suburb each year.
0
SPEAKER_01
So in 1999, there was Columbine, the high school shooting that took 15 lives in Columbine, Colorado.
0
SPEAKER_01
But that was like 1,600 miles away from where I grew up.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was so far, it barely registered for me.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was in elementary school.
0
SPEAKER_01
But then in 2001, there were the attacks on the Pentagon.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that was just 30 miles away.
0
SPEAKER_01
Of course, I mean September 11th, when the Twin Towers also were attacked.
0
SPEAKER_01
But where I m from, it was the Pentagon.
0
SPEAKER_01
That was the pin.
0
SPEAKER_01
That was the thing that was crazy.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was a place I had been.
0
SPEAKER_01
Still though, it didn t really click that people could die.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then in 2002, it pulled up in my backyard.
0
SPEAKER_01
That was the year of the DC sniper.
0
SPEAKER_01
The closest killing was five miles away from my childhood house.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was so close, I remember running from room to room in our house to avoid the windows.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then when we found out he was shooting with holo tips that exploded on impact, I felt a little safer in front of those windows.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was weird.
0
SPEAKER_01
I remember seeing people jump out of their cars and run to the gas pump to pump their gas and then duck and crawl back to the driver s seat.
0
SPEAKER_01
But still, I was a kid.
0
SPEAKER_01
It felt almost like a weird role-playing video game.
0
SPEAKER_01
It felt like kind of something exciting to happen in our town that was, for the most part, pretty quiet.
0
SPEAKER_01
It didn t feel real until it was real, until my best friend was gone.
0
SPEAKER_01
And the year that followed was bookended by a stabbing murder right in front of our high school.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was there.
0
SPEAKER_01
I saw it.
0
SPEAKER_01
Or was I?
0
SPEAKER_01
That s the thing.
0
SPEAKER_01
That year, my 16th year of life, 2004 to 2005, it feels like so much happened in that one year.
0
SPEAKER_01
I lost a friend.
0
SPEAKER_01
I saw a murder.
0
SPEAKER_01
I felt the thrill of being part of a state finalist basketball team.
0
SPEAKER_01
I felt like a local celebrity for that year.
0
SPEAKER_01
The center of attention.
0
SPEAKER_01
Finally, one of the cool kids.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I felt the pain of never being quite good enough, quite masculine enough, the fear of being an outcast, that push to have sex, and the confusion of trying to act like a grown-up while I was still in this 125-pound, 5 6 body.
0
SPEAKER_01
That year changed my life.
0
SPEAKER_01
I tell myself a story that it defined me, that it made me who I am.
0
SPEAKER_01
I think about that year almost every single day.
0
SPEAKER_01
20 years later, I still live in that year.
0
SPEAKER_01
And now I m trying to figure out, why did it mean so much to me?
0
SPEAKER_01
Why did I think that it shaped me?
0
SPEAKER_01
Why can t I let it go?
0
SPEAKER_01
I tell other people about that year, and about losing Alicia, and the murder, and the basketball, and the peer pressure.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I talk about it so much, I feel like I can t even be certain anymore what happened that year.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so to find out, I m going back to talk to some of the people who were there, who lived it as I lived it, to try to understand them and to try to understand what happened to us that year.
0
SPEAKER_01
To understand why I was caught so flat-footed when tragedy struck, I think you got to understand the high school that I went to.
0
SPEAKER_01
It couldn t have seemed more perfect from the outside looking in.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was like that school in Friday Night Lights, but it wasn t always like that.
0
SPEAKER_01
And to understand what it was like before I got there, I gotta bring in the woman who built it, Dr. Carol Goodman, our principal.
0
SPEAKER_01
Here she is to tell you a little bit about Blake High School before it was quote unquote perfect.
0
SPEAKER_01
What kind of community was Blake opening up into?
0
SPEAKER_01
What were you walking into there?
0
SPEAKER_02
Montgomery County is a very diverse community.
0
SPEAKER_02
The thing about Blake that was unique, though, was we were part of the Northeast Consortium, which was a new concept where students would have a choice between three schools.
0
SPEAKER_02
It was supposed to be four schools.
0
SPEAKER_02
One school opted out.
0
SPEAKER_02
I still hold it against them, but I won t go there now.
0
SPEAKER_02
What school was that?
0
SPEAKER_02
It was a school where it was about race.
0
SPEAKER_02
They didn t want their kids to go to school with those kids.
0
SPEAKER_02
Was it s**t?
0
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it was.
0
SPEAKER_02
That s what it came down to.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh man, come on.
0
SPEAKER_02
So we were opening with a signature program in Fine Arts and Humanities.
0
SPEAKER_02
I had a planning year to work on hiring and
0
SPEAKER_02
working with the community and picking the name, you know, school name.
0
SPEAKER_02
And that was the whole process.
0
SPEAKER_02
And I m still very proud that Blake is the only high school in Montgomery County named for an African-American after all these years.
0
SPEAKER_01
And Blake was like a humanities and arts school.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, tons, including myself, of writers, journalists, musicians, dancers have come through that school.
0
SPEAKER_02
Little did we know, however, that a large percentage of kids who chose Blake in the early years had no interest in the arts at all.
0
SPEAKER_02
They were kids who were pulled in by someone at their previous school and said, choose another school.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh.
0
SPEAKER_02
So we had a large number of 17-year-old ninth grade repeaters, a large number of criminals.
0
SPEAKER_02
That first year, I had over 50 kids with ankle bracelets.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh, shit.
0
SPEAKER_02
That first year was horrible.
0
SPEAKER_02
We had a 19.5% suspension rate with 725 kids.
0
SPEAKER_02
By the time you got to Blake, our suspension rate was probably 2.5 maybe.
0
SPEAKER_02
So those early years, we were really warriors to change the tone, to set the climate, to set expectations, and to just tame these kids.
0
SPEAKER_01
The Blake Dr. Goodman is describing there is one I don t even recognize.
0
SPEAKER_01
By the time I got there, she had transformed our school into like the model public school in our county.
0
SPEAKER_01
I transferred into Blake after a year at one of those Catholic schools where you gotta wear a uniform in D.C.
0
SPEAKER_01
Alicia was the one who convinced me and my family to make that move to Blake.
0
SPEAKER_01
And when I got there, I saw everything she said about the school to be true.
0
SPEAKER_01
The newspaper was like the best in the country.
0
SPEAKER_01
The art programs were A1.
0
SPEAKER_01
Their dance program was always being featured in the Washington Post.
0
SPEAKER_01
The band, the sports programs were on the rise.
0
SPEAKER_01
And the school, it just felt safe and warm.
0
SPEAKER_01
People kind of liked each other.
0
SPEAKER_01
It seemed like even the kids that didn t hang out with each other, there was a rapport there between them.
0
SPEAKER_01
But there was certainly still this delineation between the popular kids and the unpopular kids, the cool kids and the weirdos.
0
SPEAKER_01
It still had that tension you re going to get at any high school, that feeling that an eruption was a moment away, but you didn t know what the moment was going to be.
1
SPEAKER_02
And in a school full of talented artists and dancers, Alicia stood out.
1
SPEAKER_02
She was 15 years old and she could make magic in any medium.
1
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes she could do something so simple, like she would just take my hand in class sometimes and doodle a long twisted rose bush while listening and taking notes with her other hand.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it would be so elaborate and soulful, I d avoid washing my hand for the rest of the day.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I can go on and on about Alicia, but I m biased.
1
SPEAKER_02
I loved Alicia.
1
SPEAKER_02
I love Alicia.
1
SPEAKER_02
But here s someone who looked at Alicia more like competition back then.
1
SPEAKER_02
Laleh Mizani, who you re about to meet, was another crazy talent who came out of our school.
1
SPEAKER_02
Now she s an Emmy-nominated costume designer in New York, working on movies like Hustlers and TV shows like The Blacklist.
1
SPEAKER_02
And even Laleh, back then, as a little bit of a prodigy herself, was intimidated by Alicia s talent.
1
SPEAKER_01
I really got to know Alicia more the next year when both of our focuses, we thought at the time, were fine art.
1
SPEAKER_01
We both had Mrs. Michaels as an art teacher.
1
SPEAKER_01
So Alicia was the one in class that was really good, embarrassingly good.
1
SPEAKER_01
You didn t want to draw or paint or do anything next to her.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it was a weird experience for me because I always knew I was advanced in that area and people always complimented my art and everything, but it was hard for me not being the best in the class anymore.
1
SPEAKER_01
There was a bit of jealousy.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was like, why can t I be as good as her?
1
SPEAKER_01
And it wasn t even about the quality of the work.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it wasn t just like, oh, why can t I draw it like that?
1
SPEAKER_01
She was so creative.
1
SPEAKER_01
Why didn t I think to draw what she s drawing?
1
SPEAKER_01
At a certain point, she would come to me to ask my opinion on things, and that s when I felt very accepted.
1
SPEAKER_01
Not like she wasn t accepting, but you know what I mean?
1
SPEAKER_01
It s like, oh, the girl that I m jealous of is coming to me asking my opinion.
1
SPEAKER_02
Alicia wasn t just an artist, she was a performer.
1
SPEAKER_02
She was one of the lead dancers on our Poms team, and we were the art school.
1
SPEAKER_02
Anything that had to do with dance was a big deal.
1
SPEAKER_02
Fall Friday nights were football nights at Blake.
1
SPEAKER_02
But halftime was the Palms show.
1
SPEAKER_02
The night of Alicia s accident was a Friday.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so thinking back, I m confused why Alicia wasn t dancing that night.
1
SPEAKER_02
I asked Dr. Goodman what she remembers.
1
SPEAKER_04
That was a Friday night that normally would have been a football Friday night, but it was Yom Kippur.
1
SPEAKER_04
So the game was played on Thursday night and Friday night kids were off.
1
SPEAKER_04
Alicia would have been at the football game as a palm.
1
SPEAKER_04
So she and
1
SPEAKER_04
This young man, they went to a movie and were going out for ice cream, and she had a curfew.
1
SPEAKER_04
And so I was at synagogue on Friday night, and then Saturday my family goes.
1
SPEAKER_04
And the phone rang, and I thought, who is calling me on Yom Kippur morning?
1
SPEAKER_04
How, you know, disrespectful.
1
SPEAKER_04
And first it was from one of the secretaries at Blake who called me to tell me what she had just heard.
1
SPEAKER_04
And then my phone was ringing nonstop and just trying to piece together what next steps would be and everything else.
1
SPEAKER_04
I said to my husband, I want to go by the site.
1
SPEAKER_04
And I went.
1
SPEAKER_04
And Mike Kelly, who was the deputy fire chief for the Sandy Spring Fire Department, and he was a Blake parent, Mike was there.
1
SPEAKER_04
And the car had been towed by then.
1
SPEAKER_04
But Mike, God bless him, he was there with a trash can picking up debris.
1
SPEAKER_04
He picked up Alicia s flip-flop.
1
SPEAKER_04
He said, I don t want a child to see that.
1
SPEAKER_04
His daughter was a pum as well.
1
SPEAKER_04
There was a rusted beer can that he took because he said this had nothing to do with this accident.
1
SPEAKER_04
And he went
1
SPEAKER_04
through to make sure because he said, I know kids are going to come to this spot and we ve got to prevent them from coming to this spot because it s so dangerous, which is why we set up a place on Blake s campus where kids could, God, I m getting teary, where kids could come and gather and mourn.
1
SPEAKER_04
And I didn t know Alicia.
1
SPEAKER_04
You know, she was a sweet face in the hall.
1
SPEAKER_04
She wasn t a kid who I really had the opportunity to know, which always, always bothered me.
1
SPEAKER_04
But, you know, you have
1
SPEAKER_04
1,800, 2,000 kids.
1
SPEAKER_04
You know so many, but you don t always know.
1
SPEAKER_04
I feel like I know her so much better after she died than I did.
1
SPEAKER_02
She was an introvert.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, well, but through her art.
1
SPEAKER_04
Her art was just so amazing.
1
SPEAKER_04
But the other piece was the driver was in critical condition in Baltimore in the shock trauma.
1
SPEAKER_04
And my husband and I went to Baltimore and I saw him there.
1
SPEAKER_04
He remembered nothing of it.
1
SPEAKER_04
And
1
SPEAKER_04
Part of the difficulty, too, I had to wear a couple different hats because his privacy and kids were angry at him.
1
SPEAKER_04
And I talked to his parents about would it make more sense for him to go to another school.
1
SPEAKER_04
He was a distinctive looking kid.
1
SPEAKER_04
Everybody knew who he was.
1
SPEAKER_04
You know why.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_04
And no, they wanted him to return and he didn t return for a long time.
1
SPEAKER_04
He was in bad shape from the accident on many levels.
1
SPEAKER_04
We made sure he had friends around him and we had all kinds of safety nets that just for, you know, his own.
1
SPEAKER_04
It wasn t as simple as everyone mourning the horrible loss of a student.
1
SPEAKER_04
We had the pain and suffering of another student to deal with.
1
SPEAKER_04
So it was a lot more complicated.
1
SPEAKER_04
I d never been through anything like that before.
1
SPEAKER_04
And I was an assistant principal at Magruder, and we lost an inordinate number of kids.
1
SPEAKER_04
It was, I guess, those back roads, and a lot of them were drinking and driving, and the school community was very focused on that.
1
SPEAKER_04
So, yeah, I had dealt with it before, but often said that a principal s worst nightmare is that phone call in the middle of the night that you ve lost a student.
1
SPEAKER_02
The only thing I loved more than calling Alicia s house phone back to back to back to back at dinnertime was popping up on the betting courts in real life.
1
SPEAKER_02
I had known Lulu and Arturo, Alicia s parents, basically since I was born.
1
SPEAKER_02
And they treated me like family.
1
SPEAKER_02
Lulu is an author and illustrator of children s books and an extremely prolific one.
1
SPEAKER_02
And back then, I thought it was so cool to see her and Alicia s art all over the walls in their own house.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then there was the Puerto Rican food Lula would make.
1
SPEAKER_02
There was a pet bunny in the home studio.
1
SPEAKER_02
They felt like the Latin version of our family.
1
SPEAKER_02
And those feelings, they all just rushed back in when I stepped foot in their house again for this interview.
1
SPEAKER_03
It has been the home of many joyful moments and many difficult moments of love and grief and healing.
1
SPEAKER_03
It has been the home where the birth of new wisdom began.
1
SPEAKER_02
What does that mean for us cavemen?
1
SPEAKER_03
Well, we re going to dive into the time where the family of four became a family of three living on Earth and one departing Earth.
1
SPEAKER_03
And when such a tight family unit lost one member, it was a shattering moment because it just takes a lot of time in order to learn to live with the physical absence of such a joyful member of the family.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was actually looking for a word to describe how I feel every time I walk into this house.
1
SPEAKER_02
What I know when I walk into this house is at least one person will hug me.
1
SPEAKER_02
There will be light.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I mean, like, if not daylight, like if it s nighttime, there will be light, which sounds probably like a basic element, but it s a really distinctive element, I would say, of your house.
1
SPEAKER_02
There will be artwork everywhere.
1
SPEAKER_02
There will be smells that are good, food, I don t know, candles.
1
SPEAKER_02
But I m talking about even after Alicia was gone, as a 17, 16-year-old, when I came in here, it still felt prosperous.
1
SPEAKER_00
I can remember seeing teachers and everyone breaking down.
1
SPEAKER_00
And at the same time, I could see the bond that was created with the students through that tough times.
1
SPEAKER_00
You guys kind of just gelled together and held each other up during that time.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I knew I was in a special place.
1
SPEAKER_00
At least I felt like I was in a very, very, very special place.
1
SPEAKER_02
I remember even when Alicia died, I was a kid, I was sad.
1
SPEAKER_02
My sister reminded me of this.
1
SPEAKER_02
I one time used my grieving as a way to get out of something with my parents.
1
SPEAKER_02
I didn t know a responsible way to grieve.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then there s all these other things that feel so important, like your crush at that age, your high school relationship, your test coming up, all these other things that are pulling at your attention.
1
SPEAKER_02
As a result, I didn t really know what I was going through with having lost so
2
SPEAKER_02
And my friends definitely didn t know.
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, they knew at first.
2
SPEAKER_02
They were like, Chad s crying.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s weird.
2
SPEAKER_02
We should support him.
2
SPEAKER_02
But like I said, once basketball season got up and going, it just all fell to the background for my friends.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I don t think they gave it a second thought.
2
SPEAKER_02
And my friends who didn t go to Blake, I think they barely even knew, to be honest.
2
SPEAKER_02
Kids don t know what other kids are going through at all, because they re going through it by themselves, and they might be going through it with their parents.
2
SPEAKER_02
And kids go through way more than that.
2
SPEAKER_02
On September 23rd, 2005, a fight broke out in the Blake parking lot between two girls from two other schools nearby.
2
SPEAKER_02
I was there with a few of my closest boys from around the county.
2
SPEAKER_02
And to be honest, we were used to fights breaking out at the games.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s why so many of us would show up together.
2
SPEAKER_02
But this one turned worse.
2
SPEAKER_02
It started off like every other fight, people yelling, people pushing, and then in a second, in a blur, boom,
2
SPEAKER_02
One of the girls pulled a knife and stabbed another one.
2
SPEAKER_02
The victim was dead shortly thereafter.
2
SPEAKER_02
But what stays with me from that moment is how quickly me and my friends moved on.
2
SPEAKER_02
We had just witnessed a murder.
2
SPEAKER_02
And in hours, it was just a story to tell.
2
SPEAKER_02
It was like the third or fourth most interesting thing to us from the game that night.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t even think I told my parents when I got home.
2
SPEAKER_02
Something crazy like that.
2
SPEAKER_02
But as years have passed, I ve noticed how the anxiety from that moment is still on me.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s still in me.
2
SPEAKER_02
I went to an Eagles-Vikings game recently in Philly.
2
SPEAKER_02
Just anywhere that there s crowds like that, as I feel the people shuffling toward an entrance together, I m aware of who s got a beer in their hand, whose voice is too loud.
2
SPEAKER_02
I m always checking over my shoulder, scanning.
2
SPEAKER_02
Is something going to break out?
2
SPEAKER_02
Do I need to run?
2
SPEAKER_02
Because of that day, that day that left someone, a child, dead.
2
SPEAKER_02
That memory is a low hum, always under the surface for me.
2
SPEAKER_02
But I never knew much about what actually happened that day.
2
SPEAKER_02
There were so many rumors flying around.
2
SPEAKER_02
The story was one girl had slept with another girl s boyfriend and that girl hit her with a baseball bat and then these girls ran her over with a minivan.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like, that was the story.
2
SPEAKER_02
So much to the point where I started telling that story.
2
SPEAKER_02
I have this visual of a baseball bat
2
SPEAKER_02
hitting a girl in the head and then a van driving over them, speeding out of the lot.
2
SPEAKER_02
I can see that moment so perfectly in my head.
2
SPEAKER_02
And at the same time, something makes me question it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Did I really see it?
2
SPEAKER_02
Was I really there?
2
SPEAKER_02
What really happened?
2
SPEAKER_02
But I never knew the facts about that day.
2
SPEAKER_02
I didn t know the girls, and I didn t know what led up to that terrible situation.
2
SPEAKER_02
But talking to my friend Isaac, who s a lifelong friend, Isaac makes me wonder if I misremembered the whole thing, and especially how it affected us.
2
SPEAKER_01
For a long time, there were moments in these games where you ve seen people who just brought negative energy.
2
SPEAKER_01
who brought the just knucklehead attitude to a game and you never end up knowing that you may be the outcome of something like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because you re around motherfuckers who just are immature.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know the types, let s be honest.
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SPEAKER_01
There s like a simmering anger underneath it.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, these cats just come out here, just want to pretend to be super thugs or want to be gangsters around the way, or may have legit backgrounds.
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SPEAKER_01
But it s just surreal.
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SPEAKER_01
And especially when it s at such a young age and you couldn t even cope with the reality of what that moment was until years later, maybe.
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SPEAKER_02
When I tell this story,
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SPEAKER_02
And I m going to just be super honest, because it s you.
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SPEAKER_02
When I tell this story to white people, I think when they hear the story, they re hearing this incident, this murder, as if it is an isolated incident that lives on its own in a bubble.
2
SPEAKER_02
But that s just like the sprout of a bunch of roots that are, even as black kids in the suburbs, in a well-to-do suburb, upper middle class, middle class area,
2
SPEAKER_02
That tension of simmering violence is all over the place as you move around as a teenager.
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SPEAKER_02
At the movie theater, at the house party, at college park.
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SPEAKER_02
At illusions.
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At illusion, at the teen club.
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SPEAKER_02
You re walking around and I think now in my life, I ve been told I have a very serious facade.
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SPEAKER_02
I ve been told you seem a little bit brooding sometimes and I think
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SPEAKER_02
that it s a weird experience to live in a county that you can see the wealth, especially when you go in like Olney, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, you see how white people are living, like you can literally see the wealth.
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SPEAKER_02
But at the same time, you re a black teenager, you go to a house party and you realize you re having a good time, but you re also like somebody, this might be their last night here.
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SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
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It makes me like clenched.
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SPEAKER_02
Do you know what I m saying?
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SPEAKER_02
For sure.
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SPEAKER_02
As far as the impact on me, there was a lot that was different between what happened to those girls and what happened to Alicia.
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SPEAKER_02
I mean, not to diminish what happened in that situation at all, but those girls were strangers to me.
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SPEAKER_02
And even today, I don t know one of their names because it s been protected by the legal system.
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SPEAKER_02
But they went to a different school on the other side of the county.
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SPEAKER_02
Even still, having seen what happened there, I could live in this distance from the tragedy.
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SPEAKER_02
Alicia was my best friend.
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SPEAKER_02
And I m now willing to admit as an adult, I wanted her to be more than that.
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SPEAKER_02
And her parents were on the same page as me.
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SPEAKER_03
As I ve said to you, way back when, you know, I always thought that he would be a good match for our daughter.
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SPEAKER_00
That s not to be okay.
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SPEAKER_03
There s no greater compliment than a father saying, you know, you are the person I would like my daughter to be with.
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SPEAKER_03
And, you know, thereafter, I very fondly seeing you evolve professionally.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah.
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SPEAKER_03
as a person and when I made that comment that I made on the email I really meant it you know I if I were to have a child a male child I would certainly like you to be that child so that just gives you an idea of the qualities that I appreciate in you that would
2
SPEAKER_03
lead me to want you to be part of our family.
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SPEAKER_03
I always kept insisting, and I should say insisting, I would ask, it s like, why don t we date chat?
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that came up.
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SPEAKER_03
That came up quite a number of times.
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SPEAKER_03
And what was the answer?
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SPEAKER_03
And the answer was, we are very good friends.
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SPEAKER_03
Let s keep it that way.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, let s not go into her choice of boyfriends.
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SPEAKER_03
It could get, she said, it could get complicated, and I want to keep him as a very good friend.
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SPEAKER_00
So one of the first football games that we went to after you transferred to Blake, I was just walking, I think, to get popcorn or something.
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SPEAKER_00
And I heard somebody say, hi, Mrs. Sanders.
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SPEAKER_00
It s me, Alicia.
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SPEAKER_00
And she just had the biggest smile on her face.
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SPEAKER_00
And I just will never forget that snapshot, because it was just so adorable and sweet and outgoing, because a lot of times teenagers
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they try to ignore adults.
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SPEAKER_00
And I just thought it was so special.
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SPEAKER_00
And she had been one of the people really encouraging you to go to Blake.
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SPEAKER_00
I m sure you remember.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
And she said, oh, Chad, I hope you come to Blake.
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SPEAKER_00
If you come to Blake, I ll love you for life.
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SPEAKER_02
And she kept her promise.
2
SPEAKER_02
She loved me for the rest of her life, which turned out to be only about another year long.
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SPEAKER_02
After that, I was different.
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SPEAKER_02
I became me.
2
SPEAKER_02
There was Chad before Alicia died.
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SPEAKER_02
There was Chad after.
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SPEAKER_02
That morning, when I found out Alicia was gone, I went outside and I took a long walk around my neighborhood.
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SPEAKER_02
Remember that being the first time I just left the house without even saying bye to my parents.
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SPEAKER_02
I was confused.
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SPEAKER_02
More than I was sad, more than I was angry, I think, I was just confused.
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SPEAKER_02
It was like,
2
SPEAKER_02
The Rubik s Cube was broken.
2
SPEAKER_02
It was like a sentence that ends in an awkward place with no punctuation.
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SPEAKER_02
No special effects, no big moment, no big thrilling goodbye.
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SPEAKER_02
I couldn t even remember what the last conversation was with my friend.
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SPEAKER_02
It was just quiet.
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SPEAKER_02
And as a teenage boy, I could feel myself in that moment start to change.
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SPEAKER_02
I wasn t innocent.
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SPEAKER_02
I didn t feel cute anymore.
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SPEAKER_02
I felt jaded.
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SPEAKER_02
I started going inward.
2
SPEAKER_02
I started to watch life happen more.
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SPEAKER_02
I suddenly knew death.
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SPEAKER_02
There s no other way around it.
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SPEAKER_02
I knew death.
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SPEAKER_02
It just walks in whenever and wherever it feels, whether or not the doors open.
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SPEAKER_02
No warning.
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SPEAKER_02
It s just here.
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SPEAKER_02
That made me afraid.
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SPEAKER_02
Still makes me afraid But what I tried to project was toughness, of course confidence.
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SPEAKER_02
I Got more sharp.
2
SPEAKER_02
I got a little more cutting with friends more sarcastic more witty.
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SPEAKER_02
I was nimble I became agile like a ninja if you tried to give me too much earnestness If you tried to give me too much emotion too much love I would dart around and poke at it and get out of the way
3
SPEAKER_00
I started to become sort of an emotional matador.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I wanted that closeness that I had with Alicia.
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SPEAKER_00
I wanted it so badly.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I found some ways to draw people in with humor and by listening, by seeing people, by seeming interested, by being interested.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I was always scared I would lose someone again.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would have to face death like that again.
3
SPEAKER_00
It would have been different if it had hurt.
3
SPEAKER_00
I could have done that again.
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SPEAKER_00
But that big empty, that feels worse than hurting.
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SPEAKER_00
And so I found ways to push people away.
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SPEAKER_00
I still find ways to push people away 20 years later.
3
SPEAKER_00
Still an emotional matador.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t want to be that anymore.
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SPEAKER_00
I want to be able to feel love without fear.
3
SPEAKER_00
I want to be able to feel closeness without constantly counting down the moments until that feeling is going to go away.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think the only way I m going to be able to do that is to actually tell the story of that year.
3
SPEAKER_00
Not the story I ve made up, not the story I believe in my head, but through the people who were there and the moments that happened, I need to go back to that year so I can get out of that year.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so for the rest of this series, that s what we re gonna do.