Thursday the 19th, I had a very busy day. First, I was to spend the day with my mom's friend's grandson at an anime store near our house. That was pretty fun. Then, my sister and I were going to our friend Lauren's house. We were supposed to go swing dancing at night but our plans got cancelled due to lack of a ride.
We talked about different plans we could do, but nothing was planned. We were camping out in the basement.
The rest of the night was chaotic and I really cannot remember a lot of what happened, but my friend Liz told me I had called her to let her knew what happened. I just remember Lauren getting a call and waking us up to tell us what had happened. She said "there was a shooting at the theater, the Dark Night premiere. Some people we knew were shot, Zach and Alejandra."
We called our friend Kevin, who was there. He told us about how nearly everyone we knew was there. Alumni from our high school, friends, groups of all kinds of people we knew and talked to. Thankfully Kevin was okay, but he had many terrifying and sad stories to tell us.
He explained a story about our friend Aj, who I had met through an ex boyfriend of mine but I was never very close to. His girlfriend, (who was in marching band with me) Lasamoa, ran into Kevin while leaving the theater. Kevin told us that she was covered in Aj's blood and he was left in the theater.
We frantically awaited news from our friends throughout the night and into the next day. We slept, but I had nightmares all night. The next day we found out that Zach and Alejandra were okay, but Aj was still missing. Hoping for the best, we sat in front of the TV watching the news with our phones in our hands.
The Century 16 theater is barely a mile away from my house. All the movies I see, I see there. I recently saw Brave there twice. You always see things like this in the news and never think this could happen to you. It's always a distanced thing from yourself. You feel bad for those people. It's not part of you.
After leaving Lauren's house, my boyfriend, Brandon, came over. He was close friends with Aj at a point, so we anxiously awaited phone calls from friends. Brandon hadn't slept all night, so he took a nap on my couch. My dad ordered pizza for us and we sat down together (my sister, my dad, Brandon, and I) and ate. We shared our concerns about Aj and hoped he was okay. Brandon and I had gotten news he wasn't missing anymore, so we were thinking wishfully.
Not even a minute after dinner, Brandon got a call from his sister, Brooke. He walked away from us and had a solemn expression, and in that moment I knew something terrible had happened.
He turned to me and said, "Aj didn't make it"
After a lot of sobbing and hugging, we called a couple friends to let them know. Lauren was hanging out with some other friends and invited us to come. We went down to an impromptu vigil for Aj behind our school at a park. It was good to be out with friends. We cam home around midnight and I called Brandon.
I told him to call me back if he needed anything and went to sleep. He called me about forty five minutes later, unable to sleep. I sung him to sleep.
The next day I experienced in a daze. I went out to lunch with my grandma and mom and I didn't taste anything. We went thrift shopping and although I got some hangers and a dress, I really wasn't in the mood for new clothes. I'm usually really anal about keeping my stuff with me, but they're both still in the car.
I waited all day to go to the vigil held at my school for Aj. His favorite color was purple and so we all wore purple. There were so many people there, it was amazing. When we arrived, there were hundreds and hundreds of people there, all wearing purple, black, or white.
Many of his friends talked and it was an incredibly moving experience for me. I don't even know what to say about it. There were so many hugs and tears, I'll just put some pictures on here.
Sorry for the length of this post, and I'll be posting normally again soon.
I love you guys and I hope you weren't affected like I was.
Yours Truly, Jamie♥
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