Mary turned northeast onto Interstate 85, passing through the “Jacob L. Soon, the kids were in the back seat, studying the day’s lunch menu on their phones. “Y’all about ready to head over?” her mother, Mary, asked Ava and Cameron, who is just 10 months younger than his sister. “Everything will be alright,” one of them read, because, for a long time, Ava didn’t believe that anything would be all right.Īva was also one of the central subjects of Cox’s 2021 book, “ Children Under Fire: An American Crisis.” He has remained in contact with her and her parents as she worked through her trauma and entered her teen years.

She’d designed it over the weekend, stitching together a purple collage of cats and butterflies, flowers and affirmations. Now, on a morning in March, Ava laced up her unblemished, heart-pocked Skechers and brushed on the mascara she’d just started wearing.Īs she waited for her brother, Cameron, to get dressed, Ava perched on the couch and stared at the custom background on her new iPhone. Whether she could stay for good, no one knew. But Ava’s early progress, her family understood, was fragile. She’d done well in her first few weeks, making some friends and settling into her classes. Instead, she enrolled at Riverside Middle School, where many of the other Townville survivors also attended. Ava didn’t have to return to her old campus, which only went up to sixth grade.

Then, in February, her mom and dad finally decided to send their daughter back, and when they told her, she agreed to try. Ava transitioned to home schooling, not setting foot inside another classroom for six years. She was so consumed by trauma and fear that her parents withdrew her from Townville. The only boy she’d ever kissed died three days later. Ava escaped, but a classmate she loved, Jacob Hall, was shot in the leg. In 2016, when Ava was in first grade, she walked out onto the playground behind Townville Elementary as an angry 14-year-old pulled up in a truck, raised a handgun and opened fire.

Less than a month had passed since she’d done something no one ever thought she would do: go back to school. “This thing is so heavy,” said the 13-year-old, who had stuffed her bag with every item she suspected she might need for seventh grade, including 15 pens, a hairbrush, an oversized water bottle featuring the image of a bespectacled giraffe and a body spray labeled “Magic in the Air.” Just before dawn, Ava Olsen lugged her new backpack into the living room and plopped it on the floor.

Something Like Summer by Jay Bell