All through the night, River Valladares pinwheeled between the TV and his phone, channel-surfing and texting, filtering the news and rumors, exchanging information with his teammates on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School cross-country team, frantically groping to determine who could be accounted for and who was still missing.
The 18-year-old tried lying down, but he couldn’t sleep. When he closed his eyes, images from the day burned through his brain. He saw backpacks flying over a chain-link fence, heard the caterwaul of sirens. The sound seemed to cleave his life in two, the innocent one before 2:21 that afternoon, and all the hours and days to follow.
He rose from bed and resumed his vigil. One piece of news kept coming up, from multiple sources, on the team’s group…
