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running shoes, by bare feet and by bodies either dragging themselves or being dragged away by friends. There’s something else he’s not telling me-a father knows that-but what could be more horrible than-Oh God, this is not a prayer.
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    I can’t help but wonder if the other girls thought I used God as an excuse to hook up with Jason, or that I confused one with the other. Maybe I wasn’t truly in love with Jason; maybe it was just an infatuation, or maybe it was only some sort of animal need like any teenager feels.
    Listen to me, practical Cheryl, covering my bases, even after death. But I know that when I was alive I did face thesequestions: I loved Jason, but what I felt for God was different altogether. I kept them separate.
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    As Mitchell was aiming at me, there were sirens outside, helicopters, alarm bells throughout the school and water splashing down from the shattered pipe. As well, Duncan was egging Mitchell on to kill Jeremy, too, and my hopes had flip-flopped-now I thought I might survive. Then Jeremy said, “Go ahead, Mitchell, shoot me-like I care.”
    Mitchell seemed to be short-circuiting. He hadn’t anticipated this scenario. He turned a bit to his left, looked down at me and the Bunch, then took his rifle and shot me on my left side. He really wasn’t a good shot, because he was five paces away, and I should have been dead instantly. And quite honestly, it didn’t hurt, the shooting, and I didn’t die immediately, either. Lauren, bless her, lunged away from me, leaving me there on the floor on top of my binder, which the water had sloshed off the tabletop. At my new angle, I could see much better what was transpiring. Mitchell said, “Well, Jeremy, you stud, that’s one less girl for you to impress,” and Jeremy said, “Dear God, I repent for my sins. Forgive me for all I have done.”
    In unison, Mitchell and Duncan shrieked, “What?” and turned to Jeremy, blasted him enough to kill him a dozen times over. Then I heard Jason’s voice from the cafeteria doors-something along the lines of “ Put those guns down now .”
    Mitchell said, “You have got to be kidding.”
    â€œI’m not kidding.”
    Mitchell shot at Jason and missed, and then I saw something that looked like a lump of gray art-class clay flythrough the air and crack Mitchell on the side of his head, so fiercely that I could see his skull implode.
    At this point, the boys in the camera club lifted up their table and used it as a shield as they charged against the sole surviving gunman, Duncan Boyle. It was covered with paper bags and some cookies that had been glued in place by blood. They charged into Duncan, pressing him against a blank spot of cinder-block wall. I saw the rifle fall to the ground, and then I saw the boys from the camera club laying the table flat on the ground on top of Duncan and begin jumping up and down on it like a grape press. They were making hooting noises, and people from the other tables came and joined in and the table became a killing game as all of these children, boys and girls, who fifteen minutes earlier had been peacefully eating peanut butter sandwiches and oranges, became savages, killing without pause. Duncan’s blood dribbled out from under the table.
    Lauren called out, and Jason came over and lifted the table off me like a hurricane lifting off a roof. I know he said something to me, but my hearing was gone. He tried holding me up, but my neck was limp, and all I could see was across the room, children crushing other children. And that was that.
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    To acknowledge God is to fully accept the sorrow of the human condition. And I believe I accepted God, and I fully accepted this sorrow, even though until the events in the cafeteria, there hadn’t been too much of it in my life. I may have looked like just another stupid teenage girl, but it was all in there-God, and sorrow and its