New Comm Ave

Laura Holzwasser has lived her entire life, before attending Boston College, in a suburb of Boston called Sudbury, MA. Sudbury is about as exciting as what she likes to call its claim to fame, the "Mary had a Little Lamb Schoolhouse," which many people are shocked to find out actually exists. Despite her clumsiness and difficulty mastering walking up and down stairs, Laura has spent 15 years of her life practicing gymnastics, surprisingly with relatively no injuries. Being only 5'3.5", she blames gymnastics for stunting her growth making her four inches shorter than her sister who is four years younger than her. She also has dabbled in pole vaulting despite her incredible fear of heights. Laura enjoys saying "wicked" and pronouncing "room" as "rum," which annoys everyone from outside of the Boston area. She would like to thank Ms. Notaro and Professor Sousa for helping her improve her personal narrative writing.

Waking up with a shudder, I thought to myself it was only a dream. You’re safe. But the nightmare had felt so real. As I rubbed my palms together, I noticed the cold sweat I felt in the dream had carried over into real life. I could still hear the crowd buzz as I climbed out of bed. I could feel their shoving as they began to swarm and push their way towards the victim, pushing me along with them. There was a knot in my chest as I opened my closet. I felt uneasy while brushing my teeth, playing the dream over and over like a movie in my head. Someone had been stabbed. But it was only a dream.

Walking into school on January 19, 2007, I heard the sirens before I saw the commotion. Thinking nothing of it, not realizing where the sirens were headed, I walked into Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School’s main entrance. Immediately, I was frantically approached by a faculty member who ordered everyone to go upstairs. We were then herded into the math department office.

Not knowing what was going on, we let our minds wander. Someone reported seeing a lot of blood outside a boys’ bathroom. Jokingly, I predicted that one of my friends probably pissed someone off and got himself stabbed. It was just a lingering thought from my nightmare. I had no idea at the time that more of my dream had carried over to real life than I had realized.

The room we had been forced to wait in was completely crammed. It was filled with a murmur, a buzz that was eerily similar to the nightmare. There was a giant window overlooking the blocked off hallway that teachers had pulled curtains in front of to block curious eyes. There were no other windows to the outside. We were being held hostage in our own school. I had almost no communication to the outside world. With no friends in the math office with me, and very bipolar cell phone service, I felt stranded. A prisoner.

Sneaking a stare around the curtains, I saw a CSI team walk through the hallway and two teachers locked in an embrace, crying. The superintendent came over the loudspeaker. He told us to remain calm, we weren’t in danger, and he would update us when he could. This was after over an hour of confinement. I was alone and scared. Looking for information, teachers and students scanned the news online. We found our school. In disbelief we read that one was dead. Someone had been stabbed.

Students frantically texted friends, making sure everyone was accounted for. People called home, assuring family members that they were safe. Everyone was bewildered. There was no explanation. Nothing to make sense of the madness. And in the madness, no one even knew who had been killed.

The superintendent came on the loudspeaker once more. “There has been a tragedy today in the building,” he began. “One of our students was attacked by another student and he has passed away in the hospital. We will be dismissing shortly.” The words were even more haunting coming for one of our own.

I was finally reunited with my friends outside. We saw the pack of news crews racing over as we pulled out of the parking lot. The moment we all filed into our friend’s house, we flipped on every TV to different news stations. As we compared our stories, we listened to countless “BREAKING NEWS” reports of how the events unfolded. Four of my friends had been there to witness the victim’s collapse and were clearly shaken up from what they had seen. He had been stabbed down the hall from where we meet every morning. I realized that had I been five minutes earlier to school, I would have been walking by the bathroom as he slumped through the door into the hallway. The thought made me sick to my stomach.

The news announced the name of the killer and the victim. A member of my class, a junior boy named John, had killed a freshman named James Alenson. John had autism and something had made him snap that day. The killing was completely unprecedented. Random. They had never met before in their lives. Any of my friends could have been the one in the bathroom when John snapped. James could easily have been any of my friends. They were so close.

Only a few of us had ever seen either student before and none of us knew anything about them. But within minutes of leaving school, there were countless facebook groups dedicated to honoring the memory of James Alenson. It sickeningly became “the thing” to do, like a new morbid trend. As we all joined the groups, myself included, we watched the news. Occasionally we would see one of us walking by a camera, or one of our friends hopping on the bus. The morning had been so surreal, that although I am ashamed to admit it, we were excited to see ourselves. We called everyone we knew, ordering them to turn on the news. It was being talked about nationwide, and we oddly felt kind of famous. We were actually there, we knew more than anyone what had happened.

We finally left to go our separate ways. We ate dinner with our families, recounting our personal accounts of the day before we thought about plans. It was a Friday night and we weren’t sure if we should feel guilty about going out. Someone had organized a candlelight vigil in memory of James at the high school for the early evening. We thought about going to the vigil, but selfishly we thought of how tired we were and decided to stay home and watch a movie instead.

We all met at a friend’s house to watch the movie “Crank.” It was a violent movie, and as it progressed, the events of the morning began to really hit me. I felt guilty about watching a man killing people in a movie. It wasn’t entertainment. Death was real, and it scared me. A lot. My world was put in a new perspective. It sounds cliché, but life was suddenly short and fragile.

I excused myself from the movie and went outside, barely making it out the door before having a full fledged panic attack. I was literally shaking and unable to catch my breath. I felt like I wanted to jump out of my own skin, anything to escape the shock I was feeling. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. My friends didn’t understand, but I was overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness and guilt. Guilt that I hadn’t been affected more. Guilt that I hadn’t cried. And guilt that I didn’t even go pay my respects at the candlelight vigil. How could I have been so selfish that I couldn’t take an hour of my time to pay my respects with the rest of my community? How could I have picked a movie over that? The movie should not have been important. James’ life was important.

Why couldn’t the feelings come naturally? I didn’t want to fake the feelings. I wanted them to exist on their own. Too many people were acting sad because it was “the thing” to do. Too many people were just jumping on the bandwagon. I wanted to replace the feelings that I had with the ones that should be there. No more guilt, no more numbness, just pure sorrow. I wanted to replace the ones that made me eager to share the story with everyone I knew. The thoughts that were making me wish I had known James or John, just to be able to say I did when telling others the story. The ones that made me almost wish that I had gotten to school earlier to be there. Could I actually be that sick? I should have been grateful that I wasn’t there, that somehow the universe miraculously saved me from witnessing a horrific sight, and yet in the back of my mind a little voice kept telling me, the story would have been better if you were actually there.

I left my friend’s house that night, finally in tears. But they weren’t necessarily mourning tears. They were tears of guilt, of helplessness, and from being scared. The day had shaken me up completely. I was sick to my stomach and I had no idea what to do, or how to feel. My illusions of safety had vanished. I was no longer safe anywhere, and there was nothing I could do about it. My reality was no safer than my dreams.

Feeling vulnerable and powerless, I was reduced to an almost trance like state. As hard as I tried, no other thoughts could form in my head. My head had become a black hole, sucking out happiness, and leaving the day’s events to dwell in my mind. Leaving me empty. Numb. I fell asleep in my parents’ bed that night, not able to face the darkness of my room alone.

I felt guilt everywhere in those following weeks. While the school was filled with support counselors, trained in crisis management, and even a dog to help make people smile, I felt out of place. The hallways were filled with people in embraces, crying. Teachers couldn’t finish classes because they couldn’t keep their composures.

I was afraid to confide in even my closest friends, afraid of being judged for my lack of emotion. Everywhere we went, someone wanted to talk about the incident. To help us cope. The school was bonding together over a tragedy that I hadn’t grieved over. I was still being pushed by the crowd, the same crowd as the one from my nightmare. They were pushing me towards the victim, reminding me constantly that he was there. That I should be more upset.

It is almost two years later, and I still feel guilty for my feelings that day, and the days to come. More so, I feel guilty for the feelings that never came. I wasn’t completely empty, void of any emotion, but I feel like I wasn’t affected enough. I tried to make up for the lack of feelings by attending other vigils and writing letters to the families. I hid the guilty feelings deep inside myself, afraid to bring them up because I didn’t want to offend anyone or be judged. For all I know, I was the only person in the entire school with these feelings. I doubt that I was, but no one expressed this opinion. If anyone felt the same way, they were also too afraid to admit it to their peers as well. The feelings I thought I should have never genuinely came. I never had a moment of real depression and mourning. To this day, I still feel distant from the event entirely. It never really affected me or moved me in the way I feel like it should have. I feel guilty that my actions were because I felt obliged to at least fake those feelings. I still wish I needed help coping. I wish I didn’t feel like I haven’t cared enough.

• 2009 Spring
• Personal Essay