On May 21, 1998, before places like Columbine and Newtown and Parkland had become part of the American vernacular, Kristin Kinkel received a phone call. At the time, she was twenty-one and a student at Hawaii Pacific University, in Honolulu. She had a scholarship for competitive cheerleading she was an expert tumbler and flyer and she lived with some of her teammates in a modest rental house they called Cheer Palace.
The phone call came early that morning from a friend from her home town Springfield, Oregon. He stammered something about having bad news and hung up. Soon afterward, another friend called and told her that there had been a shooting at Thurston High School, where Kristin had gone and where her brother, Kip, was in ninth grade. "Is Kip hurt?" she asked. She didn't get an answer. Then a third friend phoned and blurted out what nobody else wanted to say: Kip was the one who had opened fire at Thurston. As Kristin would later learn, he had killed two students and injured another twenty-five.
Someone told her to check the news; the story was dominating CNN. "I remember turning on the TV and seeing my house, the house I grew up in, from a helicopter view," Kristin recalled recently. Her parents had built the house twenty-five years earlier-an A-frame surrounded by Douglas firs. Now it was a crime scene. After the shooting at Thurston, the police had discovered two bodies inside her family's home-her brother had killed their parents, too.
The phone kept ringing. One of Kristin's childhood friends in Oregon had heard an early news report that mistakenly said three bodies had been found in the family's house-not two. The friend was terrified: Had Kristin been killed as well? "I ended up calling her roommates in Hawaii," the friend remembered. "And they were, like, 'She's here. She's fine. But she's not talking to anyone."
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 04, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 04, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.