Ava

Editor's note: The author writes about reading an award-winning play in her school's auditorium. This piece pairs with "On The Verge of Tears" which was written by another student who listened as Eva and other students read the play.
By Eva Theriault
Williston Central School
I stood up.
I walked over.
I sat down.
“You’ll be Ava,”
he told me.
I nodded.
We read.
“I was in
the library
the gym
the hallway
the bathroom”
we started,
all four of us narrating
one event.
I thought
“what a cool way to start a play”
I thought about how I said the lines.
About Ava,
and the three others.
As we kept reading,
subtle changes happened.
It was all quiet,
except for the person reading.
We got serious,
ten long faces looked at me,
at us,
at Ava and her brother and the others.
What was coming out of my mouth
wasn’t me anymore.
It was Ava,
telling her hallway story
that day in her high school
when nine students got shot.
Before, I was thinking normal things
chatter in my head
there for a second
then gone.
But that stopped.
We weren’t Eva and Alex and Chris and Jonathan,
we were those students
waiting
and rushing
and hiding
and panicking
the words coming out
the voices
didn’t belong to us anymore.
We were there,
we all were.
Not self conscious anymore,
not concentrating on the voice that
we knew so well.
But today,
it belonged to them.
I was Ava,
rushing up the stairs,
trying to save people,
not wanting to get hit.
That girl,
in Ava’s math class,
she didn’t even see it.
She cried out,
and we all felt it,
how it was for her,
not seeing it coming
having her life flashing before her eyes.
And Ava
couldn’t do anything,
she knew she couldn’t.
Going to her brother’s class
we all held our breath
in the dining room there
under the bright lights,
finding out he was dead.
I know I read it,
but it didn’t feel like me anymore,
it was Ava,
crying out loud
and hugging his body there,
knowing that it was
all over.
Ava saw him,
the killer,
and she looked him in the eyes
and she asked him why.
He answered her, and then he shot himself.
There were nine students dead.
Ava went to ten funerals.
She wants to hate him,
she really does.
She knows he turned all those feelings out
and this is what happened.
She wants to hate him,
but she just can’t.
We had to swear,
there were five swears
in the play.
After the first one,
I told myself
that if I had to,
I would read right through it
pretending I say that kind of stuff
every day.
I
had to.
We had established
before
that yes, we were saying them.
It would be wrong not to.
I realized how Ava used the F word
wasn’t bad,
not like you’d think.
It wasn’t using it for
lack of a better word
or to be cool somehow
or because it’s such an
infinite word.
All the songs I’ve ever heard
that say that
feel so poseur,
misusing this play
misusing life,
misusing what she felt like
right then.
She was telling us what it felt like
standing there
in her brother’s place
between her parents, holding them up
knowing that he would never graduate
or go to college,
how unfair and
cruel this whole thing was.
And then it was over,
and we were all quiet,
just thinking.
And I stood up.
I walked over.
I sat down again.
I realized that I was
sweating
and shaking
and trying hard not to cry.
Then a few of us
smiled tentatively
and laughed nervously
and said how much we liked it.
And then it was
over.