Shots Fired

Shots fired
Nina Cristofori

this is where it ends
By Marieke Nijkamp


What would you do if there was a shooter in your school? Would you call your parents and tell them you love them? Would you hide in the corner or in a closet? Or, would you try to escape and risk your life in the process? More courageously, would you try to stop the shooter from harming more lives by putting yours on the line? We all say exactly what we would do in a situation like this, but unless you experience it you don’t how you would react.


10:05 a.m., Opportunity High School, gunshots are fired. Tyler Browne, a forgotten student, friend, brother, and son, interrupts a school assembly, having locked all the doors prior, and opens fire on the entire school. Whether it be through the perspective of his sister Autumn, Autumn’s girlfriend Sylv, Sylv’s brother Tomas, or Tyler’s ex girlfriend Claire, every few pages reader’s get to step into one of the many character’s shoes, and interchange between them all. Claire runs track and when the assembly was going on, Claire was outside practicing with her track team, so she was spared from the shootings. From when the gunshots first went off, Claire and her best friend Chris attempted to run to the closest gas station to get help, but luckily a police car drove by and picked them up and brought them back to the school in a safety zone outside. Tyler had loved Claire but things didn’t work between them. Tyler and Autumn’s lives at home were tough. Autumn had a passion for dance, but gets abused by her alcoholic father every time he finds out she’s been dancing because, her mother died in a car accident on her way to pick Autumn up from dance. Autumn wants to leave her life behind and follow her dreams of dancing at Juilliard. Tyler loses his mind because he has lost everything in his life, and now he is losing Autumn too because she is so eager to follow her dreams that she is leaving him behind when they were supposed to always be each other’s support system. Tyler takes this as Autumn neglecting him just like everyone else in his life, and when Autumn tries to talk her way out of getting Tyler to stop shooting people in the auditorium, she tells him she can save him. Autumn conveys, “ His arm snaps back, and the barrel of the gun bashes my cheek. Spots of light burst in my vision. Pain blossoms over my face. Blood pools in my mouth”, and Ty says, “You’re too late to save me now” (154). From once being all each other had, Tyler was willing to inflict harm on Autumn because she hurt his feelings. Not even his own sister could stop him. Sylv was hiding in the auditorium while all of this was happening because she knows Tyler would kill her immediately because he hated her for “corrupting” his sister and making Autumn fall in love with her. Sylv’s brother Tomas, was in the principal’s office at the time of the assembly, stealing student files, and ended up help students escape the auditorium by unlocking the exit doors. When Tyler discovers Sylv, he goes on a witch hunt to kill her, but Tomas protects her. Tyler takes away significant lives, including a beloved main character. He also spares another main character, but attempts to damage their lives by taking away one of the most important things in their life. Autumn expresses, “ Ty made good on his promise. I didn’t need to die for him to kill me. He simply lowered his gun and pulled the trigger. And his bullet tore my knee to shreds” (270). Tyler tries to take away his sister’s happiness before he chooses his fate.


I recommend this book to those who can engage in horrendous and heartbreaking novels. This book is fiction, but the events that occurred in it are not unrealistic to society today. Considering the issue at hand, gun violence and school shootings, I can understand the touchy subject it is and how for some people it can really hit close to home. Nijkamp uses different perspectives to give readers insight into the minds of numerous people during a school shooting and what it's like to go through it. Her in depth detail is noteworthy while the plot of the book is only forty-five minutes long. Forty-five minutes is an insignificant amount of time to people who live to be old, but forty-five minutes of terror and violence seems like an eternity to the people subject to it. Nijkamp allows readers to feel true emotion for all the characters as if the audience personally knew them.


This book spoke to me, because with all the gun violence occurring today, and the school shootings, it illustrated to me more why our country needs to initiate change. In the final pages of the book, my heartstrings were broken as I read the words of a survivor in the book, “ We are not better because we survived. We are not brighter or more deserving. We are not stronger. But we are here. We are here, and this day will never leave us. Nor should it. We will remember the wounded. We will remember the lost” (280). I cannot imagine what enduring a situation like this would be like, and I would never wish it upon anyone. Schools are meant to be a place for kids to learn and expand upon their knowledge in a safe environment, not be shot and killed by a psychotic individual. Guns laws need to be altered and school security needs to be made even more strict so students never have to be victims to a fellow student, or adult shooting up the school.