Chapter 1
Once upon a time
No this is a sad story, I’m not sure if you wanna read this. If you have a soft heart I would stop here because this is about to get very grim and sad. This is the story of my life. My name is Kayla heritan, I’ve been dating ben offer for three years now. We always had a great relationship we were happy and everyone at school said we were gonna last forever, then things took a turn for the worst. He was always a happy lovely boy honestly the sweetest boy I ever met. We laughed and joked about everything we never had a bad day, he started to talk about his family and I mean they were never the happiest family but it was never to the point where he would be upset for more than an hour or so. Ben started to talk about how much he hated school and everyone there. To me this was the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth, ben was the star quarterback of the football team, the most popular boy in school and always had a million girls in love with him. His favourite thing was the school he was always smiling and laughing there I couldn’t see why he would all the sudden hate school. He gradually over the next couple of-of months started to talk about who he would kill if he had the chance, I had no idea what this was leading to. He started to talk about all the ways to get out of school and ways he could make it all better. One night ben told me he didn’t wanna live anymore and he was going to end his own life. I jumped out my window and walked an hour and a half to Ben’s house and when I got there he was sitting crying with an empty bottle in his hand. He told me he took them all and he loved me and his suffering was finally over. At this point, I did the only thing I could think of and I’m not saying it was the right choice but this is how it worked. I punched Ben in the stomach as hard as I could and he threw up every single one of the pills, for the rest of the night ben and I sat on the floor of the bathroom and he told me everything that had happened. His father had left the house and left his family with no money and piles of debt. The reason he was so happy at school is that it’s the only place he ever felt loved. I have never cried this much in my entire life because what I was about to do is the scariest and most painful thing I have ever had to do. The look on a mother’s face when you tell her that her child attempted suicide is the most heartbreaking thing you will ever see, it’s like you drove a stake through her heart. Bem and his mom talked for a good hour well I waited in his room and then his mom and I talked for a couple hours about the plan to make Ben happier again, we agreed I needed to be around the house more and he needed to start seeing his friends again more and more. Over the next couple months Ben seemed to be happy again, things at home had calmed down and he started football again. He was back to regular old ben and I loved it our relationship was better than ever. One morning ben didn’t show up to school, he texts me and told me he was sick. I was sitting in the library and all the sudden there is screaming and crying. We all jumped and ran to the cafeteria where the sound seemed to be coming from. I walked through the cafeteria doors to complete and utter shock. There he was my boyfriend the most popular fun loving boy in Michigan high, standing in the middle of the cafeteria with a gun. I was frozen in fear and shock. I watched as my boyfriend shot his best friend and his entire football team. My only thought was I have to stop this, I ran as fast as I could to the cafeteria table where he was standing and screamed ‘BEN STOP’ with my cracking voice through my tears. His eyes looked like something I had never seen, his pupils were as big as his iris and his hair looked like he had just climbed out of bed. I jumped on the cafeteria table and grabbed his gun. I jumped off the table and ran as far as I could. He chased me all the way to the cafeteria doors and did something I never thought he would. Ben grabbed the back of my hoodie and turned me around, he put one hand around my neck and squeezed until I let go of the gun and it fell to the floor. Ben picked up the gun and all he did was look me dead in the eyes and shoot me in the leg. I fell to the floor screaming and crying, Ben looked at me with no fear in his eyes perfectly calm and put the gun in his mouth. He slowly reaches his other hand up to the gun and pulls the trigger, my heart wrenched and I screamed as ben fell to the floor gushing blood. Never in my life would I have ever thought this is how Ben would die, I guess I was wrong.
It’s been three months since the shooting, I spent two months in the hospital with severe nerve damage and a broken neck. The only boys that survived from the football team where the backup quarterback and the waterboy. Ben always loved those boys maybe that’s why he only shoot them in the arms. Ben’s best friend survived too, he’s been in a coma for two months and I watch as his girlfriend comes to see him every single day. Tears in Cassidy’s eyes as she walks into the room every single day hoping and praying Mitchells awake. Every day I watch her leave after an hour head in her hands she runs from that room crying, she loves that man more than I have ever seen someone love another person. This summer break has been the most heartbreaking thing, watching every single one of the family members of these boys walk into this hospital to see there children grandchildren nephew and brother slowly fade away. To see these people physically and mentally breaking right in front of you and not being able to do anything to help is the most painstaking heartbreaking thing in the world. To sit in this hospital bed and watch people slowly walk in this hospital knowing this may be the last time they can ever talk to there boy is the most depressing anxiety filling feeling in the world. The boys still have no idea or could even think of why Ben would ever do this. To me that was not Ben standing on that cafeteria table, it was a broken shell of a man that was never whole again and everyone was too blind to see it. Bens autopsy report said he was on a brand new street drug called Flaka, it turns you into a living breathing zombie. Flaka gives you cannibalistic behaviour and makes you attack anyone and everything. At this point, I still have no idea where ben got this drug from and neither does anyone else. School starts again in a week and my therapist says I’m going back to school, even though I fully disagree with this I know in the back of my mind I can’t avoid this forever. I completely shut down all of my social media accounts, every single morning I would wake up to thousands of messages from classmates and parents sisters and brothers about how this was all my fault and I’m the one that pushed ben to do this. Some say I’m a hero for grabbing the gun and others say ben would still be alive if I had never walked through the cafeteria doors. At this point I honestly don’t know what to believe, maybe I didn’t make the right choice for grabbing that gun from him or maybe I saved lives. At this point sitting here writing this for you I definitely don’t feel like a hero.
I’m on crutches now I can walk again and my neck is almost fully healed. Mitchell woke up after the seventieth time cass walked through the hospital doors, she and I became really close after seeing her every day she came to me crying sometimes.
I avoided school for an extra month, today I am going to walk through those front doors again for the first time since the shooting. I have my best friend Cass by my side and I think I can do this. I was almost sure after all the help from my therapist and my parents I could make it through a full day at school. Well, I was wrong because when I walked through those doors all my hope was lost, all the sudden the dirty looks and stares started. I ignore it and with cass by my side we walked to my locker, my entire soul was broken when I saw my locker. Across the entire front of my locker in big dripping red letters it said ‘MURDERER’. The only thing I did was open my locker and put my bag inside what I saw was the final piece that broke me. I looked at the bottom of my locker, there it was a rose withered from sitting there for so long it was almost dust and there was a note attached to it. The note read ‘Dear Kayla, I will love you forever I’m so sorry for what’s about to happen, Signed your love Ben’. I put my bag inside my locker and with tears streaming down my face and makeup running everywhere, I turned and ran as far as I could from that place from that locker and from that note I never wanted to see it again. I don’t think I’ve ever ran that far in my life. I ran to my house from school that’s a twenty-minute car ride. I sat in my bed and didn’t move for three hours all I did was cry, my next action was probably the saddest and most depressing thing for Cassidy I could have ever done. I walked to the bathroom and recorded a video, the video states ‘ hello my name is Kayla heritan, I’m sure by now everyone in Michigan knows my name, I was Ben’s girlfriend at the time of the shooting and this is my point of view on the events of that day at Michigan high.’ then I continued to type this entire story for you. That day at school was my final breaking point, the note scrolled across the front of my locker pushed me over the edge along with bens note.
Hello, this is Cassidy, Kayla’s best friend I was just showed this story by her mother, Kayla ended her life that day when she ran from school. Please take Kayla’s life as a reminder of why we should never take retaliation on someone in her situation. Thank you for reading and always remember be as kind as you can because no one deserves to have there life end because of the reasons and the way Kaylas did.
