Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down Read Online Free Page B

parents to the local public library to wait for news of their children, and to make room at the high school for ongoing investigation. Each high school student signed a register as they left the building to account for their presence. Medical helicopters and ambulances arrived on the scene to take the wounded to nearby hospitals.
    Meanwhile, a search warrant has been authorized to investigate the suspect’s home.
    â€œIt’s just unbelievable,” said Betsy Carraway, an employee in the school’s cafeteria who hid with coworkers in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer when she heard shots fired. “These are just kids. This is a school. This is meant to be a safe place.”
    Amid widespread news this week regarding the war in Iraq, President Bush held a press conference sending prayers to the community of Lewis and Clark High School and the city of St. Louis. The rampage occurred just after the state of Missouri passed a concealed-carry bill this year, legislation that Governor Bob Holden vetoed before it was overridden by the Missouri General Assembly and Senate. Governor Holden held a press conference last night thatcalled for prayer, care and healing in addition to continued consideration of gun responsibility, mentioning specifically the recent bill.
    â€œIn the coming days, we’re going to need our community,” said Jeremiah Olson, a Lewis and Clark parent who at 7 p.m. last night was still waiting for news from his child. “We’re going to need every last shred of empathy and love and peace that still exists on this earth.”

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MEMORY
    FLASHBULB MEMORY: A fixed location, a moment stilled in time.
    Where we were when x happened. Solve for x . Capture. Click.
    Synapse: the brain’s bridge where nerve cells touch.
    Neurotransmitter: an electric impulse, a firing of new data between cells.
    Dendrite: feathered tip. A waving of cilia at the ends of cells that connect, that jump synapses and transport fact. Sight and taste. Sound, touch. Sensory perception of how the light fell or how the television crackled or how the spine of a book curved firing between tendrils, catching data like an outstretched hand.
    Fear: the amygdala. Cortisone release. A stress response to threats, the animal brain. A quickening of heart rate and blood pressure. An intake of breath and air. A flooding of neural synapses to remember fear and to self-protect, to create connections that rewire the brain entirely.
    The mind a malleable thing, a mold of plasticity. A collection of 100 trillion synapses that rearrange and transpose. A critical mass of impulses that bury trenches, that germinate and take root in the cortex. Overturned chairs. A wall of desks. The sound of popping and screaming. An assembly of pale faces crouched to the floor.
    Flashbulb memory: the firing of so many synapses at once, a braid of cells.
    A strengthened cord. An imprinted image.
    A seed. A fractal. A road.

LOVE IS PATIENT, LOVE IS KIND
    OUR PARENTS MONITORED what we knew, what we saw on the evening news. They closed our front doors to the swarming of police and the FBI and to the intrusion of reporters, local affiliates, and national news teams surrounding the school and its neighborhoods. Our parents placed signs on the porch pleading privacy, signs that told visitors to refrain from ringing the doorbell, a sound so unlike the ricochet of gunfire but still so startling, an earsplit. They presided over breakfasts and dinners without television, the phone off the hook. Homemade pot pies, chicken casseroles, trays of lasagna they accepted from neighbors. Some of our parents stayed home from work to be with us, school suspended until further notice, while others immersed themselves in their jobs, a means of coping and forgetting. All of them whispered behind their bedroom doors when they thought we had fallen asleep, some on the phone, some to one another, their voices low and terse. Despite their efforts we saw the