Instead, she enrolled at Riverside Middle School, where many of the other Townville survivors also attended. Ava didn’t have to return to her old campus, which only went up to sixth grade. Then, in February, her mom and dad finally decided to send their daughter back, and when they told her, she agreed to try. Ava transitioned to home schooling, not setting foot inside another classroom for six years. She was so consumed by trauma and fear that her parents withdrew her from Townville. The only boy she’d ever kissed died three days later. Ava escaped, but a classmate she loved, Jacob Hall, was shot in the leg. In 2016, when Ava was in first grade, she walked out onto the playground behind Townville Elementary as an angry 14-year-old pulled up in a truck, raised a handgun and opened fire. Less than a month had passed since she’d done something no one ever thought she would do: go back to school. “This thing is so heavy,” said the 13-year-old, who had stuffed her bag with every item she suspected she might need for seventh grade, including 15 pens, a hairbrush, an oversized water bottle featuring the image of a bespectacled giraffe and a body spray labeled “Magic in the Air.” Just before dawn, Ava Olsen lugged her new backpack into the living room and plopped it on the floor.
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