1:37:00 A.M.

1:37:00 a.m.

God, or kismet, or intuition, or chance, wakes me up. My cell phone’s home screen lights up my bedroom. I reach for it. My news app notifies me that there is an ACTIVE SHOOTER targeting NED PEPPER’S BAR in the OREGON DISTRICT of DAYTON OHIO. The alert was originally sent fifteen minutes ago. I immediately dial Brianne’s number, one of three numbers I’ve committed to memory. I need to know if my friend is oh please I can’t even think it.

1:37:50 a.m.

If she picks up she’s alive, if she doesn’t she’s dead, if she picks up she’s alive, if she doesn’t she’s dead, if she picks up she’s alive, if she doesn’t she’s dead Oh God Oh Christ please let Brianne be alive and not dead God I’ll do anything please Fuck.

1:38:00 a.m.

She doesn’t pick up. I check her twitter profile. The last activity was five hours ago, a retweet: Big Gemini flex: Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of us. My index finger jabs and fumbles for Snapchat.

1:39:00 a.m.

Brianne’s location in the Snapchat video she posts appears underneath an ornate white banner at the bottom of the screen: Ned Pepper’s ~ Dayton, Ohio. Even without the geotag, I recognize it as the bar she works at. I’d been there several times. Yes, I was there just last week, before I moved out of the cute little white apartment we shared for the past year, the one we were so excited to get because we were doing it—we’d talked about this since elementary school, and we’re fucking doing it!

Brianne is smiling, as always. This is how my night is going. She looks beautiful, as always. Her bright blue eyes are piercing, as always. A woman in sparkling, glow-in-the-dark glasses leans on her shoulder. They’re both grinning, laughing. The bar is alive behind them. People are dancing. The strobe light bounces off the walls, floors, faces. It looks fun. It was six hours ago.

1:39:20 a.m.

The next story, ten minutes ago. The photo is an ambiguous blend of dark and pale orange, like someone placed their thumb in front of the camera. Hi. I’m okay. Thanks everyone for checking in, her caption reads.

1:39:25 a.m.

My eyelid twitches in a catharsis of adrenaline. My heart’s palpitations decelerates and thank Fucking Fuck she’s okay, at least her body is, at the very least I have that, thank You, thank You, thank You.

1:39:30 a.m.

My phone’s screen goes black then shows me, me: my face staring back at me in slack-jawed horror. The speakers play a familiar jingle, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. A facetime. Brianne. My thumb does not hesitate to press the round, green telephone emoticon. The tech lags. Accept! Accept! Accept!

1:40:00 a.m.

I hear her voice before I see her.

Hi, she says.

Hi, I gasp back.

I stare at her.

She blinks back.

Brianne propped her phone against the wall. She sits crossed-legged in front of the camera in her bedroom of the new place she moved into days ago. Her long brown hair is tied into a tight ballerina’s bun. Are you okay? I ask her. I just woke up and saw a news article. About the Oregon.

No, she says. And yeah.

What are you doing?

Building a cat tree, she gestures to the set-up box, deflated and discarded across the room. The cats won’t stop scratching up the nice wood floors and my landlord is going to be pissed.

Why are you talking about that right now?

Because I think I have PTSD.

What?

I survived a shooting. An hour ago. Or two? I’m losing track of time, she attaches a velcro rod to another. She laughs wildly to herself. Because of the PTSD.

Humor was always the way you coped.

Yeah. She pulls a face. No! Her freckles buoy. You’re one to talk. But yeah.

We don’t have to talk about it. I don’t care. I care that you're alright. That’s all. But I do want to make sure you’re taken care of.

Brianne is silent. Her bedroom looks the same as it did at our old place, though old seems so relative at this moment.

Days ago,

we were watching One Direction music videos on our busted Roku in the living room and walking to and from the bar down the street, a local favorite, drunk as all hell, not even looking once over our shoulders, hand-in-hand, emboldened by each other, the queens of the goddamn world.

I want to build this cat tree and talk, Brianne finally says. No questions. No advice. No nothing. Just listen.

So, of course I quiet myself. Of course I listen; be still my thumping, aching heart.

2:30:00 a.m.

Brianne asks me if I remember a book we read as elementary schoolgirls on the playground. I tell her that I do: a small, uncomplicated book of poetry, Notes of Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person. I’d stolen it from the middle school section at the library (which is to say, I hadn’t bothered telling the nice librarian that I was checking it out), even though we were both permitted to choose from that section (before all the others, and were very proud of that fact) anyways.

Do you remember how that one poem ends? She wonders, cat-tree built, her two fat tabbies crawling all over it like catnip fiends. She watches them dart around, her babies, and smiles. I smile too. The one about death? And surviving? Something like that?

The poem comes into focus. Is this it? I send her a link.

She goes off screen to look. Yes, yes, oh my God, you found it.

3:01:00 a.m.

I love listening to Brianne read poetry, especially her own. I remember laying on the floor of her bedroom, on the white rug, begging her to read another poem from her little black notebook. Without the encouragement of red wine, it takes a little work. She believes her poetry isn’t good. She isn’t interested in writing—she’s just interested in writing poetry. It’s one of the things that brought us together. It’s one of the things I like best about her. I promise myself, right then, I will be better about telling her that. Making it known.

3:01:10 a.m.

She reads the poem out loud to me. Or she reads it for herself. It doesn’t matter. I listen:

But it's morning. I have been given / another day. Another day to hear and read / and smell and walk and love and glory. / I am alive for another day.

She breathes deep and finishes the poem—I think of those who aren't—all the while, I am thinking of those who are.

-Kasey Renee Shaw

Kasey Renee Shaw is a writer in Ohio. She graduated from West Virginia University with her MFA in creative nonfiction.