Part 2: Campus Tour
Alice looked impatiently at her watch. Five more minutes until her daughter Madison and the other four candidates would present their high school theses to the Elmwood University enrollment board.
“Shouldn’t we head to the lecture hall?” Alice asked the tour guide. She didn’t want to miss Maddie’s presentation, a discussion about the Constitution. "The Bill of Negative Rights", she called it.
“Oh, that’s a closed event, ma’am. We’ll finish up the tour in time for you all to retrieve your students.” The tour guide didn’t even pause before continuing. “Next we are going to walk through the residential quad. Naturally, we will not be going inside any of the residence or dining halls for security reasons.”
“Are the dorms co-ed?” asked a parent.
“No, they’re all gender-segregated. Each entrance is equipped with a fingerprint reader and laser counter to ensure only authorized residents have access.”
Well, that’s overkill, thought Alice. What fun is college if you can’t sneak boys into your dorm room? Not that she’d actually say that to Maddie. Not that Maddie even cared. She wasn’t interested in dating.
Or was she? Alice had no idea, really. She’d been wrong about her daughter before, and look where they were now.
Alice made eye contact, unintentionally, with one of the armed guards at the east end of the quad. She looked away as quickly as possible.
“All of our guards are military-trained and required to take weekly drug tests,” the tour guide continued, noticing Alice's interest. “We have a 24/7 security detail which allows us to lift the Federal curfew for our students. We’ve received so much positive feedback from students who love to take walks after dark.”
The guide led them over a wooden footpath. “This is the campus park, which is really popular at night for picnics and stargazing.”
The parents all smiled and gasped at the nostalgia; one even laughed like a child on a swing. Alice covered her smile with her hand; it felt too intimate to reminisce about such things with strangers.
Alice missed taking walks at night. She missed taking walks, period.
“As you can see, the perimeter wall completely encloses campus.” The guide gestured dramatically with both arms to illustrate. “We have guards on the outside, every twenty feet along the wall. Our security is the reason we are able to prohibit firearms on campus. We haven’t had an incident since the wall was completed. The students and faculty don’t need to carry, so they are completely free to learn, study, socialize, network, shop at our on-campus general store," (another dramatic gesture towards the quad) "and enjoy being outdoors without obligation or fear.”
He would have died anyway, thought Alice as the tour guide turned them around. Her son Marcus had been accepted to NYU before the shooting, and its urban campus was impossible to enclose. There had been at least a dozen incidents at NYU since Madison’s speech at the memorial. Or maybe he would still be alive today, because Maddie wouldn’t have delivered that speech at all if he hadn’t been shot in the first place.
The NRA awarded Madison a full scholarship to the college of her choice after her speech went viral. It was ironic that, three years later, she was choosing a school with a weapons ban and round-the-clock lockdown.
The tour group and students arrived back at the entrance gate simultaneously. Maddie was peeking over the top of her presentation board, which was comically big in front of her tiny figure.
They signed out at the reception office; rifles were returned to their owners as they left campus. As a guard handed Alice her AR-15, Maddie pulled a button out of her pocket and pinned it to an empty space on her mom’s rifle sling.
Alice read the slogan on the button. “It says ‘Elmwood Mom’... does that mean--?”
“Yep,” Maddie said, with a touch of melancholy.
“Congratulations, honey! Aren’t you thrilled?”
“Of course I am, mom. I’m just... tired of everything.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Maddie took a deep breath and sighed. "I wish I'd never made that speech." She was fighting tears.
Alice felt her heart in her throat. What could she say to comfort her girl, who carried the wounds of the world on her conscience, wounds that she cut herself? "You spoke from your heart, sweetie. You had no way of knowing what would happen."
Maddie burst into sobs. “I just can't wait to be free again.”
Alice felt her heart in her throat. What could she say to comfort her girl, who carried the wounds of the world on her conscience, wounds that she cut herself? "You spoke from your heart, sweetie. You had no way of knowing what would happen."
Maddie burst into sobs. “I just can't wait to be free again.”
