As she has lived near Thurston for many years and worked there for part of that period, she listened as long as she could to the news before heading out to work. Before she left she heard some news that I hadn't heard, and now I wish I hadn't heard it because I feel like I need to vomit but I can't. This isn't a physical kind of sick that I'm feeling, though that might change at any point.

When the police went to the murderer's house to notify his parents, they found his parents dead. They had been killed either this morning or yesterday evening. The bus driver told me that his sister had also been killed, and though I heard that from other people - nutty druggies on the bus talking about how they dealt drugs with him, which might or might not be true - I'm not absolutely certain it's true.

If I were his sister, I would prefer to have been killed with my parents. This is not like another murderer, one where a random person broke into a house and killed the people who happened to be there - but one where a child killed his parents. As the sister, still alive, there would be so much to deal with - not only the fact that your parents are dead, MURDERED, but that the murderer was your _brother_. I wouldn't want to bear that knowledge, don't know if I could.

When I heard that news, I clutched my stomach and almost began sobbing right there at the head of the bus. At home, who knows where in the house, he killed his parents. This wasn't a random spray of bullets in the school cafeteria - this is knowing that the parents looked at their son holding the gun and knew that they were dead, that there was no escaping because they were his intended victims. Nothing random, no hope.

His parents had both worked in the school system, his father as a teacher at Thurston, for many years but were retired. I imagine that when they found he had been expelled he had been subjected to lectures, grounding, something along those lines.

How could lectures, mere lectures, end in bloodshed?
There has to have been more to it than that, but there can be no justification.

I can't think of this anymore. Before, in the first page, there was some coherence, some structure to what I was thinking and saying, but now I'm just overwhelmed and... I simply can't organise these thoughts, this news, right now. I can't be removed from it.

All of my heart and sympathy is with the people who are standing by their babies - their teenaged babies (you know how parents are) - hoping that they will live. All of my heart... and some of my blood. This was a huge reminder that I haven't given blood for four months, and I've scheduled an appointment to give blood on Monday, June first.

Monday, June first is the first time that they have any openings. I knew as soon as I called and got the busy signal many times over that probably hundreds and maybe even more people would be calling to give support in the only way that they could immediately think of - by giving blood.

For this once, blood will not be in short supply.