A school shooting is something devastating to talk about or to even imagine. Most people don’t live in fear of their school being the target of a massacre. In Nineteen Minutes, no one at Sterling High School was expecting their well-educated and highly recommended school to become a mortifying crime scene. This novel follows the lives of multiple people who were affected by the truculent shooting at Sterling High School. You are able to experience the characters lives years before the shooting and learn events that lead up to the shooting. During the process of reading this story many predictions can be made toward what is going to happen. Questioning the events in this novel is also another strategy used to help understand the events …show more content…
During the shooting the novel follows Patrick, a detective who goes into the school trying to protect the students. Patrick is a very courageous man and he could be described as a benefactor. The sights he had to endure while he went through the school will probably scar him for the rest of his life. I imagine dark, scattered hallways and extreme quietness. The quietness you hear when someone is looking for the monster in a scary movie, the anticipation quietness. Everyone in the school was probably afraid that they were going to see the monster, or in their case the shooter, any second. “He swept into the open double doors of the gymnasium and scanned the handful of sprawled bodies, the basketball cart overturned and the globes resting up against the far wall- but no shooter” (Picoult 22). This in text example shows you how eerie the scene of the school was at the time of the shooting and Patrick’s destiny to find the shooter. When I picture the school the day after the shooting, I see caution tape around the whole school. I also imagine the school looking like a place of burden. Even if it was a bright and sunny day, the school still looks like a very somber site. The school can be imagined as a frightening crime scene during and after the