Holland Tech Vignette Episode 2 

We walked the halls clueless that there was an older woman among us. Walking the same halls and seeing the same sights. Shelby Hewitt was an adult 32-year-old woman posing as a student, even worse, as a teenager. I would see her in the halls walking and having normal conversations with other students like a normal “teenager.”

My classmate Jari, a light-skinned girl with black glasses would tell me “There is something weird about her I just can’t tell what it is.” My response as a young 12-year-old girl who had just graduated from sixth grade was to just leave it alone and not be quick to judge. I continued to hear students older than me murmur about this girl named Daniela who at the time I did not know was Shelby Hewitt. Students would say the way she acts was off and abnormal. 

That day as I went home all I could see on the news was a 32-year-old woman posing as a teenager in the Burke high school and my mind went blank in an instant. As the days passed my mind could only think that this couldn’t be true, my school is a safe environment for all its students. 

Adults such as staff members would ask us how we were feeling about the situation that was unfolding in front of us. From my perspective, I was in pure disbelief. I eventually went to my school counselor, Ms. Clarke, a short African American woman with pretty long locks in her hair. I walked into her office and asked “How can this happen?” She looked up at me with a frown on her face which was very unusual and said “The world is an interesting and evil place.” By the frown on Ms. Clarke’s face, I could tell the situation was much more serious than I had been hearing or anyone had been telling me. 

I walked back to my math class wondering who else could be lying to us all along. That was all I could think about for the entirety of my math period until the last bell of the school day. As I walked out of my school all I saw were news reporters and police cars circling our school trying to talk to students. All that went through my head was how the adults in our school environment and our community never noticed anything or even researched who they let enter a school full of children.

The school dean came up to me and said, “Shelby Hewitt has the mind of a monster.” I could not agree more so I added “And a heart as cold as ice.” He patted me on the shoulder and told me to get home safely. I walked home thinking about how a 32-year-old woman can make connections with students with her true intentions being to get close to teenagers and understand their minds.