Mia Tretta was studying for finals when the active shooter alert blared through Brown University last December. The 21 year old art history major did what any student would do. She locked the door. Turned off the lights. Texted loved ones. Waited. Except unlike her classmates holding their breath through their first lockdown, Mia was breathing through her third. She'd already survived the 2019 Saugus High School shooting that killed her best friend and left bullet fragments permanently lodged near her spine. Now here she was, 3,000 miles from Santa Clarita, realizing terror doesn't care about geography.

When she tells me about the odd normality of preparing for exams one minute and contemplating mortality the next, her voice carries the startling calm of someone who's cataloged emergency exit routes since middle school. She explains how the second lockdown felt different. Less panic, more grim familiarity. A horrific déjà vu where your body remembers how to flatten itself against cold floors before your mind catches up.

Active shooter drills were Mia's generation's Duck and Cover. Where baby boomers practiced nuclear attack responses beneath school desks, Gen Z learned to Barricade, Evade, Counter. When I was in third grade, our biggest crisis was whether the kickball field was muddy after rain. Today's third graders know which classroom closets have the sturdiest doors.

The mayor of Providence recounted a conversation with an injured student who credited active shooter training with saving their life. His voice cracked as he acknowledged the dissonance this represents. Those drills work. And the fact that they work speaks to how frequently we need them. We've normalized what should be unthinkable. Preparing children for carnage isn't prevention. It's surrender.

Mia still attends physical therapy for nerve damage from the bullet that tore through her abdomen at 16. She's had multiple surgeries to repair a perforated eardrum from gunfire. The visible scars have faded. The unseen ones press against her ribs when fireworks explode on College Hill. When a car backfires near campus. When the silence between classes feels too heavy.

She's part of a grim sorority no student chooses to join. At Brown alone, several classmates shared stories of surviving previous school shootings. Their WhatsApp groups lit up with messages of support that doubled as horrified recognitions. You too. Across America, a generation moves through lecture halls carrying memories of classrooms turned crime scenes. They order coffee with hands that once pressed against classmates' bleeding wounds. They attend football games with ears still ringing from gunshots that weren't special effects. They are battle scarred veterans of a war we refuse to name.

The day after Brown's lockdown ended, students trickled back to dorms clutching travel mugs and boarding passes for holiday travel. One freshman told reporters through tears that their perfect bubble had burst. But children who grew up practicing lockdown drills never lived in a bubble. They've always known the glass could shatter.

Mia no longer believes in bubbles. Or statistics. Or thoughts and prayers stitched into pastel Instagram posts after every tragedy. See, the cruelest myth about gun violence is the comforting lie of It couldn't happen here. It follows the disbelief of It can't happen twice. Mia is living proof that lightning does strike the same person two times, especially when we keep ignoring the storm.

This isn't about complicated policy debates. It's about algebra homework flecked with dried blood. It's about graduations where empty chairs hold framed photos. It's about dorm rooms that should smell of cheap pizza and ambition, not fear sweat and adrenaline. When Mia visited the White House two years ago to discuss gun reform, she looked politicians in the eye and said what too few acknowledge acts of mass violence are not anomalies. They're symptoms.

The scariest thing isn't that students like Mia exist. It's how easily we've adjusted to their existence. We treat surviving multiple shootings like surviving multiple car accidents or multiple hurricanes. But cars have safety regulations. Hurricanes get meteorological tracking. Shootings just get candlelight vigils and temporary hashtags.

Let's be clear trauma compounds. The first shooting leaves deep bruises. The second splits those bruises open. Mia once thought moving cross country could outdistance grief. Now she knows grief packs lighter than security personnel outside lecture halls. She understands survivor's guilt shifts shape but never disappears. After Saugus, she grieved friends lost. After Brown, she grieved the illusion that adulthood meant safety.

Perhaps what unsettles me most isn't Mia's story. It's how many Mias we've already created. The Saugus survivors. The Parkland freshmen now finishing college. The Uvalde children who'll enter middle school next year clutching bullet resistant backpacks. How many times must one person dodge death before we admit the problem isn't their luck. It's our willingness to gamble with children's lives.

When I ask Mia what helps now, she speaks about community. About professors extending deadlines without requiring explanations. About university counselors trained specifically in gun violence trauma. About friends who understand why she needs to sit facing restaurant exits. Small graces in a world where grace feels scarce.

She also speaks about anger. Not the hot, screaming kind. The cold, sustaining kind that fuels advocacy. The kind that refuses to let It is what it is be the final word. She knows this fight requires both softness and steel. That sometimes surviving means speaking through tremors to remind people daily life shouldn't include eulogizing classmates.

None of this is inevitable. Other countries experience mental health crises without weekly mass shootings. Other democracies respect firearms without worshipping them. What Mia survived isn't freedom. It's failure wearing freedom's costume.

Before we hang up, Mia mentions something mundane about picking up dry cleaning later. The ordinary hum of life continuing. That's the real rebellion. Breathing through the memories. Laughing despite the ghosts. Demanding more than rehearsed reactions to preventable tragedies.

She's studying art history because she still believes beauty matters. Because Renaissance paintings prove humans can create glory alongside grief. Because maybe if enough people wake up tomorrow determined to build a safer world, her children won't need to learn the difference between cover and concealment before they learn fractions.

Until then, she keeps surviving. Not as inspiration porn. Not as a political prop. But as a young woman who loves indie films and salted caramel ice cream and deserves a future where active shooter alerts don't interrupt studying for finals.

We owe her more than candles.