Fluke

They planted a tree where she fell.

It was on the edge of the schoolyard, just where the baseball diamond and the soccer pitch began. A fluke, they all said. It had to be a fluke. It couldn't have been on purpose. She couldn't have been deliberately targeted. It was too long a shot for it to be anything but a fluke. An eleven year old boy with a rifle borrowed from his daddy's closet, an eleven year old boy who'd never shot the gun before, an eleven year old boy who could barely shoulder the thing...no way he could have targeted her. A fluke.

So they planted the tree. Each year on the anniversary...a word that would never sound the same...of her death her parents would put a wreath at the base of the tree. A week later, they'd remove it.

The tree started to grow crooked and had to be staked. It was, they said, a fluke.