EVERGREEN — One by one, they filtered into an empty Evergreen High gymnasium, greeted by a tunnel of pompoms and an outpouring of joy they hadn’t felt for weeks. The kids were here, and they all carried hallmarks of one of the happiest nights of small-town USA. Some wore football jerseys. Some wore blue-and-yellow Cougars face paint. Some wore blue-and-white pinstriped overalls.

Most, improbably, wore smiles.

The only reminder that there was a shooting on this campus shortly over a month ago, in fact, was the slew of Evergreen Strong shirts across the crowd. These students needed nothing else. Their town is covered in signs that remember the day: 09/10/25. They needed a shred of normalcy to rip them out of the monotony of tragedy, and so the Student Senate pulled together a homecoming as

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