“Hopefully this will stick with them,” Stoddard said. “They have the grief, they have the loss, but they’re learning how to navigate their life now, holding that.”

Moving forward

Perez was in the crowd in the gym on Tuesday for the assembly. She thought the message was good, but didn’t like the way Lutzenkirchen put it — like the car crash that killed her friend was her friend’s fault.

“I don’t want to think of it as a mistake she made to put her in this situation,” Perez said.

Part of what’s been hard the last few weeks is that there hasn’t been time to remember their lost peers for the people they were, Perez said. They can’t just look at the crashes as lessons.

“They were people. They were our friends. They were our classmates,” she said. “It’s really important that we do remember the lives they lived before.”

But when students reflect on the year, Marsh said, it’s not just homecoming and spring break that will stand out to them — it’s the crashes. They feel it when they drive. Marsh throws his phone in the passenger seat now, out of reach. Queen changed her mind about letting her daughter drive herself to take the SAT in Douglasville. Perez avoids highways.

The crashes rocked the school, tied the students and teachers and parents together in a way they couldn’t have foreseen.

“I definitely feel like our school community has come closer,” Perez said. “Nobody knows how to handle a situation like this ... all we can do is be there for each other.”

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