'Yeah, I have dodged a bullet'

The story of the shooting was so raw and painful, it was as if Jenna E. Broderick needed to get it out of her system.

"I told it to a lot of people. I put it on Facebook," remembers Broderick, now a 19-year-old sophomore at Northern Illinois University. Typing as fast as she could, and not worrying about grammar or spelling or complete sentences, Broderick posted her memories shortly after midnight that same night for the world to see.

"That’s all your mind could think of," the Tinley Park teen explains. "It’s not gossip you want to tell anyone, but I wanted to tell it over and over again."

She went out of the way to bring up the subject. When she heard a friend casually use the phrase "dodged a bullet," she’d pipe up.

"Well, yeah, I have dodged a bullet before," she’d say.

With the shooting on her mind, Broderick sought some counseling briefly. She credits "parents, friends and music" for helping return her life to normal.

Now she can go days without thinking of the shooting.

"I don’t bring it up myself," says Broderick, a soft-spoken woman with blonde hair and brown eyes.

But the memories aren’t gone.

"I remember the smell of gunpowder and the blood splatters going to the Holmes Center," she says, her eyes tearing. "There’s just images you’re never going to forget."

The shooting made her notice people. When Broderick saw a man dressed in black walk into the Blockbuster where she and her friends were headed, she hesitated. "Guys, we’re going to wait outside," she said.

The shooting changed the way she sees classrooms.

"You’ll look at the door for a second and it will register: ‘This is why I’m looking at the door,’" Broderick acknowledges. "And then you’ll get back to class."

The Fourth of July proved painful.

"I hate loud noises," Broderick says.

Her grandmother lives near a hunting preserve, and the gunshots bother her. But she makes herself confront those fears.

"Batman (the movie) cured me of a lot. You have to retrain your mind," she says, recounting scenes of gunshots and violence. "No, this isn’t going to hurt you. It’s all right."

Of course, her mother panics if Broderick doesn’t phone home every night.

"Yeah," Broderick says, allowing herself to laugh, "but she did that before, too."