On the afternoon of April 13, 2014, sophomore Asia Humphrey was at work, having just begun a new job at a photography studio. As she was taking photos of two young children, their grandmother suddenly got a call.

The woman “started freaking out – ‘Oh, my god, there was a shooting at the Jewish Community Center,’” Humphrey said. “To me, it was just another shooting – ‘it’s really tragic, and I’ll think about them and the families.’”

But Humphrey soon found out that the attack was more personal to her than she had previously believed. She received a text from a friend who told her he needed to speak to her about something important.

“For some reason, I had this urge to get my phone, so I picked it up while I was doing a shoot [to call him],” Humphrey said. “And I was like, ‘Okay, this has to be important, because I’m at work, and you know that.’ And he was like, ‘Reat got shot.’”

Reat Underwood had been Humphrey’s best friend since seventh grade, when she moved to Blue Valley Middle School. When neo-Nazi Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr. attacked the Jewish Community Center and nearby Village Shalom, Underwood, who was at the community center for a talent audition, was fatally wounded by a gunshot. Underwood’s grandfather, Dr. William Corporon, and another woman, Terri LaManno, were also killed.

After Humphrey found out about her friend’s death, she immediately attempted to go back to work. However, the grief made it impossible to continue as before.

“I started crying, and I kept spacing out,” Humphrey said. “And I told my boss, ‘Hey, I can’t work here anymore. I know this is not going to be good if I stay here.’ I can go back to the same place and see all the areas [where I was when I found out]. It was raining, and I sat outside – I just kept crying and crying.”

The circumstances of their relationship at the time of Underwood’s death made Humphrey’s loss even worse.

“We were in a fight when he died,” Humphrey said. “It would have been nice to be his friend when it was happening…I knew, the day he died, I was going to end up texting him [to make up]. And then it just never happened.”

At first, Humphrey found it difficult to cope with Underwood’s death.

“I didn’t have a distraction – I just sat in my room and watched Netflix,” Humphrey said. “I wrote a fifteen-page letter because our school put together a place to give letters to him and his family. I didn’t mean to make it that long. When I realized I was on page eight, I was like, ‘Well, I might as well do [fifteen pages] for how he was almost fifteen.’ So that was my distraction. I wrote everything I probably would have said to him.”

Humphrey found it difficult to live her life as it was before his death. Her grades suffered, she cried frequently and she found it difficult to remain at BV High, where the two of them had attended.

“I always knew [I wasn’t going to stay at BV High],” Humphrey said. “I told him the first day, ‘Hey, I think I’m going to switch schools next semester.’  He got so mad at me – ‘Oh, my God, you’re leaving me?’  He completely ignored me for the rest of the day.  And then at the end of the hour, he wrote on my notebook, because he just wasn’t talking to me – ‘Hey, please don’t leave me.  Love, Reat.’  So I stayed for the next two semesters.”

After her father bought a house within the BV Southwest attendance boundaries in the middle of her sophomore year, though, Humphrey decided to transfer. However, the choice was not an easy one to make.

“It kind of sucks because when he wrote that thing on my binder – ‘Please don’t ever leave me’ – I feel like I kind of broke it,” Humphrey said. “He never wanted me to move schools.  He was the only reason why I stayed within the district.  We had two years of middle school, and then we were supposed to have the rest of high school together.”

Although she felt guilty at first, Humphrey says she made the right decision to transfer.

“[At BV High], I used to look at places and be like, ‘Oh, yeah, we used to sit there before I went to gym,’ or, ‘Oh, yeah, he helped me with my homework there,’” Humphrey said. “At Southwest, I don’t remember anything.  It’s like a new start – all new teachers, new methods.  It’s a lot better.”

The new beginning helped Humphrey begin to cope.

“I hang out with his family a lot,” Humphrey said. “They’re really kind – they’re so nice to me.  I go to his room – that’s where his box [containing his ashes] is.  I talk to him, like, ‘Hey, now I’m taller than you.’  He was [slightly] taller than me [at the time of his death].”

As her life moved forward and she began to make new memories, Humphrey began to come to peace with the loss of her friend.

“He was like that one guy best friend – he was so sweet,” Humphrey said. “He was the only person I actually trusted – probably the only person I ever will…I lost all of that.  But it’s not like he’s here anymore; it’s not like I can just leave myself in this dungeon.  So I might as well break out and see what else is out there…It’s just kind of living for him, I guess, or living for what he could have been.”