The rubble heap that was our basement

It has been over a week since my son had seven boys stay overnight at our house to celebrate his fifteenth birthday party. We are still sorting through the rubble, fishing through layers of debris for whatever valuables may still be buried there: shoes, missing iPhones, family pets, and so forth.

‘She just slipped through our fingers’

Editor's note: some names in this story have been changed to honor a request from the family of the deceased. 

At 13, Tuscola High School freshman Zemra Teuta was like almost any other American teenage girl — she liked popular music, boys, hanging out with friends and chatting on social media. 

Zemra, however, wasn’t like every other teenage American girl. She was different. 

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