Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, we are publishing “Jumping In” by Aurora Sousanis. Aurora is a sophomore at the University of Michigan and lifelong resident of the Metro Detroit area. She began writing for publication as an intern for AllMusic and spent the following summer as a breaking news intern for the Detroit Free Press. In her work, Aurora has often focused on the arts and the intersection of cultures both within her community and around the world. She is currently an arts writer for her school paper, The Michigan Daily, and most recently published an extensive human interest piece on eating disorders as a freelance writer for the Freep.
My second week interning for the Detroit Free Press, a two-year-old girl was kidnapped by her mom's ex-boyfriend. The FBI got involved, and it was the first Amber Alert in Michigan in over a year. When authorities found and arrested the kidnapper, hope soared that she would soon be brought home alive. Two days later, however, she was still missing and the search continued.
Her name was Wynter Cole-Smith.
I landed the internship just after my freshman year of college, during which I rarely left campus. My only professional writing experience up to this point had been writing articles remotely for an online music magazine. Two days after Wynter disappeared, while sitting at my desk in the office, waiting to write up a weather report or continue my video training exercises, I was assigned as the main field reporter for the story.
The first part of my assignment was to join the search. Oftentimes for breaking news stories, journalists are paired up so that one (the field reporter) sends notes and interviews to the other who sits back at the office, writing them into a story— it’s faster that way. I was paired with a full-time, middle-aged reporter named Frank.
I was given a list of four houses within the inner-city neighborhoods of Detroit and was told to visit each one, talk to the inhabitants, and try to find the community-led search party since we didn't know where they were at that point. I assumed the addresses were meeting points for the search team.
I pulled up a picture of Wynter as I walked to my car. She was wearing a purple shirt with a unicorn detail, gazing softly at something just behind the camera and absent-mindedly touching her braids. Her bright eyes and warm smile stayed with me as I drove.
The first house was overgrown with weeds that reached higher than I was tall. The windows and front door were boarded up and the porch had caved in. Paint was peeling from what little of the house was still visible.
No fucking way am I getting out of this car.
I snapped a quick photo through the passenger-side window and sped off, called my dad and severely questioned my assignment. Endlessly supportive and encouraging of my career, he pushed me to keep going.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I told him.
“It’s okay, just keep taking pictures from your car until you see the people you’re looking for,” he told me. “You got this.”
I drove through a neighborhood of houses similar to the one I had stopped at before. At the second house, a group of men sat on the porch. People! Thank God, I thought as I pulled up and turned off my engine. While unbuckling, I examined the scene more closely. Four men in tank tops and sweatpants stared back at me intensely, paused mid-pass of a joint, a speaker booming on a run-down porch.
I hadn't expected to be going into the field today. The shirt that had seemed like an expression of confidence in the office now felt too revealing, a blinding white that was far too tight and low cut. The hearts on my jeans that had seemed ironically cute now seemed ridiculous, and the hair I had let tumble down my back like a cape now felt too flouncy to command any sort of respect. The only comfort I had was the badge from work that hung from my neck, providing me with a semblance of authority to cling to as I walked around my car to talk to the group.
I held up the badge as I moved towards them and recited the speech I had learned during training: "Hi. My name is Aurora Sousanis and I'm a reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Do you have a couple minutes for a couple questions?"
They responded with blank stares. I asked if they were part of the search party for the little girl who had gone missing. They laughed.
"You have got the wrong people, girly," one of them said, rising from his seat on the porch.
Fuck.
I thanked them for their time, and they responded with a chorus of lewd profanities that followed me as I hurried back to my car to pull open the door with hands shaking, start the engine, and drive away.
I immediately called my editor—not Frank, but our boss, Maryann, who had presented herself as something of a den mother when I'd interviewed for the job.
What the hell kind of assignment have you sent me on by myself with almost no training during my second week working for you?
I said hello and asked her very nicely if she could clarify whose addresses these were. Maryann, in turn, nonchalantly informed me that these were the addresses that the kidnapper had been associated with in the past, where he or many of his friends lived. In other words, they were the houses the search party would like to search, not meet up at.
When I related what had happened at the last house, she seemed unmoved, but she told me it would probably be okay if I went home now. After she hung up, all I could do was shake my head in bewilderment and shock, thankful that I could hand responsibility over to someone more experienced.
When I pulled into my driveway, I looked up towards the front door, expecting my nine-year-old brother, Theo, to be standing there, waiting for me like he so often does, with a smile on his face and shoes in hand, indicating he wanted me to take him outside. He had greeted me exactly that way at the start of the summer, upon my return home from my first year of college. That day had started with the misery of packing and loading up my dad's car in the pouring rain, rain that still hadn't let up when we got home. My dad and I sprinted towards the house and when I stepped inside, I was more than ready to collapse into my bed and doom-scroll myself into oblivion. But here was Theo, shoes in hand, asking me to go outside.
"I can't, buddy. I'm too tired," I said as I took off my shoes and ruffled his hair, walking into the dining room. He picked up my shoes before following and handing them back to me.
"It's raining!" I told him. "You don't want to go out in that! You'll be soaked." He left and came back holding his coat.
I sighed exasperatedly and slid my shoes back on. "Once we go out, you'll see how miserable it is." Theo smiled.
We moved onto the porch. Theo, sensing my hesitation to go further, grabbed my hand and pulled me down our walkway and out into the street. Rain splashed down on us in big wet drops, seeping through our coats and dripping down our noses.
"Have you had enough yet?" I asked him. Theo shook his head and grinned. We kept walking.
As we continued, I guided us through the minefield of puddles, dancing in between and tiptoeing around as they grew on either side and in front of us. Theo, however, soon tired of this, and letting go of my hand, jumped towards the nearest burgeoning pond.
"NO!" I shrieked, trying to grab hold of him again. "Your socks and shoes are going to be soaked. They'll never dry!" He jumped in, smiling at the immensity of the splash, his shoes disappearing beneath the murky water. As I moved to lift him out, he sloshed the water towards me, splashing it onto my own shoes and laughing gleefully at my displeasure.
I was ready to drag him home right then and there and scold him for his insanity. But, as I reached for his arm, I realized I was already soaked. I could be wet and annoyed, or I could be wet and let down my defenses to see what would happen.
I looked down into his big brown eyes smiling mischievously up at me and felt my pursed lips spread into a grin. He held out his hand, and I grabbed hold of it, and we splashed in every puddle we could find. We were cold and tired and dripping, and the water seeped into our shoes and through our socks and pruned our toes. And I laughed with my baby brother while we danced in the rain.
It was so silly. It was a rebellion.
The night I came home from the search, however, Theo wasn't there to distract me and I opened the front door to an empty house, reminding myself that the rest of my family was in New York for the Fourth of July.
I thought about Wynter, and the picture from before. Her big brown eyes were so like Theo’s, radiating warmth and kindness and innocence. I wondered if she was just as mischievous, just as stubborn. I wondered how many times her mother had scolded her for soaking her shoes while jumping in puddles. I hoped she would get to do it again.
Two hours later, I got the call that Wynter had been found dead. I was assigned to go to the crime scene. They didn't have anyone else to send, my editor told me.
I pulled on a black short-sleeved button-up and dark gray dress pants and pulled my hair into a low bun. Lowering the badge onto my neck, I hoped the costume would be convincing enough to disguise my lack of preparedness and fear.
I drove back into the inner city as the night enveloped the streets and houses in darkness, transforming them into alien blurs of black and gray without a streetlight in sight. Suddenly, the road was illuminated by the flashing blue and red of police cars and ambulances and TV news trucks and correspondents with their cameras, lights, and microphones. The police had taped off the intersection, and a one of their cars was parked at its center. More trucks could be seen about a block from where we stood where FBI agents and police officers were investigating the crime scene.
I made my way towards the chaos, notepad and pen in hand. Everyone else seemed to work for TV news, the names of their channels written in giant letters across the trucks they gathered around. About half of the media people there were in charge of manning giant cameras and lights while the other half, the TV reporters, fixed their makeup in pocket mirrors and rehearsed lines, asking the cameramen to adjust the lighting.
I found a spot off to the sides, feeling alone and lost.
As a child, I was often moved to action by the tragedies of the world around me. When I was thirteen, I helped organize a school walk-out after the Parkland shooting. I spent hours learning about the victims and researching statistics about school shootings. I gave a speech to my entire school about the people who were killed and the need for us to be activists. Two years later, I followed Greta Thunberg's lead, made posters, and joined hundreds of youth activists to lead the Global Climate Strike march through Detroit, signing my name on every petition that was handed to me.
Ironically, somewhere between then and the time I began interning for a big city daily, I stopped reading the news. Now, however, I was part of it.
I thought back to the training I had been given on crime scenes the week prior. "If you're ever asked to cover a crime scene, just remember: it's not your place to cry," they told us before moving on to copyright law.
A cluster of people from the surrounding houses gathered to my left. They murmured softly, greeting each other with somber hugs and sighs as they watched the scene unfold. I knew I should talk to them. I knew that I should just ask them a couple questions and see how they were feeling or if they knew Wynter. But I held the case at an arm's length — I wasn't professional enough yet. I would mess it up.
I moved towards the police tape and tried to focus on sending Frank my notes, pictures and descriptions of the situation. I stood there for over an hour, waiting for the FBI to update us on what was going on. When they finally came towards us, the media people swarmed, jostling me out of the way with their clunky cameras and lights in order to get the best shot. I pushed through, recording on my phone for Frank, as the FBI officer confirmed the devastating news.
“This is not the outcome we were hoping for and our hearts go out to Wynter’s family,” he said as camera lights flashed. “But we ask you to understand that we cannot provide further information at this time.”
I walked back to my car.
It is difficult to maintain a childlike sensibility about the world, to keep straight what is important. I graduated from childhood just over a year ago, but I have long felt the hands of adult-world practicality and seriousness tugging at my sleeve.
As we grow up, we learn how to protect ourselves. We avoid touching hot things after we get burned. We learn to be more careful around sharp tools after we get cut. And we learn that stepping in puddles gets our socks wet. So we stop dancing in the rain.
As we grow, we also learn about the pain of heartache, of sadness, of sorrow and just how much of it there is in the world. And we learn, just as we do with fire, how best to protect ourselves — developing strategies and weapons, ways to fight off and avoid the discomfort of feeling too much. At some point, we even learn how to be indifferent.
That night, I was left questioning the capacity for goodness in the world, or if there really was any. But my thoughts were far away, abstract ideas in the midst of an overwhelming nothingness — a numbness to the situation that, if I'm honest, I did everything to maintain. I picked up a friend and stuffed myself with fries and chicken nuggets as we cracked jokes about how crazy my job was and gossiped about the people we went to high school with. I went home and watched hours of garbage TV and scrolled through Instagram reels until I fell asleep. I picked up my weapons, patched up the barricades, and I hid from the heartache.
The next morning, I woke up to a text from my editor, asking me to attend a vigil that was being held in the neighborhood where Wynter had been found. I cosplayed competence once more and drove back to the place I had been twice before, wondering why they kept entrusting me with this case. I parked and pulled down the overhead mirror to make sure all my fly-aways were staying put.
"It's not your place to cry," I reminded myself, and I stepped out.
On the opposite side of the street, community members gathered into a crowd, placing stuffed animals, balloons, and flowers around a "Speed Hump" sign in front of the alley where Wynter had been found. I paused for a moment, unsure of myself. A young white girl from suburbia, I felt like a trespasser, walking in on an intimate moment I wasn't meant to see, much less analyze. The people here were experiencing a trauma that tore apart their community and highlighted struggles I would never have to face on account of my skin and status. I didn't have the training, the skillset, to insert myself and ask them to trust me with their sorrow.
On my side of the street, the media stood separated from the vigil, setting up their cameras and testing their mics and the TV news reporters practiced their scripts as they had before, intermittently checking their makeup, and fixing their ties. All of them were standing with their backs to the scene.
Suddenly, the badge hanging around my neck felt more like a pillory than an emblem of authority. I stood there, disgusted with these people's preening, their vanity and self-importance in the face of tragedy. I watched them in horror as they rehearsed and refined their tones of sympathy and words of condolences, making sure they wouldn't mess up when the cameras started rolling.
And, yet, as I touched my hair to tighten my ever-so-tight bun, I realized I had become them; so focused on being professional, I forgot to be human.
I was on the wrong side of the street. I didn't know quite how to bridge that gap between us that I still felt, but I figured a good start would be to cross to the other side. I introduced myself to a group of women, leaving my script behind.
"Hi, I'm Aurora. What's your name?"
Whatever I was expecting as I crossed the street, I couldn't have imagined how I was met. Mothers introduced me to their children who offered me high fives and shy smiles, and I learned that Wynter was an older sister. Grandmothers pulled me in for hugs as they explained how the tragedy affected them and wept as they held me. Wynter’s own grandfather’s eyes welled with tears as he told me she was an energetic angel on Earth with a contagious smile. Fathers and teenagers shook my hand and shook their heads, telling me that it was time for the city to come together and create change. People from around the state came to celebrate the life and mourn the loss of a little girl they did not know, but who had touched their souls, and invited me, despite my badge, despite my differences, to join them.
The vigil began, and the man leading it, Pastor Mo, carried the crowd through the ceremony with passionate songs and chants, uniting strangers against the evil of what had happened and advocating for change within the community. I watched the community and family gather with their grief in the form of balloons and stuffed animals, prayers and hugs, and I watched as sorrow created solidarity, a confirmation of goodness that had been missing the night before, and a united front rebelling against hopelessness. In some ways, it was joy.
Throughout the ceremony and before, I sent Frank countless videos, descriptions, interviews, and pictures, all trying to convey this warmth, this healing embrace of a community brought together by tragedy and determined to fight back together, as one.
Frank asked me when they would light candles.
"I'm kinda waiting for the candles," Frank texted. "Everyone likes candles."
"There's over 100 people here now," I told him. "From all over the state."
Frank: *Candle Emoji*
Blood rushed to my face. My jaw clenched. The night before, I had been questioning the state of humanity, and now I was left questioning the compassion of my colleague, who could reduce a child's murder to a cliche depiction of grief, thinking only of clicks and page views.
Frank was putting on his armor and picking up his shields, guarding himself from the pain of feeling. But is this type of apathy, of jadedness, the only way to protect ourselves?
I turned off my phone and turned my attention back to the vigil and (most unprofessionally) refused to respond to any more of his texts until the ceremony ended.
During my conversation with Frank, the crowd had grown, and I was now standing in its center. I was beginning to move to the outer edges of the group when Pastor Mo asked everybody to please turn to their neighbor and tell them that you loved them.
Without hesitation, the woman to my right grabbed both my shoulders and pulled me into a strong embrace. After a moment, she pulled away slightly in order to look into my eyes, and, tears running down her face, told me she loved me, and hugged me once more.
I had a choice: I could shut myself off to something right in front of me—the way my training had prepared me to do—or I could open myself up to something that was not immediately a given, lower my defenses and surrender myself to sorrow, to the rain, in the name of solidarity, hope, and joy.
I told her I loved her, too.
Thank you. Stay open so you can connect the healing dots for your readers.
I have a degree in journalism I don't use because of the reasons you describe. Thank you for sharing this story. Beautifully written.