MINNEAPOLIS -- Three recent graduates of Annunciation Catholic School skipped alongside Minnehaha Creek on a recent August afternoon. A light rain fell, but nothing could keep these teenage girls from one more Starbucks hang before beginning high school.

Evelyn Gruenzner, a red-headed 15-year-old who says exactly what’s on her mind, piped up. “I was scared of windows for a really long time,” she said. Her friends, Estella Safe and Ava Thompson, both 14, nodded in agreement. They all had the same memories, of bullets flying through stained glass, of their safety shattered.

After the Aug. 27, 2025 shooting at the first all-school Mass of the year killed two classmates and injured dozens more, Annunciation students coped with trauma and grief by folding inward, toward one another. They felt drawn to others who simply understood without having to say a word.

The 40 students who graduated from Annunciation in May know they’re at a hinge point in life. They left the school many attended since pre-school. Gone was the protective Annunciation bubble of the past year, where every teacher and student was processing trauma and grief, where outside counselors became a permanent presence in hallways, where kids didn’t have to explain away a bad day.

For half that graduating class, including these three girls, they’ll still be together at Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield. A neighbor of an Annunciation family started a scholarship fund, not wanting the financial burden of private school to prevent students from continuing high school together. The fund donated $4,200 to each of the 31 Annunciation graduates headed to Catholic school: 19 to Holy Angels, 11 to DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis, one to St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights.

“I don’t want to pull him out of this group,” said Chris Cron, who presumed his son Charlie would go to public high school until the shooting made the family reevaluate. “It’s like they’re war buddies.”

“These kids have always been friends, but it’s different to watch them together now,” said Kelly Meyer, mother to Mitchell. “It’s this unspoken connection.”

“They have conversations with each other about Aug. 27, and their voices aren’t cracking, so matter-of-fact,” said Brock Safe, Estella’s dad. “They talk about the heaviest possible things like you’re talking about the weather.”

It’s not like Estella, Ava and Evelyn have become world-weary cynics. Their conversations weave around volleyball, boys, the “Just Dance” video game, their school uniforms in high school, Ariana Grande versus Tate McRae. Then, almost offhand, something profoundly sad drops in.

“I’m excited for high school. But I’m also scared,” Estella said. “At Annunciation, it happened once. It’s never going to happen again. At Holy Angels, it’s never happened, so maybe there’s a higher chance of it happening there.”

The girls ducked out of the drizzle and into Starbucks. Over iced chai and iced coffee, they lounged on a couch and relived a summer of swimming at the Edina pool and cruising Mall of America and convincing parents into yet another sleepover. They guessed at how many times they’d watched KPop Demon Hunters: at least a half-dozen times just in the disorienting first few days after the shooting.

Among their Annunciation friends, they don’t have to explain feeling haunted by the number 27. Or sudden freak-outs at loud noises. Or the burden of teenagers becoming grown-ups all at once, like when Evelyn shrouded her first-grade buddy under the church pews and soothed her: “It’s almost over, I promise.”

Like any rising ninth-grader, summer’s end brings anxiety. Life’s next chapter means new friends, harder classes, more responsibility. For these three Annunciation girls, anxiety was eased by the knowledge that, one year after the horrific shooting, they were heading to high school together.

“We hang out every. Single. Day,” Estella said about her group of Annunciation girls.

“We’re always going to be so close,” Evelyn said. “You don’t have to explain anything.”

Eighth graders grow up fast

In the hours after the shooting, parents didn’t know what to do. Sitting at home, worrying and praying and doomscrolling, didn’t seem right, so Heather and Colin Mueller took their three kids to Full Tilt Tavern in Bloomington to play arcade games. Dozens more kids joined them.

“The worst thing you could possibly do is be alone,” said Owen Mueller, 15. “The longer we hung out, it felt less and less like it actually happened. We were just kids again, and it all felt just like a bad dream.”

Owen ran around the arcade with friends he’d had since kindergarten. In the coming days, even with the church and school closed, the boys kept returning to campus, sitting in the Wiffle ball field and just staring at the church’s windows.

What pushed them through the most difficult school year imaginable was doing it all together. Therapy became normalized. The memories of Harper Moyski and Fletcher Merkel, the beloved students slain on Aug. 27, became a constant presence. First-graders discussing a classmate’s upcoming CT scan to locate bullet fragments became just a typical morning meeting.

Owen’s family never planned on him attending private high school, until these bonds became clear.

“He said he wanted to be somewhere he knows and loves,” his mom said. “How can we say no to that?”

“There’s something profoundly different with them,” said Annie Feste, mother to Dane. “They’re still these teenagers who are disrespectful and make fart jokes, but there’s something so mature about them. They had to grow up that day.”

At Annunciation, younger students looked up to the eighth-graders. In turn, eighth-graders felt they had to stay stoic, protecting younger kids from mirroring their fragile emotions.

At home was when emotions spilled out. Some kids insisted on new home security systems or room-darkening shades. When Ben Grogg went to his uncle’s college graduation, his mother spotted him noting where all the exits were.

“He was always so sweet and hopeful, and now, not like his light has dimmed, but he sees the world can be bad,” said his mother, Katie Grogg. “You can’t tell him it’s going to be fine, because he knows it won’t.”

Some Annunciation students said they will miss the people but not the place, since the church building next door to the school reminded them of something awful. Others said they wanted another year in Annunciation’s bubble. Some are deeply proud of Annunciation, others anxious for a fresh start.

“There will be times they’ll want to be together, and there will be times when they say, ‘Gosh, I just want to move on from this,’” said Heidi Foley, Holy Angels’ principal. “Everything will be fine until it isn’t. Until you’re walking this walk, you don’t know what it’s like.”

Navigating tragedy together

In the moments after semiautomatic gunfire sprayed into church, Endre Gunter hid under a pew and shielded his first-grade buddy. One thought flashed through his mind: I’m only going to live until 13.

Two bullets from the gunman’s AR-15 had torn into the left side of Endre’s stomach. In the ambulance, he felt light-headed, but he tried to calm the 6-year-old boy with the lacerated spleen who was in the ambulance with him.

As a Hennepin Healthcare anesthesiologist sedated him for surgery, Endre asked doctors to pray with him. He thought he’d never wake up. “I kind of accepted dying — ‘dang,’” he said later. Doctors told his parents they didn’t know if he’d survive the internal bleeding.

During his four-hour surgery, doctors pulled out Endre’s intestines to remove shrapnel. A surgeon told the family he’d never seen this before: the bullets missed anything vital. Doctors closed him up with 48 staples in a long, winding scar.

Endre woke up that afternoon in the hospital, groggy. He saw his parents and sister bedside. He was stunned that he’d lived. And overjoyed.

“The only time I felt joy was when I woke up,” Endre said. “Then it became real life.”

Real life was four nights in the hospital with doctors monitoring his liver and lungs. Then came a month in bed at home. Slowly, he gained strength: Walk to the front door. Walk down the sidewalk. The staples came out in late October. In November, he went back to Annunciation, the final injured student to return.

Emotions lingered. Some nights, Endre awoke screaming from nightmares. He covered his bedroom windows with stacks of books so no light seeped in. Loud noises made him jumpy. He thought about death more than any 14-year-old should.

But still, the joy.

Under that church pew, Endre’s longtime friend Charlie Cron kept talking to him: Keep breathing, you’re going to be OK.

“Thinking of separating these friends, it’s like separating siblings,” said Danielle Gunter, Endre’s mother. “They have each other, people who understand them in ways even parents can’t understand.”

A shooting of hundreds of children praying in church could be the ultimate test of faith. How could a loving God let such a thing happen? Why were some kids killed while others survived? What was God’s will versus free will?

Eighth-graders worked through those questions together. “Even though this happened,” Owen Mueller reflected, “faith has helped the healing. Knowing God is just there.”

It’s a frequent refrain among students, teachers and parents at Annunciation.

In the hospital, Endre’s mom fell to her knees: God, please, don’t take my boy. Now, mother and son pray every single day.

All summer, she watched Endre and his Annunciation boys roll together nonstop: fishing, playing video games, riding bikes. With time passing, the soon-to-be ninth graders find themselves talking about Aug. 27 less and less.

“But it’s still just right under his skin,” said Jenny Kearney, mother to Liam Deutz. “I don’t know if it’s ever going away.”

On a recent morning, Endre and 18 Annunciation friends walked into their new high school. It was freshman orientation: get a locker code, visit the chapel, take school photos.

Holy Angels assigned the same guidance counselor to all the Annunciation students. That counselor has met individually with Annunciation families, knowing each student’s journey is unique. Parents fretted, uncertain of the difference between a trauma red flag and 14-year-old kids being 14-year-old kids. But the 14-year-old kids didn’t fret.

A few days later, Endre tugged on a practice jersey and a helmet and trotted onto Holy Angels’ football field for the first day of practice. Miraculously, doctors said he was fully cleared. Endre dreams of playing in the NFL: At 14, he’s a 6′2″, 270-pound nose tackle, playing on Holy Angels’ varsity team as a freshman. If not a football player, then he’ll be a lawyer.

On the far side of the field, Endre spotted a few Annunciation buddies with the wide receivers and tight ends. Coaches already had him pegged as a hard worker, a tough kid, a quiet leader.

“Right side of the line, left foot back!” the offensive line coach yelled.

The campus buzzed. The soccer team was practicing on an adjacent field, the volleyball team inside. School would start in a few days, a new beginning for these Annunciation kids.

Endre, sweat dripping off his forehead, lined up in a three-point stance. The coach clapped his hands, and the boy, less than a year from being on the brink of death, burst forward, sweeping around the offensive line and toward the running back. It was the first day of practice, though, so Endre didn’t get to do his favorite part of football, laying down a big hit.

He pulled off his helmet, strode toward the water cooler on the sideline and smiled.

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