It was supposed to be easy.
Music playing too loud.
Paper plates bending under cake and chips.
The kind of night where adults laugh at nothing and kids don’t want it to end.
No one remembers exactly when it changed.
Only that one second felt normal—and the next didn’t.
Survivors say the sound didn’t register at first.
Fireworks, maybe.
A car backfiring.
Then screaming.
People ran without knowing where they were going.
Hands grabbed fabric instead of hands—shirt collars, hoodie sleeves, anything that could pull a child close.
Someone ducked behind a car and realized they were kneeling in spilled juice and broken plastic cups.
Someone else stepped over toys that had been left where kids dropped them mid-game.
Balloons were still tied to the fence.
That part messes with people the most.
By the time the noise stopped, the house didn’t feel like a house anymore.
Just a structure.
Something hollowed out.
Now it’s wrapped in yellow tape, standing there like it’s holding its breath.
Neighbors say the quiet is worse than the chaos was.
Detectives move in and out, asking the same questions gently, then again more firmly.
Surveillance footage rewinds and pauses.
Witnesses struggle to explain moments their brains still refuse to organize.
Outside, candles begin to appear.
One turns into five.
Five into dozens.
Wax pools along the sidewalk where shell casings were found earlier.
Someone leaves a stuffed animal and immediately looks embarrassed, then angry at themselves for feeling that way.
Parents don’t talk much at the vigils.
They just stand close.
Arms locked around shoulders, children tucked in tight like the world might suddenly tilt again.
Everyone is asking the same question in different ways.
How does a birthday turn into this?
How does joy collapse so fast?
People say they don’t want it to fade into the news cycle.
They say it out loud, like saying it might stop it from happening.
Until answers come, Stockton is suspended in something thick and unfinished.
Fear.
Anger.
The kind of grief that doesn’t stay in one place.
