Every year they gather at the jetty here, teenage girls in matching black hoodies, their toes clinging to the edge of the rocks as the Pacific crashes into the shore below. They cling to each other, too, crying quiet tears into each other’s shoulders as they toss eight flowers apiece into the ocean. “Everything we do is for the eight,” Amalia Holguin says of their mantra, which, naturally, is also now a hashtag: #4The8 . Since Jan. 26, 2020, it’s a bond these eight girls have shouldered as much as they’ve shared. The flowers leave their hands, and they again become teammates, and family, in time.

Source: Los Angeles Times April 12, 2023 17:08 UTC