"Oh my gosh, Hi Alyssa. I just wanted to make sure you and all of your friends are okay."
Tali Cohn re-reads that text to a friend she'll never receive a reply from again.
The 15-year-old Cobb County teen sent the message to her friend Alyssa Alhadeff, after finding out a gunman opened fire at a Florida high school, the same one Alhadeff attends.
“She just went to school like any normal day and she just like never came home,” she said.
Cohn met Alhadeff last year during a three-week Jewish summer camp in Cleveland, Georgia. Cohn said they became fast friends.
"I'd say I was one of her first and closest friends at camp," Cohn recalled. "She always put a smile on my face."
Both were incoming high school freshman.
“It’s just nice to have someone so close especially at camp when you’re doing all these super fun activities, I get to share that with them,” Cohn said.
After camp, Cohn and Alhadeff stayed in touch, and were excited to see each other again this summer.
Until tragedy.
On Wednesday afternoon, gunfire erupted at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where Alhadeff lived. It was later that evening, Cohn learned her best friend from camp was one of the 17 shot to death by a gunman. Cohn says another friend from camp was at the school during the shooting. Luckily, he survived.
PHOTOS: Deadly Florida high school shooting
Cohn remembered praying that night Alhadeff would make it. When she woke up, she learned her friend did not.
"Her mom had posted something on Facebook this morning talking about, she lost her daughter," she described. “It was just scary…she said she had just dropped her off at school like any normal day and her daughter never came back home.”
Two young girls, hoping for a lasting friendship that never had a chance see where what it could have been.
