TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30

Greetings from the pit in my stomach.

This day has been lurking on the horizon

like a distant hurricane

threatening the coast where my heart

has made its home.

It’s 1:30pm and I’m sitting in Mrs. Fisher’s class.

Her phone rings, the mostly ignored thing that sits on her desk.

She answers it, and I already know even before her eyes

travel across the classroom to my face.

Yes, she is, she says. And Yes, I will.

She hangs up.

Alicia, she says. The Colonel would like to see you in his class.

And she doesn’t bat an eye, and neither does anyone else.

Why would they?

He is a well-hidden wolf.

When I don’t move, she blinks, stares

Did you hear me?

In the hallway, the air

sticks in my lungs like tar.

I pass an emergency exit and something inside me considers

lunging through, triggering the alarm

that will make the ceilings rain and send

my peers out into the first cold day of fall.

But Principal Warren is there and asking if I have a hall pass

and I don’t, but I tell him the Colonel sent for me

and all he says is

Well, don’t keep him waiting.