The east wing of the school was almost silent at nine forty-three on the Friday before winter break. Mr. Corleone was giving his students a final exam on the Vietnam War in room 12A. Elizabeth Jennings was playing instrumental versions of Christmas songs in the art room. The music had lulled her students into quietly working on their watercolor paintings as they skimmed through their Snapchat and Instagram feeds on the phones that rested on their tables. The sign language class in the pocket-sized auditorium at the end of the hall was full of students moving their hands but not their mouths as they performed Twas the Night Before Christmas for a unit grade, and the building’s security guard was sitting in an empty teacher’s lounge with his feet up on a chair, ordering last minute Christmas gifts for his wife with the Amazon app on his phone.
The first bullet shattered the stained glass window above the door at the end of the wing (the one donated by the class of 2011 in memory of Vice Principal Kirshner) and the next spray of bullets pierced the soft wall of the cork board, ripping posters and sending bits of holiday glitter and cheer into the air like puffs of fake snow.
The first students who heard the crack of glass looked at one another in confusion. It sounded like nothing more than bottle caps or loud doors banging against walls, but it punctured the quiet morning like the eerie warning calls of crows in a clear sky.
When the next round of bullets hit the walls and doors of the east wing, Mr. Corleone held up a hand and stood up from the chair behind his desk. “Put your pens and pencils down,” he said calmly. “I’m not sure what that is, but it doesn’t sound right.” The juniors in his history class looked around, pencils poised over their papers, eyes wide with surprise.
At nine forty-five, a scream from the end of the hallway alerted everyone that something definitely wasn’t right. The sign language teacher had stepped into the hall to see what the ruckus was about, and the vision that greeted her there had first paralyzed her with fear, and next nearly strangled her with the scream that forced its way up and out of her throat. Right on the tail of her animal-like howling came another spray of bullets, this one meant to tell the world that the time had come. The sign language teacher found her wits and pulled the door to the auditorium closed, locking and barricading the door from the inside.
Several of the classrooms had chosen to ignore the commotion, but the minute the sign language teacher locked herself and her students safely inside, she picked up the phone and made a panicked call to the office.
“Teachers,” came a steady voice over the intercom system. “We are in a lockdown situation. Please immediately usher all students in the hall into your classrooms, lock your doors, and commence with lockdown procedures. We will be in lockdown until further notice.” The deep voice echoed through the empty halls, the heavy words bouncing off the shiny linoleum like rubber balls.
Teachers all up and down the east wing scurried to lock their doors to the outside, quickly scanning the hallway for stray students to collect. What they found instead was much more terrifying: a stray student, indeed, but one armed with the intent to do bodily harm.
“Blake!” Miss Jennings said sharply, inhaling when she spotted him in a black leather coat that nearly swept the floor with its wide tails. The look in his eyes reminded her of the fall semester he’d spent in her class as a sophomore, sitting near the window and sharpening his colored pencils with his fingernails despite her many offers of a handheld sharpener. Their eyes locked now in the east wing--hers big and frightened; his narrowed and focused--and without another word, Elizabeth Jennings pulled her classroom door closed and locked it, dropping the blinds and shutting off the lights as she motioned for her students to duck quietly under their tables. She’d forgotten to turn off Pandora, and I’ll Be Home for Christmas filled the silent room from the speakers on her desk.
Blake Schiller paused in front of Miss Jennings’ room, his large frame outlined against the bright hallway beyond her door. The entire class held its collective breath, and Amy Underwood bit her own hand until her teeth pierced the skin, so afraid was she of making a noise that would invite Blake into the room.
His figure moved outside the door as he raised a gun and tapped it against the thick, reinforced window of room 13B. “I want Daniel Girch,” his voice boomed, the gun tapping the window again. “If Daniel is in there, I demand that you send him out now.”
Miss Jennings looked as afraid as her students felt, but her wild eyes swept the room with purpose. She took in the faces of each and every pupil in her care. No Daniel Girch. Not that she’d expected to find him there--he was in her fifth period, not her second--but just to be on the safe side, she’d checked.
“Daniel is not here, Blake,” Miss Jennings said loudly. Keeping her voice steady and firm was a balancing act that she couldn’t keep up for long, and everyone in the room knew it. “I don’t have him in class in the mornings, Blake.” She said his name again for good measure, hoping that by reminding him that they knew one another personally, she might be insuring her own safety and that of her students.
“Look him up, Jennings!” Blake Schiller demanded, banging against the window with his gun again. “If you don’t look up his class right now, I swear to God I’ll blow the door off and come after every single person in that room.”
“Blake!” Elizabeth Jennings shouted. “Don’t do that.” Her hands shook as she stood up from her crouching position near the whiteboard at the front of the room. She held a finger to her lips as she tiptoed over to her desk. “I’m looking right now,” she called in the direction of the door. The students watched one another with shock and disbelief--was Miss Jennings really going to tell some psycho where Daniel Girch was right now? Was she going to give up one kid just to save the rest of them?
To Elizabeth Jennings it was much more complicated than that. She had no doubt that Blake might bust down the door and do harm to all of them. Most of his drawings during his tenth grade year had been dark and gothic, and a few had warranted a walk down to the school psychologist’s office to find out whether his intricate drawings of decapitated babies being eaten by two-headed beasts were a cry for help or grounds for a parent meeting. So his threats now held real power for her, and she tried to steady her hand enough to move the computer mouse next to her keyboard.
But would she really look up Daniel Girch’s schedule and shout the room number for his second period through the door? She didn’t think so. Maybe she should just look up Blake instead and use her classroom phone to call the contact number for his parents. Maybe getting Mr. or Mrs. Schiller on the phone would work. But what good would that do? Her mind raced as she tried to think of a move that wouldn’t endanger anyone’s life. Sending Blake to the wrong classroom would inflame him and could potentially put everyone in that room at risk.
“Think, Liz,” she muttered to herself as she tapped at the keyboard. Amy Underwood whimpered beneath the table closest to her desk and Elizabeth looked down at her. Without realizing she’d even done it, she pulled up Daniel Girch’s profile. His dark eyes looked back at her from the center of a smooth, handsome face. He’d worn a blue shirt on picture day, and his thick, shiny brown hair fell over his forehead casually like he’d just come in from an afternoon on a boat. Daniel was a good kid--smart, kept to himself, had a few friends--but there was a tangible air of sadness about him that Elizabeth had felt keenly the year he’d taken her art class, and she’d seen it in his eyes every time she passed him in the hall and he’d nodded at her in recognition.
“He’s in room 15A,” she shouted at the door without hesitation. “Daniel Girch has English second period.” There. It was out. If Blake had beef with Daniel, then let them handle it and keep her and her innocent students out of it. It felt...not right--not like getting the correct answer on a test--but more like the best choice out of a bunch of terrible options.
Elizabeth Jennings fell to her knees and started to weep.