Part 1

I've heard about these things happening on the news before. A big school shooting: seven killed, two injured, the shooter arrested, the incident plastered all over the news. We all feel terrible, wonder how that could have happened, when we're secretly glad it's not our personal tragedy. It didn't happen to our kids, not our friends, our families.

I never imagined it would happen to me. So you can probably imagine how surprised I was when it did.

Two years ago, my mother left my family. I live with my father. He's abusive and he's an alcoholic. He always has been, that's why my mother left. I don't blame her for leaving, but I hate her because she didn't take me with her. My father gets drunk regularly, and when I'm home, which I try not to be as much as possible, he tells me how useless I am, that I'm not good for anything, that I won't be anything, that I'm nothing, nobody. It hurts worse than the bruises on my wrists. I'd rather live on my own, but I need him. I hate to admit it, but I wouldn't be able to live by myself. So I just stay far away from him when I'm at home.

At school, I'm not the same as everyone else. I don't act like everyone else. I don't have any enemies, because I don't have any friends. I blend into the background. No one really sees me.

I sit in class, scribbling all over my notebooks. I don't doodle in the notebook margins. I draw intricate, big drawings on everything. I'm so bored I can barely think, like the air is molasses and I'm swimming sluggishly through it. The teacher - I don't remember his name - was going on about ancient civilizations that everyone but the historians have forgotten anyway, when a voice sounds over our heads, on the speaker system.

"Students and staff, there is a code red, repeat, code red. This is not a drill."

Code red means lockdown. Lockdown…means there's someone in the school.

At first, I don't feel anything.

Then the shock sets in like a splash of ice water. At the same time as everyone else, panic shoves itself into the midst of the shock, suffocating, smothering.

A girl screams. I see her near the front of the classroom and I recognize her. Carrie, a girl I've known since kindergarten and never talked to in my life. She is hushed immediately by the teacher, and just like that I know the teacher's name too. Brent. I had him for history last year, too, and I hadn't even remembered him.

He strides to the light switch, swiftly flips it off, closes the door firmly, and locks it with a key I hadn't even noticed he had been holding.

The room doused in darkness like a shroud, the entire class of thirty kids looks at each other, and I notice something odd in their faces - excitement. And then I realize that this is exciting for them. It's not terrifying at all. Every day is the same routine, get up in the morning, go to school, come home, sleep, never anything different. This is a deviation. This wasn't in the plan for them. And some of them like it.

I am not excited. I've had experience with what's real. I'm scared. Sweat trickles down my back, soaks through my shirt. It cools quickly and dampens the back of my clothing. I've never been in this kind of situation before, but it's all too real for me, and I'm certainly panicking.

Mr. Brent tells us to get on the ground, where we can't be seen by the intruder if they were to look in the room. It's been drilled into us and we obey. Years of drills apparently kick in then, and we shut up completely, settling down on the ground to wait it out. We wait.

I sit tucked in the corner, feet away from my bag and my desk and a pretense of normalcy. I don't talk, whisper, text, play games, read. I'm thinking about last night, my father, the blooming of fresh purple bruises, the stink of alcohol. I touch my wrist, press down hard on a bruise. I don't make a sound.

I remember him screaming at me, telling me nobody will remember me, nobody wants me, and I try not to believe him. I'd think about how my mother loved me, or so I'd thought, before she left me with him, and then I'd start to believe him again. And the cycle would continue, the cruel voices in my head convincing me more and more every time.

Every second that passes, my breath starts to come slower, the rapid pounding of my heartbeat fading from my eardrums, my mind calmer. Of course nothing's going to happen. I must have been crazy to think that it would. What are the chances that the intruder in the school would come into this classroom? And how would they get in anyway?

It must have been only ten minutes, although it seems to have been hours. When people start talking again, I don't move. The teacher silences them again, his face dead white. For a second, I wonder why he's so pale, because I can see the lack of colour far too clearly in the darkness of the room.

That's when I hear the footsteps, loud and echoing, right outside the classroom. I hear the doorknob turn, stop, turn again. A pause – all I can think is that every living being in this room is holding their breath, I swear to God – and then the girl I've known since we were five, Carrie Abbott, whimpers pitifully and as loudly as a clap of thunder.

And the door explodes.