Lock Down

As they huddled in locked-down classrooms waiting for a nightmarish shooting to end Monday, Chardon High School students did what teenagers everywhere do when they’re looking for answers: They texted, tweeted, phoned and Facebooked. – USA Today

They sat at the back of the class under a large glass window. The lights were off and their teacher was sitting with his legs crossed, his eyes closed, and his head resting on his folded hands.

“There were two shooters,” one said.

“Three dead.”

The teacher raised his head and opened his eyes.

“Guys,” he said. “That’s just making things worse. We don’t know anything right now. It could just be a drill.”

“We heard shots,” one of the students said.

“We heard noises.”

“Noises that sounded like gunshots.”

The room fell silent as they pondered the implications of a shooting.

“Who do you think it was?”

“Don’t answer that,” the teacher said. “Don’t think about it. How are you going to feel walking into one of your classmates tomorrow after you’ve deemed them a murder. No one at this school, as far as we know, is capable of this.”

“Someone is,” a student said.

A boy on the end started crying softly into his sleeve. The room was filled with the sound of his whimper and the students pulled out their phones to text anyone they could on the outside.

“Where are you?” “What’s happening?” “Are we safe?” “Help.”

A light from a siren entered the room which filled the students with both hope and despair. Help had come. Help needed to come.

The students edged their heads above the ledge of the window and watched as police cars piled into the parking lot. The cars sat at the edge of the grass next to a long cement walkway that led to the front of the school.

A teacher was standing at the door waving his arms.

“What’s going on?”

They watched as a group of police officers quickly made their way across the grass. They were followed by two men and a long white stretcher.

“Someone’s dead,” the crying student said.

“We don’t know that.”

“It’s not a drill.”

The people disappeared into the building and the students sat back down below the window. The lights from the sirens continued to paint the far wall and the sobbing from the child at the end intensified.

“They’re dead,” he said. “Someone’s dead. These shooters always kill themselves because they can’t face the consequences. Two at least. Maybe more. They’re dead.”

He rocked back in forth on the ground clutching his knees. One of the girls rubbed his back and he shook his head.

“Dead,” he said.

They sat in the darkness for another two hours as the slow sad scene passed by outside. They watched as five stretchers made their way down the long cement walkway to the school entrance. They listened to an announcement over the school speakers telling everyone to stay calm. They sat in silence as a man with an automatic weapon and a bullet proof vest entered the room to see if everyone was OK.

“Did you catch them?” someone asked.

“Who was it?”

“Was anyone killed?”

The man with the gun eyed the scared faces against the wall.

“It’s over,”  he said. “It’s over.”