I break for the doors and then trip, my body splashing into the floor like a spilled tray as a ringing torpedoes through my ears.

It’s silent for a moment. Someone bursts from a classroom and tears down the hallway. Screams chase him from the door.

BANG!

It’s empty and then overcrowded all at once. Kids tumble like zombies from classrooms, bumping into each other or falling down. I find my feet and fall against the lockers. Someone trips and falls beside me, books splattering out of her hands. I rush out to help her and a hand yanks me by the jacket and throws me into the lockers. “MOVE!”

Chad. Barreling like an ogre down the hallway, leaving us in the dust.

We’ve rehearsed the steps a million times. Run. Hide. Fight. But I can’t move.

A hand meets my arm, sending my heart into my windpipe.

“Jake!” screams a voice. “We have to go!”

A girl moves past me. I follow her hair through the chaos. My wits blur across the ties and vests spilling out like ants from a disturbed hill, hands grabbing and heads bumping into backs. Our ceilings are the kind with panels that push back. I could climb on someone’s shoulders, jump into the ceiling, and hide.

“Bethany?” someone screams. “BETHANY!”

Shuffling and panic, everyone screaming, running this way and that, only half-certain they’re here. Kids frantically jabbing at their phones, fingers shaking, silencing them? Texting their final goodbyes?

At the end of the hall, my hands crash into the push handle of the front doors. I fly into the sunlight, plain sense returning to me in the shuffle down the steps. Tree branches sway like veins ripped from their connectors, but they’re shielding a bright sun, and I’m underneath it—not trapped in that horrible school, not a victim of the shooter.

I’m alive. I’ll make it home.

It’s silent, and still, and cold. No police at the carpool lane. No SWAT team in the front yard. Everyone who escaped is just . . . standing around. Catching their breath with their hands on their knees, laughing, comforting their friends. As if the whole thing is already over . . . or never happened?

Principal Ross and Vice Principal Davis are standing together—one plump and one thin—as we panic and pour out. They’re out of the way, but close to the school, as if there’s no real danger.

Because there isn’t. It was just a drill.

Jake

The administration brings us into the auditorium for an assembly when it’s over. They form a military line on the stage, with our janitor, Mr. Dao, standing off to the side. Principal Ross asks us to applaud Mr. Dao for how subtly he placed hidden speakers down the hallways and then operated the noise.