The Letter That Ended Lives

It is early Wednesday morning, and you wake up to the sounds of the mailman dropping off packages. You start to get ready for school. You put on your socks, shoes, and grab a toasted waffle on the way out the door. As you walk down to the bus stop, you grab the mail. You run back inside to leave the mail on the counter, and notice one letter is from your friend from school. You leave it there to read later and rush outside to hop on the bus to your private school. As you get there, you realize you forgot your social studies homework. You groan and tell your friend (who wrote the letter) you’ve forgotten it. Your friend tells you, in tears, that it's okay because you won’t need to turn it in anyways. The bell rings, and you walk to Chemistry while your friend heads to Home and Careers, as you wonder what your friend could have meant, and why he was crying. 

In Chemistry, your teacher states that you are starting a new unit based on student suggestions that students can place in the special suggestion box. Today, you are learning how to make paper mache volcanoes, but tomorrow you will begin the suggestion box unit. One student immediately raised his hand and asked to put a suggestion in the box. The teacher nods and the student walks past you confidently, sticky note in hand, and places a suggestion in. The teacher looks at you, daring you to question what this suggestion was. You shrug your shoulders and ask the student what he had put in. He immediately looked at you fiercely and stated he wanted to know how to make a smoke bomb. Your teacher states that that is an interesting idea, and your class can learn it now, as you have extra time before the end of class. During the lesson, you constantly glance over at the student who suggested this. He listens intently to the instruction, follows every step, and is very interested in what he is learning. You are slightly concerned, but feel that he could just be interested in the particular subject. Minutes later, the bell rings for the class to be ended. Before you leave, you notice that the student you have been paying attention to rushes out to the hall with a bulge in his jacket. 

You walk out to your locker, and seconds later you hear an announcement, stating that there is an emergency and you must report to the gymnasium. You start to walk over and notice your friend who was crying walking in, tears in their eyes, trying to signal you, although you could not figure out the message. You go and sit in one of the front row chairs in the gymnasium with other students. Twenty-three minutes go by, and students are becoming restless and confused about what is happening. Soon after, a smoke bomb goes off. Bullets start shooting everywhere. Kids all around you are starting to cry. You are in an absolute state of shock. The only thing you notice is your friend crawling on the ground over to you, grabbing you by the neck and dragging you under a pile of chairs. You then look down and notice you have been shot in the leg. Your friend immediately starts comforting you so you do not make any noise to whoever is shooting at you. You start to think rationally, and your friend begins wrapping a bandage around your wound. He tells you that it is only a small wound, and you will be okay until he can get you to the hospital. You ask him who is shooting at you, but as soon as you ask it, it all clicks. The smoke bombs. The rushing out of class. The bulge in his jacket. It’s the student from Chemistry class. He is shooting you. He wants to kill you and your fellow students. 

How will you get out of this? Your friend has a plan. He tells you that this chair barricade will shield you from the shooter, so you can escape and call the police. He tells you that he will go first and try to get the police. You watch him start crawling over, past the barricade, to the door. He jiggles the handle, then realizes that it's locked. He jiggles it a few times, but he forgot to look behind his shoulder. The shooter is right behind him and shot him in the chest immediately. You wail out a scream of terror, and the shooter whips around looking for the screamer. You hide behind another chair you found, and try to remain silent. The shooter heads back to the front, talking to terrified students, threatening to hurt or even kill them. You frantically try to help other students hide behind the barricade, and you notice a relatively hidden back door to the auditorium. You tell the other students to distract the shooter if he begins to look around for you. They agree, and you start to head out. 

You make it to the door with help from fellow students and jiggle the handle. It’s unlocked! You run out of the class in absolute pain due to your leg, and try to break through the barricaded door at the entrance of the school. You rush to the janitor's closet and find a hammer. You smash out the nearest window and jump through, making yourself bleed even more in the process as glass shards cut you. You limp out to your car and drive over to the nearest police station. As you get there, the police notice your wound and immediately rush you to the hospital. Once you are there, you report on what is happening, and the officers head out to save the lives of anyone who is left after the damage already caused. They leave you a radio to listen in on the report. 2,458 hurt, 27 dead, including your friend, who died trying to escape and save others. Only 53 were okay. As the police arrived at the scene, the shooter pointed a gun to his chin and shot himself. Your mother rushes in the next hour and breaks down crying at the sight of your leg. She starts saying how it is her fault, how she should have known this would have happened, how she is not a good mother. You tell her no one could have imagined this to happen, and you break down crying together.

You are now fully healed, and you are cleared to head home. Your mom hands you all the mail she has received in the time you were in the hospital. One letter intrigues you the most- the letter from your friend you never read the day of the shooting. You open it up- and stop in your tracks. It explains what was about to happen that day, that the shooter was his cousin who was severely depressed and planning to kill himself. He told you to stay home and he would come to get you after he had helped the fellow students escape. He also told you that if you went to the student's house and talked to him, maybe he would call it off. You start to understand why someone was driven into this. Severely depressed and lonely people can do crazy things. This person had no one. If you had read this before that dreaded day, you could have saved the lives of many. You live with regret for the rest of your life. 

Authors Note: school shootings are a devastating way to murder innocent lives, and it needs to be considered more and we need to raise more awareness!