196 Minutes

At 1:22 p.m., her phone buzzed. Once. A single vibration in the pocket of her apron—brief, polite. The kind of alert that usually meant a school delay or a low lunch balance. She didn't check it right away. There were eight two-year-olds in the classroom. One adult. She was the adult. There was no stepping out.

Her heart thumped irregularly as she wiped yogurt from a small chin. This was the third day this week she'd been alone with the class. Breaks had become theoretical. Even bathroom visits required strategic planning.

The lullaby loop played quietly from the speaker. A child with yogurt on her sleeve stared at her solemnly. Another balanced a block on his forehead and waited to be noticed. She felt the phone against her hip like something alive.

Then, in a quiet moment near the sink, she read the screen:

ALERT: INCIDENT AT HIGH SCHOOL – CHECK EMAIL FOR UPDATES.

That was all. No explanation. No voice. No call. Blood rushed in her ears as she moved to the classroom computer while the kids settled for nap. Her fingers trembled slightly on the keyboard, betraying the calm she forced into her face.

The email was waiting.

A bomb threat has been reported. This is being taken seriously. All students are being evacuated via school bus to First Baptist Church. Please watch your email for updates.

She read it three times, her vision blurring at the edges. Her son, Alex, should have been in third block.

Her stomach plummeted. Was today red day or white day? Which third block? Did he have English? Was he at school? She couldn't remember. The schedules blended. The dates tangled in her mind. She pressed her palm against the desk to steady herself, breath catching in her throat as she stared at the wall clock.

Her phone buzzed again.

Alex: We're on the bus from JROTC. Didn't even stop at school. Heading straight to the church.

JROTC was at the other high school—seven miles away, near the Air Force base. That meant he had his backpack. His phone. He wasn't caught in the evacuation. She exhaled, only then realizing she'd been holding her breath.

Alex: I'm fine.

Mom: Are your friends with you?

Alex: Yeah, some. I'm on the bus with Nathan, Trevor, Logan, Tristan, Caleb, Ryan Brisbane.

She felt a small wave of relief crack through the tightness in her chest. Names. Checkmarks. Her mental list shortened. But what about the others? The ones whose mothers she knew from soccer season and birthday parties. The ones whose allergies she remembered. The ones who'd slept on her living room floor during weekend gaming marathons.

Mom: I'm stuck at work, but I'm going to text Grandma to loop her in. You can text her too.

She opened a new thread, fingers slipping twice on the glass screen.

Mom to Grandma: Don't freak out. Alex and several of his friends have already texted and are fine. They're at the church. Don't panic when you see it on Facebook—but it's real. I'm stuck at work, but keep by your phone and keep watching.

Alex: No one really knows what's happening. Nerves are super high.

Alex: We just got here. The church.

Alex: Not everyone's here yet. Some kids were at vo-tech. It's kinda chaos.

A toddler tugged on her pant leg. She smiled automatically, the expression a mask that felt alien on her face. She filled a cup with water, handed it off. Checked the clock. Ten minutes had passed since the alert. It felt like hours.

"Nap time," she sang out, her voice falsely cheerful as she dimmed the lights. Inside, she was calculating outcomes, measuring distances between buildings, remembering the school's layout from parent-teacher conferences. Where would a bomb do the most damage? The cafeteria? The gym? How many kids would be in each location? Stop it, she told herself. Stop.

Facebook was faster than the school. A few of the teachers were in moms’ groups. They posted that students had left everything behind and evacuated quickly—backpacks, phones, medicine. Almost no one had their cell phones. She realized suddenly: JROTC was about 25 kids. That was probably most of the working phones in a church full of 1,300 students.

Her heart rate spiked again. 1,300 kids. Only a handful with communication.

The school's next email stayed professional: calm, procedural.

All is well. Everyone has been accounted for. Local police are on-site. We do not yet have a timeline for reunification, but we will share one as soon as we do. Roads are closed on Pride Parkway and Prowl Road. Avoid the area around the high school. No one will be permitted through.

The words rang hollow. If all was well, they'd be in classrooms. If all was well, they wouldn't be evacuated. She wouldn't be standing in a darkened daycare room with her insides churning while toddlers slept around her.

Alex: They're trying to feed us. Ladies from the church. But there's not enough.

Alex: I have Doritos. I'll just eat those.

She was sure the church ladies were doing all they could to help the frantic kids. She was also sure it was hard to predict how much high schoolers could eat. Anyone inexperienced wouldn’t be able to plan for it on the fly.

The toddlers were getting settled to nap, one by one. She wiped noses. Changed a diaper. Checked her phone again. Her hands performed the familiar motions while her mind raced seven miles away to a church filled with teenagers who didn't know what was happening.

Alex: Mr. Ray is playing piano in the auditorium. Some of the kids are singing with him. That group seems calm enough.

Alex: Others are freaking out. Jessica threw up in the bathroom.

He didn't say where he was sitting. It didn’t matter. Students weren’t in assigned places. They were drifting toward the adults they recognized, the ones they felt safe with. If a student liked their Spanish teacher, they went to her. If their science teacher scared them, they avoided that room. It wasn't organized. It was instinct.

Some dropped into rooms and stayed. Others wandered the halls, aimless, waiting to find someone who looked familiar. Kids slightly panicked, unsure where to go, unsure who to ask, no way to call home. The church wasn't built for this kind of weight.

Alex: Some of the teachers are teaching whatever they want. Random stuff. We're sitting in rooms like auditing college classes.

Alex: Girls are crying. Nevaeh's having a panic attack. I don't know what to do.

Mom: Are you still with your group? Are your friends okay?

Alex: Yeah. Still with them. Most of us are together.

Alex: No one has their phones. It's bad. The kids who were in school didn't get to bring anything. I'm one of the only ones who can text.

Then came another.

Alex: Mom, I'm going to pass my phone down the hallway so that everyone can send a text to their moms. I'll talk to you when I get my phone back.

She sat at her desk, watching a child stack blocks and knock them over. Her heart was sitting somewhere in a church hallway, passed hand to hand like something fragile.

She sent a quick text to Alex: Love you.

The reply came a minute later. Not from Alex, she guessed, but from whoever had the phone.

Unknown: I'll tell him.

She stared at it. Short, steady. Just enough to mean: still okay. But who was it? Which mother was waiting? Which child was trying to reach home? She felt the weight of all those severed connections, all those mothers staring at silent phones, all those kids wondering if anyone knew where they were.

Another email.

The Air Force will be sweeping the school with bomb-sniffing dogs. No pickups until the all-clear. Thank you for your patience.

No one said how long. Or what they were supposed to do without food, phones, or medicine. Or when they might see their parents again.

She wanted to scream at the faceless sender of those emails. All is not well. Nothing about this is well.

She swept between nap mats with practiced quiet, then slammed the broom down harder than necessary—bristles hitting the floor in a silent burst of fury no one heard but her.

Alex: Gave it to Rodney. He needed to check on his siblings. Didn't want to. But I had to.

She knew Rodney was one of the football players. Known for pushing boundaries, not quite bad, but not quite harmless. The kind of kid who always hovered on the edge of trouble without fully falling in. Earlier that year, he and Alex had gotten into a fistfight. Alex had been working his lifeguard shift at the city pool. Rodney and a few of his friends broke the rules—nothing major, but enough that Alex had to deal with it. The fallout spilled into school. Words turned to shoves. Shoves turned into fists. Thursday School for both of them. They hadn't spoken since.

Now Rodney was passing around Alex’s phone. His siblings rode the middle and elementary school buses, and Rodney would've been the one to meet them at home—only this day, Rodney wasn’t home. He was locked in a church with a thousand other kids and no way to reach anyone.

She wondered how that conversation had gone. The reluctant approach. The awkward request. The hesitation before handing over something valuable to someone who’d hit you months before. She imagined the tense silence between them. The way neither would look the other in the eye.

They weren’t friends. But this changed something. That moment—Rodney asking, Alex handing it over—it rewired something in both of them. There was a kind of silent acknowledgment. Mutual respect. They never had problems again, but they never became friends either. Some bridges, once damaged, never fully mend.

Alex: Mom, there are girls on their periods. They have nothing. What do I do?

She felt her cheeks flush with a mixture of pride and worry. Pride that he’d ask. Worry that he had to. She texted back: toilet paper. Paper towels. Find a female teacher. He found Mrs. Ray. She handled it. But for how many girls? With what supplies? For how long? The church wasn’t prepared for this. No one was.

2:35 p.m. came and went. Official dismissal. Still no release. She checked her watch compulsively, counting the minutes, picturing the church’s overcrowded rooms growing more and more tense.

Alex: We've been here forever. No one knows when we can leave.

Alex: My friends have jobs. They can't call in. Can you call for us?

Several of the kids—some she’d never even met—were panicked about missing work. But Ryan, who they all called Diabetes, was especially tense. He’d been diagnosed with Type 1 in fifth grade and told everyone to just call him Diabetes—part joke, part shortcut, because there were two Ryans in the group. It stuck.

Everyone knew his family struggled. His shift at Zaxby's wasn’t for gas money or video games—it meant groceries, bills, medicine. Missing work could mean missing dinner. And he knew it.

She knew the managers would understand. But Diabetes didn’t. And because he didn’t, Alex didn’t. She could feel them both carrying it—the bitter unfairness that some kids had to worry about holding their families together while also wondering if their school was about to explode.

She called them. Zaxby's. Walmart. Culver’s. They already knew. Of course they did. But she called anyway. It was something she could do. Something tangible in a day that felt increasingly surreal. Her hands shook as she explained to each manager. Yes, they're at the church. No, they don't know when they'll be released. Yes, these are good kids.

Finally, 196 minutes after the first alert:

You may now pick up your child at the church. All belongings, including vehicles, will remain at the school until tomorrow.

She hadn’t realized how many kids didn’t just need their phones. They needed house keys. Insulin. Tampons. Antidepressants. Inhalers. EpiPens. The medications and necessities they’d been told, over and over, to keep with them at all times. The things now locked behind closed doors while dogs sniffed through empty hallways.

Alex: Gavin can't get in his house. His keys are in his locker.

Alex: We’ll figure it out.

They figured it out. Passed around phones. Found floor space. Made plans. Became adults in the gaps where adults had failed them.

She drove to the church, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. The parking lot was a tangle of cars, parents double-parked and frantic. The foyer echoed with voices—some relieved, others angry. The principal checked IDs like someone might try to steal a teenager in the chaos. As if kidnappers were the threat they should’ve been worried about today.

Twenty minutes passed before she saw Alex. His hair was mussed. His eyes looked tired. Older.

“You okay?” she asked, searching his face.

“Yeah,” he said, sliding into the seat. “It was just some writing on a bathroom wall. That’s what the cops said.”

“All this for bathroom graffiti?” The words came out sharper than she intended, bitter with the taste of three hours’ fear.

“Apparently.” He looked back at the church, shoulders tight. “Can Gavin come over? He’s stuck.”

She nodded. “Grab him.”

That night, she stayed in the kitchen while the boys played video games in the living room. She could hear them talking, voices subdued. Not the usual teenage chaos. Something quieter. More careful.

“I passed my phone to like so many people,” Alex was saying. “Nevaeh was freaking out. Mr. Ray started playing piano to distract everyone. Mrs. Ray helped with the period stuff. It was kind of insane.”

Gavin didn’t say anything for a while. He was sitting on the floor, half-focused on the game, his back against the couch.

“I kept thinking someone was going to come in and tell us something,” he said eventually. “But they didn’t. We just waited. Walked around. Found people.”

Alex nodded. “Yeah. It felt like we were supposed to be doing something official. But nothing official happened. It was just us and the teachers we already knew.”

Gavin didn’t look over. “You think we’ll ever know what actually happened?”

“Nope,” Alex said. “But I don’t think it matters.”

“It does matter,” Gavin said quietly.

It wasn’t profound. It wasn’t polished. It was just tired honesty. And she stayed in the kitchen, listening, letting it be enough. Letting them process in their own way while her own hands still trembled slightly as she loaded the dishwasher.

Later, she checked her email. The superintendent’s message was already in her inbox.

We are proud of how our students conducted themselves today. This incident has proven the effectiveness of our emergency protocols…

She closed the laptop with more force than necessary. Her throat burned.

No follow-up email came. No apology. No explanation. No mention of backpacks, or insulin, or kids crying in a church hallway with no one to call. No acknowledgment of the fear that had settled into bones, the trust that had fractured.

Nothing happened.

The kids were safe.

Nothing happened.

No one helped them.

Nothing happened during 196 minutes.

Except everything did.

“Did anyone say anything about it?” she asked the next day.

He shrugged. “Not really. Just, you know, jokes.”

“Jokes?”

“Dark ones.” He didn’t elaborate.

She watched him finish his dinner, the careful way he rinsed his plate. She thought about calling the school. Demanding something. Answers. Acknowledgment. Anything.

But what would she say? That her son was fine, but different? That something had shifted in ways too subtle to name? That she still woke at night, heart racing, imagining him trapped somewhere she couldn’t reach?

In the end, she said nothing. Did nothing.

Like everyone else.