Part 4

Sage peered past heads and around the divider as her teacher moved across the classroom like he was evading a firing line. Pressing his back to the far wall, he created a slit in the blinds and peeked out. An eternity later, he stepped from the wall and flipped the lock.

The door pushed open, sending Mr. Stelter stumbling back. Two police officers swept into the room, but they weren’t dressed as the beat officers Sage was used to seeing around town. They must have been seven feet tall and forged from iron, with helmets and face shields obscuring their identity and making them look like they were going to war.

Sage drove herself backward into the bookcase. Her heart tried to leap from her chest and make a last-ditch run for it. The officers loomed over them with cannons rather than guns.

“Put your hands where we can see them.”

Sage’s hands flew over her head. Her breath stuck in her throat while her heart drummed like a jackhammer. The gun was the only thing in the room and it stared into her soul.

“Sit down!”

She was sitting. She didn’t know what he meant.

“Phones down.”

She had no idea where her phone was. She looked up at her hands, high over her head. No phone.

“Hands where we can see them. Now!”

She stuck her hands as high as she could, straining with every finger to touch the ceiling.

One officer swept through the students like a dog on the scent, and then he was on Stelter in the far corner while the other officer looked around the classroom.

“Clear.”

And then they were gone. Mr. Stelter rushed to the door and turned the lock.

Sage’s lungs had seized and her body begged for oxygen. She gulped but could not find air. The room tilted and spun and waves of nothing and everything rushed over her.

“Sage.”

A hand on her arm burned and she pulled back. Penelope took her hand and squeezed. “We’ll be okay, Sage. The police are going to figure this out.”

All around her, kids cowered with tear-streaked faces or sat solid like rocks. A stench wafted over Sage and she spied vomit down Carter’s shirt and staining his jeans. A beam of sunlight broke through the slits of the blinds and lit the puddle like a spotlight.

“Why is there sun?” Sage said.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Didn’t the sun set already?”

“Sage, it’s not even five in the afternoon.”

Sage smelled the vomit and swallowed her own.

A familiar buzzing, quiet but close, filled her ears. She looked down at her phone, abandoned a foot away. Rhett’s image filled the screen as her phone trembled again.

Sage snatched her phone and, cradling it in her hands, opened the message.

This is ridiculous. It’s another stupid drill they figured would scare us by having it at the end of the day.

Sage stared at the message. The police. The pictures on the news. The hours… or minutes… that had passed. Sage shook her head and typed out a response.

Police were in my class with guns. It’s not a drill. Didn’t you see that pic of the kid in the hospital that’s all over social media?

That was Cade from his car accident last year. Did you really believe that was from today?

Sage found the picture from Mira and studied the kid on the stretcher. Looked again for bullet holes. Tried to find where the blood was coming from.

Sage sucked back the fresh crop of tears that her brother had summoned. She closed her eyes and steadied her breath.

Soft whimpers drifted through the air. Someone shifted on the floor and their shoe squeaked the linoleum. A low voice outside. The sound of a locker closing.

She opened her eyes. Rhett is alive.

She filled her lungs with air. He’s right. I’m overreacting. It’s a weird drill.

She looked again at Carter, covered in his own stomach contents.