Part 5

Sage hugged her legs until she was the smallest ball possible. She squeezed her eyes shut and began to hum. The melody came from the deepest part of her, from when she was a toddler and her mom would sing her back to sleep when she woke from another nightmare.

As Sage hummed, the melody poured through her. Her body enveloped the song, and she rocked herself as she repeated the tune over and over.

An image of the faceless police officer and his cannon walked into her mind but she hummed it away. The classroom disappeared. The school vanished. Terror sat inside of her but she hummed through the panic, rocking herself in a rhythmic motion.

A knee to her shoulder knocked Sage from her reverie. Legs surrounded her and she looked up to see her classmates gather things from their desks and leave the classroom.

Leave her behind.

Sage shot to her feet and turned to a boy with greasy hair hanging in his face. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Lockdown is over. Didn’t you hear the announcement?”

“Over? What happened? Was it real?” Sage rushed to keep up with him.

He shrugged. “Dunno.”

Sage grabbed her math book from her desk and paused when she saw Brooklyn’s book lying open, untouched, waiting for its owner. Turning her back on the book, she joined the stream of students pushing through the door. She burst into the hallway and pressed through hundreds of bodies while searching for a face. The air was soupier than usual, the normal din of chitchat and banter heightened yet thick, and when she saw the back of Mira’s head at their lockers, tears spilled from her eyes.

“Mira.”

Mira spun around and enveloped Sage in a hug. “Gawd, Sage,” she cried. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

Mira’s heart thumped against Sage in rhythm with her own beat. Sage squeezed Mira, never to let go, and breathed in the scent of her passionfruit shampoo tinged with the acrid smell of sweat. “Was there really a shooter?” Sage said through tears.

“I don’t know. The police were here but I don’t know why. No one is telling us anything.”

As the girls held each other, Rhett drifted down the hall. His hair was a rumpled mess, his face white, and he stared ahead expressionless as though unaware of the crowd jostling him about.

“Rhett,” Sage called. He looked through her.

“Rhett!”

The girls broke from their hug but kept their hands clasped as Rhett was swallowed by the crowd.

“I wonder what he saw,” Mira said. “What he knows.”

Phones lit the hallway in scattered bursts as students pored over social media and text messages. Sobs and gossip filled the air. Sage looked over her shoulder at a group of girls beside them.

“There were two shooters,” one girl said. “They were tenth graders. They came to get a girl who embarrassed them online.”

“Yeah,” said another, “but did you see that picture of Cade? He was shot and was taken to the hospital. I hear he needs major surgery but he should survive.”

“I heard that it was the gym teacher they wanted to target for making them climb the rope.”

“No. There were three kids and they weren’t real guns, just water guns.”

“They were definitely real guns. I heard the shots. I think a police officer may have been killed.”

All around her, kids gathered in circles, tears and hugs and rumours overwhelming the North Shore High School halls.

Sage looked down at her phone, heavy in her hand.

With her best friend clinging to her side, Sage swiped away the ruthless apps. She shoved the gossip and spectacle into the deepest pocket of her backpack and walked away from Room 116.