sweet and salty

Chapter 4

september 27, 1978

I had been riding the bus the last few days as I really wasn't comfortable walking to school anymore after what happened to Josephine.
I honestly didn't wanna go to school at all since I didn't feel safe.
I wanted out of this town. Far away from it.

On the bus, I stared out the window, wondering who could be the next victim of this unidentified killer. Someone from my school? A relative? Or even, me.

I was sitting in class, bored, staring mindlessly at the pages of my book. When all of the sudden, I was disturbed by the alarm of a lockdown drill. Except, it wasn't a drill.

There was an active shooter in the school.

Miss Foster was trying not to panic, as she, and none of us for that matter, had experienced this before. Sure, we've had drills, but never the real thing.
She was trying to calm us down, and telling us to get down or hide and not speak a word.
There was a wooden storage cabinet behind Miss Foster's desk that me and Esther hid in. It's a miracle we both fit.
Everyone else got down against the wall and were very quiet, but there's one very obvious thing we forgot to do in the midst of panic. Lock the door.

Roughly 10 minutes after the lockdown started, the shooter entered our classroom.

9 people in my class were shot.

And 5 survived.