The gunshot didn’t sound like it did in the movies.
It was duller, heavier—like someone had slammed a locker door hard enough to crack bone. For a second I thought it was one of the kids dropping a timpani mallet, until the window in my classroom bloomed into a star of shattered safety glass and the sixth-graders screamed.
“Everyone down!” I heard my voice before I felt my body move. My hands snapped toward the nearest row of stands, knocking over sheet music, violins, little plastic recorders. “Under the risers, now. Heads down, don’t talk.”
Their faces blurred—wide eyes, slack mouths, freckles and braces and trembling lips—before they disappeared behind instrument cases and folding chairs. The air tasted like dust and metal. My heart had gone strange, not faster, just...thin, like it was beating somewhere far away from my ribs.
More pops echoed from the hallway. Not one. Several.
Active shooter, my brain supplied in the same flat tone it used when I counted in four. We’d trained for this. We’d locked doors and drilled and laughed afterward about how it would never really happen here, not in our little coastal town where the worst thing that’d happened this year was the PTA revolt over sugar-free bake sales.
I moved to the door anyway.
The custodians had propped the music wing door open with a folded cardboard box that morning because the latch stuck. I’d meant to fix it, then a student lost her clarinet reed and everything slipped away into normal chaos. Now the handle under my fingers felt obscene, slick with the sweat that had sprung from my palms. I closed it quietly, turned the lock with a practiced twist, dragged the nearest cello cabinet in front of it.
Behind me, Leo’s whisper shook. “Ms. Wynn… what’s happening?”
“You’re safe,” I lied, my voice low and even. “You stay exactly where you are and don’t move unless I tell you. Okay?”
He nodded, curly hair bobbing, cheeks wet. I didn’t let myself look at him again.
Another crack, closer this time. A different sound followed—boots? Running? The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, too bright, buzzing like a nest of trapped wasps. Somewhere far down the corridor, a woman sobbed, or maybe it was just the building settling. My temples throbbed.
This is real, I told myself. Not a dream. Not one of those nights.
Except my hands were shaking in a way that had nothing to do with today. The hum of the lights thickened, became a roar in my ears. A familiar ink-black fear uncoiled in my stomach, stretching like it had merely been sleeping, waiting for an excuse to wake up.
Don’t.
I forced my attention back to the class. I crawled behind the risers, checking every small body pressed against the scuffed linoleum, every pulled-up knee and half-tied shoelace. Thirty-two students. All accounted for. The count soothed me. Numbers always did.
Thirty-two. Thirty-two.
The door rattled.
The cello cabinet scraped an inch across the floor, my whole body seizing with it. Leo made a small noise—half gasp, half whimper. I met his eyes and put a finger to my lips. Quiet.
The lock clicked once. Twice.
Then a man’s voice, muffled through the door. Not shouting. Calm. That scared me more than the gunshots.
“Elara Wynn.”
