I walked into school after being dress coded for having my jacket zipped. It was the color of dark ocean waves crashing into the shoreline. It matched my navy polo shirt. But what did the teachers expect, it was below freezing and we couldn’t wear hoodies. We were as cold as a hairless cat without a sweater. A short sleeve polo doesn’t keep you warm, and neither do sand colored khaki shorts. The ridiculous rules were just part of the joke I called junior high. “Unzip your jacket Sam,” said Mrs. Evans. Not willing to start a fight I wouldn’t win, I just smiled, unzipped my jacket, and rolled my eyes once I passed the double doors. It was always the lazy teachers who stood at those doors dress coding students, because once the second bell rang, they didn’t get anything done. Now that we had been in the seventh grade for a while now, we knew what we could expect on our version of a “normal” day. There would be teachers on the verge of quitting, and students on the verge of snapping. By snapping, I mean quite literally losing their minds and giving up on ever receiving a solid education. The only thing that kept me from snapping was my friends. If one of us gave up, the rest would follow. We tried our best to not let this happen.
Now, it might seem like I had always hated school, but that is far from the truth. I loved my elementary school. My face beamed every time I walked through its double doors. It had one of the highest testing ratings in the state. It also had a good atmosphere and good teachers. I think they knew we wouldn’t have these privileges for much longer. The teachers seemed to feel bad for us when we graduated from elementary school, but I didn’t understand why until I started junior high.
On this particular school day, it started as you would expect. A boy named James was kicked out of class for being what Mrs.Carson called a “disruption.” James did have anger issues, he once got mad at me for calling him rude. The result was I was pinned against the wall being choked with my own jacket sleeves. He was lucky he didn’t ruin my favorite jacket, or we would’ve had issues. Thankfully we didn’t have any other altercations. We were on good terms at the time, and I didn’t want to change that so I kept to myself when he walked past my desk. I would agree with her sending him out because he is very disruptive, but she didn’t ever actually teach us anything. “Is she ever going to get off Facebook and get up from her desk?” I asked myself in an irritated voice. You might be wondering what we actually did during first hour, and the answer is absolutely nothing.
“Mrs. Carson can I have something to do please?” I asked with an attitude. “Here,” she replied quickly as she handed me a deck of cards to play with. Now, Mrs.Carson might be a bad teacher, but she was a smart woman. Since she didn’t teach us anything, she had to figure out a way to have grades in her monthly grade book. She knew that my friend and I were in the gifted program, so she knew we were smart. So whenever she needed grades put in, she would hand us a stack of tests and tell us to work out each problem, but get each student to put their name at the top of the paper so it wouldn’t be suspicious. “Sam and Rikilyn, please come get a stack of papers,” Mrs. Carson said in a tone that would suggest she was actually busy doing work. “She isn’t doing anything, she just really needed grades submitted this week,” Rikilyn said as she rolled her eyes and got up to get the papers. She was lucky we never failed her tests on purpose. Our junior high is known for being one of the top five schools in the state with the lowest testing scores. It had been for the past ten years, and it didn’t seem to be improving. After an hour of doing other students’ work, it was time for my personal favorite class, which was band.
We lined up at the double door so we could walk over to the band room with Mrs. Powell. Knowing it would be cold, I zipped my jacket. I would rather be dress coded than get sick. We didn’t have a band room because we didn’t have enough room in the junior high, or enough state funding to build one. I immediately knew this day would be different when I didn’t see Mrs. Powell coming to get us from the band room. I looked at our torn and battered American flag outside. For some reason, today it looked different to me. I felt like today, it stood for something else. It was a young lady with dark hair, who seemed to be Mrs. Powell’s age. I normally knew the substitutes, because not many people were willing to substitute at our school. However, I had never seen this woman in my life. She didn’t even tell us her name, she just quickly took us to the band room. “Get out your music sheets please,” she said in a agitated tone. My classmates and I looked at each other for a second and no one said a word. “Yes ma’am,” I replied mocking her tone. She didn’t look in my direction, or respond. She just sat at Mrs. Powell’s desk, with a nervous look on her face. About ten minutes later, someone came on the intercom and scream, “lockdown!”.
We often had lockdown drills, so we did as we had been told to do in the past. We dropped everything and ran into the large closet that stored the instrument cases. I felt my palms sweat as I looked around and saw the panic in everyone’s eyes. Every lock down we had ever had made me nervous. The substitute stood in the closet with us for what seemed to be less than a minute, she then opened the closet door again and locked us in. She wiggled the doorknob one last time to make sure it was locked before walking away. We heard the band room door close shortly after. We all look at each other in fear and confusion. We didn’t question anything at first, until we heard several popping noises. It was gunshots. After that I think we all realized she wasn’t coming back. We were as calm as we could be, which wasn’t very calm because we were alone in a locked closet. Several of my friends looked at me as if they needed reassurance. “We’ll be fine,” I responded as if I knew wether or not we would be. There wasn’t much I could do at the moment, considering the fact that I had no idea what was going on. In my head, I was making plans on how to escape, wether the situation was getting better or worse. “What are we supposed to do now?” I thought to myself as I struggled to take a deep breathe. I was on the verge of tears, and so were a few people around me. About five minutes later we heard the door to the band room open. Someone was walking around the room, in what seemed to be a panicked state. Not even ten second later we heard a sound that you wouldn’t think would be relieving. It was the sound of keys. To us, it sounded like a justification that we would be getting out of this closely cluttered closet. Several of my classmates started to stand up, but I quickly told them to sit down and stay silent, considering we still didn’t know who had the keys. The footsteps suddenly stopped, and there was a shadow of feet in front of the doorway. We held out breathes as the door opened. It was our custodian.
He quickly did a headcount and told us to run quickly back to the junior high. The morning dew had soaked into the ground already, so it was easy to run without any mishaps. I hesitated as I ran past the American Flag. “I knew you seemed different today,” I said to the flag as I continued to the double doors. As we ran back, I saw a man driving quickly towards the highway. The car was at least a few summers old, and the color of a stop sign warning us what was ahead. In the passenger seat, was our so called “substitute.” They were a Bonnie and Clyde duo. Once we got back to the junior high, our parents were called. Needless to say we didn’t stay at school that day. My parents along with everyone else’s were called and told that we needed to be taken home immediately. Thankfully my mom was one of the first to arrive, because I had been trying to calm down fifteen anxious students including myself. I got in my mom’s car and didn’t say a word. I looked at that American flag one last time in disappointment.
I didn’t know how to feel. January 14th, 2014, was supposed to be another day at my boring, depressing, and somewhat idiotic junior high school, but that was not how that day played out. I felt like I was in a movie, slowly trying to find a resolution to why everything played out like a thriller based on a true story. My mom came in the living room where I was sitting and turned on the news. The broadcaster was explaining the headline on the screen. It read, “School intruder flees with wife who posed as a substitute teacher at the local junior high.” I stood up and started walking to my room because I didn’t want to hear what just happened to me, because I had already lived through it.
As I walked past the front door I heard the chiming of the doorbell. I opened the door and locked eyes with a man wearing a shirt with a news station logo. He looked at me like I was some exotic species, not a boy who had a bad day at school. Before he could even spit out a word, I slammed the door, locked the deadbolt, and went down the hallway as I proceeded to before. My mother came in my room shortly after and asked, “I know this isn’t good timing, but will you give this crazy news guy a statement so he will get off the front porch?” I didn’t even say my statement, I just wrote it down. The note read: “That day I realized two things: I was lucky to be alive, and I definitely would be transferring schools.” I didn’t know how to comprehend what my life was now. I was no longer a person with privacy and an identity. I became a top story on national news.