And the doors that lock and the teachers that get locked out and we arenât supposed to let anyone in but that guy SAYS theyâre a teacher and LOOKS like a teacher and might get mad if you donât open the door for them. But if you do what if they ARENâT, and you just got those kids in the chemistry room next to the door killed? And you have to size the guy up like âCOULD he be carrying a gunâ and if you let him in you spend the rest of the school day terrified that you were the one who caused the next school shooting. And if you DONâT let him in you see him in the halls later and someone says âHi Mr. ______!â and itâs time to avoid him for the rest of your four years in high school because YOU LEFT HIM LOCKED OUT BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT HE COULD KILL YOU.
And the woman at the lonely desk in the front lobby who checks everyone in, everyone, except at the beginning of the day when everyone all comes in at once. And you have to live with the fact that youâve seen her miss people while checking in others, because weâre kids and impatient to get to class one time and sometimes we just walk past - and are we setting a precedent thatâs going to get us all killed? Is this teacher or secretary or hall monitor just going to get shot anyway, before the rest of us, so the killer can come in? Does she KNOW, for SURE, that that kid who walked past is a student? And anyway, it wonât save us, because they donât check the bags or anything, so if the shooter IS a student they can just check right in!
And you used to be friends with the weird kid because he liked the same music as you, and now you have to careful weigh whether that makes YOU responsible. Do you have to keep being his friend so maybe you all graduate alive, even if he has a camouflage hat and his dad was probably in the military and he listens to edgy music and he talks about weapons all the time and you know he has a gun at home? Will being friends with him save you, or if you slip up once, make him mad, donât sit with him at lunch, say something teenagers say about each other when you think he isnât listening, are you a walking ghost? Are your days numbered? If youâre a girl (I am), youâre even more terrified, because WHAT IF HE ASKS YOU OUT? You donât like him that way. Will he kill you if you say no?
You stop sitting with the weird kid. You live with the guilt of knowing maybe this was the last straw. He doesnât shoot up the school. He was okay in the end, and youâre still guilty⌠and youâre still scared.
You go over to a friendâs house. At one point, everyone takes a break and plays with bb guns. Itâs the first time youâve seen a gun in real life. Youâre the first to get shot. It hurts more than you thought it would - they shot you on the side of the neck. You wonder if they were lucky, or if they know how to aim. You donât know if thereâs a real gun somewhere in the house. Later, weeks, months later, you two have a falling out. Youâre terrified for the rest of high school.
And instead of the anti-bullying talks from middle school you have lockout-lockdown drills, and they come and pound on the doors to see if anyone opens them, and in some schools they have the good courtesy to tell you itâs a drill so you arenât crying, except then⌠then you have to wonder if your sobs would have given you away. Except they wouldnât have - youâre a quiet crier, but what about the kid next to you who screamed at a physics demonstration last week, what if it wasnât a drill and you heard pounding at the door, would she scream?
Can you fit under that closet shelf? Can you fit into that chemistry cabinet, if you move the scales out, first? You canât try in class. The teacher doesnât have time for that. You want to, though. You want to KNOW if you could close yourself into that tiny space that locks when it shuts all the way and wait. Maybe you wouldnât suffocate, it has cracks at the edges after all. You donât think youâre claustrophobic. You donât think youâll scream.
Nobody shoots up your school. You graduate. You go to college. Someone sets off a firework near one of the dorms - not yours, but a friends - and the groupchat is alive with the not-so-fun, never-fun game of âfireworks or gunshotsâ with the stakes being your lives. You all decide, âfireworks.â If you were wrongâŚ
A friend breaks up with someone and you spend a little time wondering what you would do if they broke into the dorm while you were hanging out. Would you die for them? Sometimes you decide no, sometimes you decide yes. You arenât sure which turns your stomach inside out the most. You had a dream about a school shooter asking who would be the first to die. You didnât volunteer. They picked you anyway.
Two years after you graduate, your school gets a threat. Police search it. The kids are locked in rooms for hours. Four hours, five. You imagine it. They wouldnât have said it was a drill on the loudspeakers, that time. Police WOULD have opened the door to your classroom, because they were searching room-by-room. Would you have screamed? Five hours without food or water or being able to go to the bathroom. Some people had to pee in the trash cans. In a dark room in front of their classmates. Your friendâs school has cops with guns in it now. It didnât when they graduated, and you werenât there for the not-a-drill⌠but they were fears both of you had, two fears out of hundreds. Just because you werenât there when they happened doesnât mean they didnât feel like a rope around your neck.
The newspaper article interviews a student and you find out the kids thought it was an active shooter. They didnât know it was a note. Doors slammed. Lockers slammed. The police were searching the school, there was a lot of slamming. How many of those slams sounded like gunshots?
Do you have a right to feel this way, since it didnât ever happen to you? Every lockdown was a drill for you. Does that matter? You know the part of your brain asking isnât a part you should listen to, but it doesnât matter. Half the adults say youâre overreacting, or that it isnât being caused by guns, but by bullying or just teenagers being teenagers or mental health or something, ANYTHING, thatâs YOUR FAULT instead of theirs.
HALF THE ADULTS ARE SAYING SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ARE YOUR FAULT.
And you remember that you stopped sitting with the weird kid, and you wonder if thatâs true. And then you remember not letting that one teacher in once, and you wonder if they blame you, if they were the half of adults that would never understand the fear you felt in that instant.
And it follows you, this fear and these events and the news from home and the flinch when someone slams a door. But youâre the adult now, youâre out of high school, and so the kids are yelling at YOU when they say âDO SOMETHING, WEâRE DYING!â At least, in your mind, they are. Even though you arenât out of college, even though itâs the older people who did this, you feel like you are to blame BECAUSE YOU DIDNâT DIE. Because the weird kid DIDNâT shoot up the school. Because the teacher WASNâT a murderer, because the lady at the front desk DIDNâT get killed, because you never sat for five hours in a dark classroom thinking you were about to die. Itâs your fault now, because you graduated, that part of your brain says. And it takes a tumblr post to tell you that thatâs survivorâs guilt. That itâs trauma.
You still have the school shooter dreams. You think you always will.
Theyâre nothing next to reality.