Who’s Mr. Wager? I thought.

“Everyone go to that corner of the room and stay as close to the wall as you can.” Mr. Madison said as he shut the lights and locked the door.

I did what he said as fast as I could while all the other students came at their own snail pace, though the situation was clearly urgent.

I got the sense that we were supposed to be quiet from Mr. Madison's consistent shushing but there was still whispering and giggling.

After a few moments of “silence” I finally asked one of the students who’d gone to public school her entire life and, so, was familiar with everything that happened here, “What’s going on?”

“It’s a lockdown.” She said rolling her eyes.

“A lockdown?”

“Yah.”

“How are you sure?”

“‘Mr. Major’s’ here, duh.” To avoid talking to me any longer, she started whispering to one of her friends. I didn't know a Mr. Major but I knew what a lockdown was.

I slid onto the floor and used the wall for support. This wasn’t how I wanted to spend my last minutes. In school. In a desk. Nowhere near my family. As cliché as it is, there were still so many things I had to do. Publish my book. Meet someone famous. Become famous. I hadn’t had the time to do half of it because I had school all the time and now, being at school would be the reason I died? That had to be pretty close to the most depressing thing in the world. Right next to a bunch of teenagers playing around while their death could be seconds away. Like it was a joke.

How could they take it so lightly? There was some trigger-happy guy in the school who could come charging into this room at any moment, and they were talking and joking. Weren’t they afraid, he’d hear them and come in?

I took out my cell phone and started typing a letter to my family. When I finished, I made a list of the things I wish I could’ve done; maybe my little sister would do them for me.

The other students continued talking. They glanced at me a few times; probably thinking I was a freak not appreciating how much class we were missing...this was the class I’d made the least friends in.

When I neared the completion of the list, someone on the loudspeaker announced, “the drill is over. Good job, everyone.” Drill? Why had nobody told me this was a drill? “Now,” the woman continued, “Everyone-” there was loud bang and silence on the other end of the microphone. No one in that class looked at me like I was strange, again.