As I ran in search of protection, my heart pounding, tears rolling down my eyes, trying to process all that just happened within the last 13 minutes. 

Let me start from the beginning. Hi, my name is Star and this is the story of how my life changed forever…..

It was a normal Thursday morning at school, same classes, same students, same schedule, same everything. I walked in the line to get breakfast with my friends Julie and Tony.

“Pancakes again? Why can’t they serve us real food like bacon or something?” said Tony.

“It’s a public school, some kids can’t even afford pancakes so be grateful” said Julie.

“I know but I don’t like how soggy they are” said Tony.

“Guys, let's just sit down and eat,” I said.

As we sat down and ate our soggy pancakes we heard thunder, it began to rain. We looked at each other with big smiles on our faces, we love when it rains so we were pretty happy about it. We finished our food and walked to class, Tony doesn’t have the same class as me and Julie for the first period so we said our byes and walked to class.

Julie and I sat down at our table and took out our books, we got started on our work and after about 12 minutes Julie had to go to the bathroom, so of course we went together.

 So as we walked we talked about whatever 14 year girls talk about. We finally made it to the bathroom after about 3 minutes. That's when we heard a loud pop. We froze as we were walking to the stalls, looking at each other with fear and confusion. 

“Attention students and staff we are now going on a hard lockdown this is not a drill”

As we heard those words we rushed to the big stall and stood on the toilet scared and worried.

We heard some girls running down the hall screaming “HE HAS A GUN HE HAS A GUN!” After that we heard 3 shots. loud, scary shots…

Julie started to cry, I tried to comfort her saying that everything was going to be alright but she wouldn’t listen. She was making a lot of gasping noises and I was freaking out because I didn’t want whoever was in the school to find us so I put my hand over her mouth and held her. I felt the tears fall from her cheeks into my hands but I didn’t care. All I wanted to know was if Tony was alright and are we gonna make it out of here alive.

We always made jokes about what we would do if there was a real school shooting at our school but we never realized how scary and crazy it would be. I regret not taking the drills seriously.

We heard screaming, crying and gun shots for a solid 3 minutes. At that point I was also crying. We left our phones in the classroom on the charger so we had no way to contact Tony or the cops. Luckily I had my apple watch but it was on 3 percent so I had to act fast.

First I texted my mom telling her I loved her, she was confused asking if everything was okay but I didn’t have time to respond because I had to see if Tony was okay.

I texted him hoping and praying he was alive and safe. My watch was now on 1 percent and I had no choice but to shut it off to try and save this last amount of battery life I had in it.

After a few minutes it went silent, no gunshots. No screaming. Nothing. So we decided to leave and try to get out of the school. So we held hands and looked at eachother. 

Julia whispered “Are you ready”

I nodded my head and we took off running faster than we ever did before.

We came to a stop as we saw the hooded stranger, too scared to move he slowly started walking towards us.

We gripped each other's hands and held on tight, I knew this would be the end of it all, and I didn’t even get a chance to tell Tony how my I loved him

He stopped a few feet in front of us and removed his mask.

It was Tony.

Julia fell to the ground in shock but I couldn’t move, I didn’t understand why he of all people would do something like this…

I looked at him full of fear and confusion and said.

“Why are you doing this”

He looked at me with tears in his eyes, he opened his mouth but before he could say anything a knife went through his chest and he fell to the floor.

I screamed in terror and ran off not realizing I had left Julie on the floor but at the moment all I could think about is how am I gonna get out and survive this. As I ran I heard 2 shots. I stopped when I realized the shots weren’t towards me, I turned around and saw the other hooded stranger who had stabbed Tony pointing a gun at Julia and just kept shooting at her poor helpless body. At this point I couldn’t even cry. I just wanted to run and get out. As I ran I couldn’t help but blame myself for Julia’s death. 

After about 3 minutes I finally made it out of the school. As soon as I reached the grass I passed out from all of the running.

I woke up from what felt like a few hours later and realized it was all a dream.