“This is your principal, Barbara Paulson.” The words echoed back to them from the hallway speakers. “I need everyone’s undivided attention for a special announcement. Everyone-students, faculty, staff, and visitors-in the south, east, and west wings must leave the school immediately, under the emergency procedures we have practiced throughout the year. This is a Level II emergency. Repeat-this is a Level II emergency.”
Her hands were shaking, yet her voice retained its usual metallic quality and her face was devoid of emotion, almost waxen. The Botox rumors that had dogged Barbara since spring break suddenly seemed plausible to Alexa. But perhaps Alexa’s own face was blank and empty, too, unable to summon any expression appropriate to the moment, because what expression would be appropriate?
Barbara continued speaking into the microphone: “Those in the north wing, however, are asked to go into containment procedures, locking doors, drawing blinds, and staying away from windows until an all-clear is sounded.”
Anita and the other secretaries happily followed the principal’s instructions, grabbing their purses and all but running from the office. Alexa remained, because she thought Barbara might need her, but the principal barely seemed to register her presence. She called 911 and repeated the information she had gathered, while Alexa listened to her carefully worded answers. Yes, she had implemented the county’s emergency plan-evacuation for those in the unaffected wings, lockdown for those classrooms near the reported shooting. No, she did not know if there were any injuries at this point.
“ Glendale High School,” Barbara repeated patiently. “Off Glendale Circle.”
There was a pause while the dispatcher asked another question. Barbara braced the hand holding the phone, but both hands continued to shake.
“I wouldn’t characterize it so much as a school shooting,” she said, “but as a shooting at the school.”
Motioning Alexa to follow her, the principal turned out the lights in the office and closed the door, locking it behind them. The halls were already full of students and teachers, and Alexa plunged into the hallway, feeling as if she were trying to body-surf in those spindly, treacherous waves she remembered from the Outer Banks, a place she hadn’t visited since she was four or five. The air had a crackly, electric charge, more like a winter day than a late-spring one, with some girls’ hair dancing on end. The students were moving a bit too fast, talking among themselves in low voices that quickly rose in volume, despite the teachers’ best efforts to enforce the no-talking rule. Others were ignoring the guidelines for a Level II emergency, holding their cell phones low by their hips, text-messaging with the ferocity of young Helen Kellers who had just discovered an accessible language. Alexa tapped one or two girls on the shoulder and shook her head in disapproval, but the girls just widened their eyes in fake innocence, as if they couldn’t imagine why they were being singled out.
Out in the parking lot, Alexa realized that the timing of the incident would make it nightmarishly impossible to account for everyone. While teachers had brought their roll books, they had yet to take morning attendance. Ten minutes before the first bell, the school was just full enough to be chaotic. There was no way to determine who had been inside or if the three wings under evacuation had truly emptied.
The staff tried to organize the chattering students, directing them to their homeroom teachers, insisting they turn off their cell phones, but it was like trying to gather feathers in a breeze. Some of the stoner-skater crowd-known as skeezers, for reasons Alexa had never grasped-drifted across the athletic field, heading to the fringe of woods where they gathered in all but the most intolerable weather. Alexa wanted to call after them that this was probably not the best time to get high. Then again, maybe it was. Certainly the police would have more pressing things to do than round up a few pot smokers.
Meanwhile students continued to arrive by car only to turn around promptly, sometimes taking other students with them, even as teachers yelled at them not to go. Parents, pulling up with dawdling freshmen and sophomores who had missed their buses, behaved no more responsibly, fleeing the moment they caught the scent of the emergency. Alexa imagined the stories that were starting in their heads, the tales of ordinary lateness-oversleeping, finishing homework-that would now take on epic dimensions. These parents were the lucky ones. They had the advantage of knowing now that their children were safe. Other parents would have to endure that horrible gap between partial and full knowledge. Once the police arrived, the driveways to the school would be blocked and parents would be directed to the nearby middle school to wait for their children. That, too, was part of the procedure of a Level II emergency. But it had all seemed so theoretical, so remote, during the training.
The faculty and those students who remained in the parking lot studied the school, as if the building itself might explain what was going on. It stared back, blank-faced, secretive.
Eve Muhly approached Alexa, standing a little too close, as usual, so Alexa could feel the odd heat the girl always generated, like a toddler who had just awakened from a long yet unsuccessful nap.
“Ms. Cunningham?”
“You can call me Alexa, Eve. You know that.”
“Someone said it happened in the restroom?” Her voice rose on what should have been a declarative statement of fact. Eve often needed affirmation for the simplest assertions.
“Who said, Eve?” It was Alexa’s automatic reply to anything that sounded like a rumor, even if she happened to know that the story was true. She never missed an opportunity to remind her students of the power of gossip, of mere words.
Eve looked around her feet, as if her informant were something she had temporarily misplaced or dropped. “Someone? I didn’t see, exactly? But I definitely heard someone behind me as we were leaving, and she said she, like, heard it, she heard something.”
“Those in the north wing were instructed to stay put.” Alexa would never fall into the trap of calling it “containment.” She eschewed jargon and euphemisms whenever possible, feeling it gave her more credibility with the students.
“Right. Like, if you were about to go into the bathroom and you heard shots, would you just stand there and wait for an announcement about what to do?”
Alexa looked at Eve closely. “Are you talking about yourself, Eve? Were you outside the bathroom when it happened? Did you call the office?”
“No, I’m just saying. Like, a hypo…hypo…hypothetical. If I heard shots, I wouldn’t just stand around. I’d run.”
“But you said ‘she.’ And you said she was going into the girls’ room. So you know that much.”
“Yeah. Well. I know a girl’s voice from a boy’s voice. And no one goes into the boys’ bathroom, not even the skankiest girls. The boys’ bathrooms are nasty.”