Devonne Brown

“Teachers and students, Lockdown. Code 1”

“Shit. Class was over and they were staying”

Before I turned to lock the door, Pew! Pew! Pew! Little balls of wet paper stuck in the white curls on the back of my head. Gilly was having one of his days. His mission in life was to make every teacher he’d ever had miserable. Gilly had six, seven long years if you counted kindergarten to practice his craft. And he was good at it. 

He’d be able to put a paper wad in an ear canal by tenth grade if he kept at it, at his current level of expertise he splattered glasses at twenty feet. He caught Josh right in the middle of his left lens. If Gilly maintained the same learning curve, I’d wager he’d be a pea shooting sniper by the time he reached twelfth grade.

I ground  my teeth while I locked the door and more wads of wet paper balls pelted the back of my head. Some hit the door. I tried not to think about what crawled in the folds of the slime balls. The lockdown could last for five minutes or five days. I wondered how long or even if video games, football games, Uno, Hangman, or even Poker would entertain Gilly and his compatriots in the class. 

Gilly was the alpha of the jackal pack. I covered my face with an iPad and walked toward the feral child.

“I didn’t do nothin’,” he whined and stuck a quarter sheet of blue construction paper in his mouth. Never taking my eyes off of him, I carried a trash can to his desk where little paper spitballs were being born.

“Of course you didn’t, Gilly,” I said. I smiled first. Then, ” Spit it out,” I said, and smiled again. Gilly kept chewing.

“I want to be prepared for the shooter.” He was matter of fact and focused.

“You’re going to take him out in a hail of spitballs?” It was an earnest question. The rest of the class looked concerned, but intrigued. He had everybody’s attention.

“If he comes in here, I can shoot him in the face with these. You guys can too. It’ll surprise him enough to get the gun away from him.” said Gilly. 

Gilly struggled hard in class, but now he saw himself as the Hero.

POP! POP! POP!

I felt all the blood drain to my feet. The class went silent, then erupted into wails and tears. This was not a drill.

I motioned for the kids to move to the inside wall. “Get on the floor under the bulletin board and be quiet,” I whispered. The kids lined the wall, criss cross applesauce, and went silent like we’d practiced. Those hateful procedures we have to drill into them every day came in handy sometimes.

“We need to make spitballs,” Gilly whispered out loud. “We’ll all get him.” Everybody had big eyes and nodded.

There weren’t any closets or cubbies to squeeze preteens the size of adult humans into. We were locked in a pretty box with posters on the walls, handwritten poetry in magic marker, colored pencil, and crayon meant to comfort us. 

Busy hands were happier hands. If Gilly’s trauma induced hyperfocus was going to protect him from the horror of this ordeal, it could protect everybody. I opened a brand new pack of multicolored construction paper, and gave everyone two pieces of their favorite colors, more if they wanted it, anything to distract the kids from the possibility of death. Never underestimate the power of a piece of colored paper. It was all we had.

Two hundred shaking fingers shredded paper. Forty quaking hands folded and rolled little balls for battle. Twenty pairs of hands made paper launchers for their missiles. Each kid pushed past their fear to choose the right color. Sandy selected Marshall green because she wanted to be a forensic scientist. Jalen called blue, he said it had the power of the oceans. The weapons were chosen and rolled. I passed around the tape. Gilly nodded his approval, he was on fire. 

The alpha of the jackal pack focused on his duty and became the commander in chief. He was calm under pressure, poised. He saw to it that every one of his minions were armed with a neat pile of perfect paper balls and a construction paper shooter.

POP! POP! POP! BOOM!

The classroom door rattled. A collective gasp went up to heaven, an urgent prayer to let this cup pass. I heard retching and vomit splattered on the floor behind me.

“Ok folks, get ready,” Gilly said. 

  I got a can of  jet stream wasp spray out of my desk, it was rumored to be as effective as mace and legal to have in the classroom. The can promised  accuracy to at least fifteen feet. I held it in one hand and my green peashooter in the other. I chewed on a wad of purple.

  Gilly nodded. No one in my classroom believed in wasp spray and certainly not in peashooters, but everyone believed in Gilly. He’d brought order to chaos and shot down terror with a spitball. He lined us up on the left side of the door behind the upturned desks and tables and stood at the head of the line. When the bad guy came in, we were going to take him down.

A knock. 

It was showtime.

Nobody breathed but Gilly. He raised his shooter to his mouth, ready to blast whatever came through the classroom door. The other students stood at attention, and waited for Gilly’s order.

A voice came over the intercom, “Teachers text your room number and status to Officer St. Jude,  CPD,  911,” The familiar voice of the school secretary came over the intercom. I looked around, put my finger to my lips. The first thing they tell us in shooter training is never trust the intercom. They tell us we will be released when the danger has passed, but they don’t tell us how. 

A text message from 911 CPD lit up my phone. “Reply to this message with your location and status” 

            “We’re traumatized in Room 301,” I texted back.

“OK,” somebody responded to my text. That was it. “OK.” No one ever told teachers anything. The less they told us, the less they got out of us. That was all, “OK.” Nothing was close to fine, neither was construction paper to fight off bad guys. The willing suspension of disbelief built an invincible, if colorful, force field against evil that was as real and strong as it was ever going to be.

Another knock.

I put my finger to my lips and shook my head, “Shhhhh.”

“CPD, clear,” said a stern voice through the door. 

Still, I shook my head. I put the wasp spray in position. 

“CPD, entering room 301.” I heard a massive intake of breath. It was about to go down.

An unseen key unlocked the door and a uniformed man stepped in. My hands shook too much to hit his eyes with the jet stream of wasp spray, but I soaked his uniform shirt. The liquid caught him off guard and he did a double step backwards.

The firing squad aimed and opened fire on the cop. The man swatted at the barrage of spit wads the colors of the rainbow as they pelted him and stuck. They even got his badge and gun.

The world rocked back and forth in halted time, space, and silence. 

“Good job, guys!” The officer managed a laugh that felt as good as Christmas.

 The kids cheered and tried to hoist Gilly in the air, but I stopped them. We had come this far without casualties, there would be none now. Gilly could lead us out of the room with bragging rights.

The officer’s jovial mood disappeared when he spoke into his walkie, “Room 301, no casualties. We’re coming out, twenty-one coming out. Folks, put your hands on top of your heads and keep them there. You don’t want to be mistaken for a shooter.”

Gilly stayed close to the cop when he led us from the room. He reached for the man’s hand when he saw the rusty red smear and brown footprints in the stairwell where it smelled like rotten dirt. The cop gave Gilly’s hand a squeeze for a second before he put it back on top of the boy’s head, and then handed me the reins. “Keep them together when you get outside.”

I reminded the group, “Stay together, folks, we have to take care of each other,” once or twice more before we got to the bottom step. The minute the class hit the open air, kids scattered screaming in every direction. They found their friends, their parents, their grannies.

 They vanished into the waiting armada of flashing cop cars, ambulances, and wailing parents. They weren’t supposed to do that, they were supposed to stay together. I had to take fucking attendance. There’s a giant rule about holding it together in a school emergency and I broke it. I wondered what kind of trouble I’d be in.

 I didn’t look for anyone, not a kid, not an administrator, nobody. 

I needed a minute.