It started, really started, with the rage.

After months of hiding behind pale blue masks, latex gloves, and hand sanitizer, something in the air had shifted. Every moment became tense; every step became dangerous. 

At first, everything was blamed on the intensity of the worldwide pandemic that nobody could truly accept as the new normal. We could all claim to be well-adjusted, but in reality, we were all left reeling from the shock of rapid changes. 

Then things started to get out of hand. 

Georgia V. was the first to crack. Recently recovering from a case of Covid that had left her bedridden for nearly a week’s time, the freshman had returned to school very different from before. 

I never knew her personally, but all accounts claimed that Georgia had never been known to be confrontational, let alone violent. Despite this, she had been no less than brutal as she’d clawed at her best friend of many years, leaving painful, sluggishly bleeding gauges down both of her arms. Georgia had been restrained, and Sydney (the friend in question), had been sent to the nurse’s office.

I don’t know what happened to Georgia afterward. Nobody does.

That first, bloody incident in mind, things only went downhill from there.

Fights continued to break out across not just Windsor HIgh, but schools all over the country, if not the whole world.

That first day, there were three more fights, all of them between freshmen; all of them ending in blood. A total of seven students were expelled, and over the course of the next 24 hours or so, another five or six were suspended for recording the fights that took place. 

Staff members began to buckle down on procedures. Still, another 10 fights occurred in the span of a week. No more students were expelled. There weren’t enough of us left.

Things just kept getting stranger and stranger. Until further notice, all students were on pass restriction. Tensions were running high, and teachers especially grew more and more irritated faster. The students were restless. Everybody could feel the undercurrent of anger and fear and something not quite normal. It warped every breath that the students of the institution took, and the teachers could feel something building, both in the hot-headed students and themselves.