“These teenagers are terrorists!”

All across America, concerned parents spoke in tones of unbridled rage about things that were simply out of their control.

At the very least, I was no longer holding my breath. Instead, I was breathing acid. It was slow-simmering, but painful all the same.

Reports of school shootings and bombing threats had torn across the country. Even my own, typically unshaken mother, seemed… fazed, but not quite concerned just yet. She’d sent me a particularly cryptic message (assumingly upon discovering the threats) that seemed to amount to something along the lines of “trust no one, not even your closest friends.”

The idea was comical. As if I would trust anyone to begin with.

School was in a full lockdown, and if searching students was illegal, the school’s security detail most certainly did not care.

In conducting my own research, there appeared to be no publicized threat to our school specifically, but that didn’t stop the administration from implementing their ‘precautions.’

School became closer to a prison than ever before.

Doors, windows, bathrooms? All locked. We couldn’t go anywhere or do anything about it, because it was all our fault. We were the guilty party, and so we would be the ones to pay the price.