“Meredith Cole,” I whispered, wiping tears on my sleeve.

Nash squeezed me tighter, wrapping his arms around mine, where they clutched at my stomach.

Emma stood slowly, her expression a mixture of disbelief and dread. She backed away from us, legs wobbling. Then she turned carefully and peeked around the corner. “I can’t see anything. There’re too many people.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, mildly surprised by the dazed quality of my own voice. “She’s already dead.”

“How do you know?” Her hand gripped the corner of the building, nails digging into the rough mortar outlining the brown bricks. “Are you sure it’s Meredith?”

“Yes.” I sighed, then rose and pulled Nash up, wiping more tears from my cheeks. He stood to my left, Emma to my right. Together, we turned the corner and entered the chaos.

6

EMMA WAS RIGHT—THERE were people everywhere. Several classroom doors had opened into the quad, and students were pouring out in spite of protests from their teachers. And since there were still ten minutes left in second lunch, the cafeteria was now emptying its usual crowd onto the grass too.

I saw at least twenty students on cell phones, and the snatches of conversation I caught sounded like 911 calls, though most of the callers didn’t actually know what had happened, or who was involved. They only knew someone was hurt, and there had been no gunfire.

Coach Tucker loomed on the edge of the green-and-white central throng, her sneakers spread wide for balance, pulling kids out of the way one at a time even as she shouted into a clunky, school-issue, handheld radio. Finally the crowd parted for her, revealing a motionless female form lying on the brown grass, one arm thrown out at her side. I couldn’t see her face because one of the football players—number fourteen—was performing CPR.

But I knew it was Meredith Cole. And I could have told number fourteen that his efforts were wasted; he couldn’t help her.

Coach Tucker pulled the football player away from the dead girl and dropped to her knees beside the body, shouting for everyone to move back. To go back into the building. Then she bent with her face close to Meredith’s to see if she was breathing. A moment later, Coach Tucker tilted the dancer’s head back and resumed CPR where number fourteen had left off.

Seconds later, the dance team’s faculty sponsor—Mrs. Foley, one of the algebra teachers—raced across the quad from an open classroom, stunned speechless for several seconds by the chaos. After a quick word with a couple of students, she gathered her remaining dancers into a teary huddle several feet from Meredith and the softball coach. The other students stared at them all in astonishment, some crying, some whispering and others standing in silent shock.

As we watched from the fringes of the mayhem, three more adults jogged down the cafeteria steps: the principal, who looked too prim in her narrow skirt and heels to even make a dent in the pandemonium;her assistant, a small balding man who clutched a clipboard to his narrow chest like a life raft; and Coach Rundell, the head football coach.

The principal stood on her toes and whispered something into Coach Rundell’s ear, and he nodded curtly. Coach wore a whistle and carried a megaphone.

He needed neither, but he used them both.

The shriek of the whistle pierced my eardrums like a railroad spike, and everyone around us froze. Coach Rundell lifted the megaphone to his mouth and began issuing orders with a speed and clarity that would have made any drill sergeant proud.

“We are now on lockdown! If you do not have second lunch, return to your classroom. If you do have second lunch, take a seat in the cafeteria.”

At some signal from the principal, her assistant scuttled off to make the necessary lockdown announcements and arrangements. Teachers started herding their students inside in earnest now, and one by one, the doors closed and a tense quiet descended on the quad. Mrs. Foley, looking overwhelmed and on the verge of tears herself, gathered her sobbing dancers and led them into the building through a side entrance. The principal began ushering the lunch crowd back into the cafeteria, and when her assistant showed up again, he helped.

Nash, Emma and I fell into the stream of students right behind the huddle of green-and-white football jackets, and as we passed the last picnic table, I looked to the right, where Coach Rundell had now taken over CPR from Coach Tucker. Even sick with guilt and numb with shock, I had to see for myself. Had to prove to my head what my heart knew all along.

And there Meredith lay, long brown hair fanned out across the dead grass, her face visible only when the coach sat up for a round of chest compressions.

My eyes watered and I sniffed back more tears, and Nash stepped up on my right, blocking my view as we climbed the broad concrete steps into the building. Inside, the lights were all off because of the lockdown. But the cafeteria windows—a virtual wall of glass—had no shades and were too big to cover, so daylight streamed in, casting deep shadows and lighting the long room in a washed-out palette of colors, in contrast to the bright light usually cast from the fluorescent fixtures overhead.

At the far end of the room, the jocks had gathered in a silent, solemn huddle around one of the round tables. Several sat with their elbows propped on wide-set knees, heads either hanging or cradled in both hands. Number fourteen—who’d tried valiantly to save Meredith—held his girlfriend on his lap, her face streaked with tears and mascara, his arm around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder.

Other students sat grouped around the rest of the tables. A few whispered questions no one had answers for, a few more cried softly, and everyone looked stunned to the point of incomprehension. There had been no warning, no violence, and no obvious cause. This lockdown didn’t fit with the drills we practiced twice a semester, and everyone knew it.