3

Suz

 

 

St Basil’s Preparatory School, Bethesda Maryland

 

 

Suz was exhausted and distracted that morning as she got ready for school. That it was Valentine’s Day had completely slipped her mind as she dressed for her mood rather than the occasion, choosing all black.

When she unlocked her classroom door, though, she was greeted with bright red and pink decorations and the new reading words carefully lettered and posted behind her desk — words that meant love to her students: hugs, family, home, safe. . . Suz picked up a sheet of stickers that lay on her desk, ready for her to use on the kids’ workbook pages that day, and she tapped a few hearts onto her turtleneck sweater. It was the best she could do under the circumstances – all she had energy for.

The kids filed in, filling the classroom with excited chatter.

“Good morning, bright and shining faces. You look very happy today. You would think that it was a special day or something.” Suz smiled down at her first graders. They plunked gifts and cards on her desk, then went to hang up their coats. It was a blustery winter day. The temperature hovered in the upper twenties, and there had been warnings of possible snow. The children worked to untangle themselves from their layers of outerwear. Suz waded into the crush to help with buttons and stuck zippers.

“Miss Molloy, I want to give out my cards,” Michael held up a crushed paper bag. Suz was sure his mother had handed it to him in pristine order, but Michael was a rough and tumble kind of guy. Suz was a little surprised the bag had made it to school at all.

She raised her voice. “Class, after I take attendance you can distribute your Valentine’s cards to the student post boxes, okay?”

Her class was only sixteen strong today. It was a particularly bad flu season this year, and four of her students were out sick. She should have called in sick herself and had a substitute cover for her today. By the time Suz had left Jack at the hospital and climbed into her own bed, heartbroken by her decision and her loss, she couldn’t sleep. All she was capable of was lying there feeling miserable. The long night left her exhausted and not completely in command of her emotions.

She watched the kids running around, making their deliveries and a wave of melancholy washed over her. She wanted kids of her own. A bunch of them. But she also wanted them to have a father who was around for them. Yet another reason why she couldn’t marry Jack. She bent over and pretended to pick something up off the floor as she surreptitiously swiped a tear from her cheek.

This is just fatigue, she tried to convince herself. “For heaven’s sake, pull yourself together,” she muttered as she lifted her head to find out who was tapping on her shoulder.

“I lost a tooth last night.” Miranda opened her mouth wide and stuck a finger in the open gap. Her mother had pulled the wisps of Miranda’s silk-fine hair into pigtails and tied them in pink ribbon to match her jumper.

“Oh that’s so fun! I can already see your adult tooth trying to pop through. Did the Tooth Fairy come?” Suz pulled her enthusiasm out of thin air. Losing a first tooth was a huge deal to these kids, and she wasn’t going to mope and bring Miranda down.

“Yup!” Miranda danced off and Jenny stepped into her place. “Miss Molloy, can we read stories this morning? I want to know what happens next to the Velveteen Rabbit.”

Suz actually felt relieved. It was a good idea. She’d settle the kids on the floor with hearts and flowers coloring pages to build their finger muscles and fine motor control while she read to them this morning. This afternoon, one of the room-moms was coming in with a little party she had planned. The kids would play games and open their Valentine’s cards then. Suz would make it through today and let the principal know she wasn’t well. That would give him plenty of time to arrange for a substitute.

“Children,” Suz said with the kind of gentle authority that made the children turn and pay attention. “Today is such an exciting and happy day. We get to show each other how much we care for each other and what good friends we can be.”

Suz’s gaze took in the sweet faces of her students, and she felt a sting of tears burn her eyes. She grabbed a Kleenex from her desk. “Oh my, it looks like I’m catching cold. My face wants to drip. Four of our classmates are out sick. So today, we are going to be careful to use the hand sanitizer on my desk. We’re going to make sure that if we cough or sneeze, it will be into our elbows. And we aren’t going to share any food or drink. Understood?”

The children each gave their version of agreement, and Suz congratulated herself on having an all-day excuse for looking like an emotional mess. “Let’s gather on the reading rug for more of Velveteen Rabbit.”

There was a quick rush as her students scrambled toward the places they wanted.

“Red light,” Suz called and all of the students froze in place. All noise ceased.

“I would like you to first go to the activity center and each of you get a clipboard and some crayons. Green light!”

As the kids surged forward, Suz rounded her desk and pulled out a file folder of coloring sheets. And that’s when she heard it.

 

PopPop Pop. PopPop Pop. PopPop Pop.

 

Triple taps. Two shots to the chest and one to the head. The sound of death. Nothing else sounded like that. Suz had heard it time and again when she was on the firing range, waiting for Jack to finish up. Jack had even tried to teach her once. He thought she might like to learn to use a gun. He was wrong. Guns made her vomit.

 

PopPop Pop.

 

In Suz’s mind she was standing behind her desk, shocked to be hearing that sound here in her school. Her body, though, was already standing at the classroom door, moving with lightning speed. Her mouth had already called out, “Red light!” The children were frozen in space.

If the other teachers had heard and recognized the noise, they’d be turning off their lights, locking the doors, and herding their children into a corner. Jack said that was absolutely the wrong thing to do; if she did nothing else to defend her children, Suz needed to keep her students spread out. Suz flipped off the light switch and turned the lock on the door. Jack had told her that these doors were hung the wrong way and a gunman could easily kick them open. Jack had bought and installed industrial floor bolts, and now she stepped on them to slide the metal spikes into place as she pulled out her phone.

I’m wrong. I’m hallucinating, Suz told herself. She quick dialed the school’s secretary who sat at the front desk to sign in the tardy students. The rings ended with an out-of-service recording.

The children looked around bewildered. A few of them must have caught hold of Suz’s anxiety because she saw frightened faces and tears as she scrambled behind her desk to look out the window. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Her fingers shook as she tapped out 911, it didn’t go anywhere as if she had no bars.

“Children, come quickly we’re running a very special fire drill. This time we’re going out a different way.” Suz said as she pushed open the window that Jack had cut loose from the layers of paint and carefully oiled for ease of use and silence. Outside on the ledge rested a box painted to match the beige façade of the building; and therefore, it had gone unnoticed by the administrators and ground’s staff alike. Jack had said all she needed to do was push the box off the ledge and let it fall unencumbered, so she did. The box dropped to the ground with a resounding bang, leaving a rope ladder stretched taut.

They’re going to fire me if I do this. I must be wrong. This is so dangerous. Gunfire here? I must be wrong.

But screams and a man’s shouting flooded up the corridor and gushed under their classroom door. It was the nightmare that she had been having ever since Sandy Hook. Suz was terrified that someone would come into her class and hurt one of her kids. That she’d leap in front of a bullet for them was not in doubt, but other teachers had done that, and the kids had died anyway. Their heroic actions just upping the horrific body counts.

This escape plan was Jack’s gift to her – a plan so she had some better course of action than piling the kids into a death pack. Jack had come to the school and offered to instruct everyone, to come up with strategies and plans, to do the training for free. But the principal thought that would make the parents feel nervous for the safety of their children. He had turned down Jack’s offer. So Jack had done this for her alone.

“Tad come here, you’re my brave leader. Down the ladder then help the others. Michael you’re next.” Michael’s face was set in grim determination as he climbed out the second story window. “Come on guys fast. Move. Move. Move.” She watched her best athletes scramble down the ladder like little monkeys, showing the other kids that it could be done. “Miranda, you’re next. You’re line leader. All the way down then to the edge of the building toward the field.” Suz hefted the girl up by the waist and pushed her through the window. “Then crouch down as small as you can get next to the wall. Go. Go.” Suz watched Miranda start her climb then turned to the other thirteen. “Come on. Everyone follows. Go as fast as you can. But be safe. Watch that you have a good grip. Make sure your feet are centered on the rungs.”

Tata tat tat.

Gun fire strafed the hallway and seemed to be working its way toward them. Suz was picking up the children and thrusting them through the window as fast as she could.

She unplugged then grabbed up the backpack from its place under their exit window, threw the coil of rainbow colored rope over her shoulder, and shimmied her body through the small opening. She stood on the second rung and pulled the window back down into place. Jack said that every second that she confused the attackers meant time when they weren’t watching her running the kids across the field.

As she scrambled to the ground, she counted heads. Sixteen. They were all out of the building and farther away from the crazy person wielding the weapons. Her ears, primed to take in sound and their slightest nuances, picked up on gunning engines, and then the solid application of brakes in the parking lot. Surely, that was the good guys come to rescue them. Maybe she should run the students towards the parking lot instead of the woods. Suz looked up and took in all of the windows that they’d have to race under, and it seemed like a dangerous gauntlet.

Jack had said that once she was deploying her escape, she needed to move forward as planned. He insisted that second guessing would lead to indecision and indecision could lead to deaths.

Deaths. Shit.

Suz ran forward dropping the line beside her students whispering, “Grab hold of the rope. Don’t let go for any reason. We’re all together. Everything is going to be okay.” When she got up to Miranda, Suz pointed at the large oak across the field. “Miranda do you see the pink dot on the tree?” Jack had put a long piece of pink duct tape on the trunk at a child’s eye level. At this distance it was reduced to a speck of bright color. That it was still in place was testament to Suz that there were angels with them.

Miranda nodded.

“Sweetheart, I need you to hold the rope and run to the pink dot.”

Miranda didn’t need to be told twice. She seemed very glad to pelt in the opposite direction of the gunfire. Suz let Miranda set the pace. It was slow. These little six-year-old legs were only but so long and could only move but so fast.

Why did Jack want her to have the children run across such a broad expanse in the open? True he had told her that at this angle, they were all but invisible from any of the windows at the school, but the word that looped through her brain was “unprotected”. Suz tried to replace it with repetitive base notes of, “God will help us. Please. Help us.” It didn’t seem to dull her anxiety.

Almost immediately, Lolli fell to the ground. Lolli was their class’s fairy-child. A precious little girl who was as light as a breeze, with the air of fragility like the gossamer wings of a dragonfly. Suz scooped her up and set her back on her feet, but Lolli reached down and touched the plastic supports on her ankles and started to cry. Without further thought, Suz swung the little one up on her hip like a toddler and continued her slow jog besides her students. “Good job,” she whisper-cheered them on. “You’re doing great. Keep going guys. I’m so proud of you.”

Slow. Their little first-grade legs made them so slow. The woods didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. Suz glanced over her shoulder at the school’s main building. Why would Jack have her make these babies run across a field like this? She asked herself for the hundredth time. This was crazy.

Another child, Greyson, went down, pulling the rope to a stop. Tad, her big boy, the one who always reminded her of Jack for his intelligence and kindness–her class’s gentle giant—looked around and saw the problem. He ran back to where Suz was bent over, lifting the second child.

“I’ve got him, Miss Molloy,” Tad said as he hefted his classmate up and pulled Greyson’s arm around his shoulder. The two hobbled together, and their slow caterpillar run continued. It was tortuous.

Suz had no idea what was happening at the school. Time played out oddly in her brain. She felt as if things were going their normal terrestrial pace and at the same time things were slowed way down. It gave her plenty of time to wonder if abandoning her classroom meant she wasn’t there to help with the other students. Wonder if there was a muzzle pointed their way right now. A sniper could pick off her little children, one after the other, right in front of her, as they trudged onward, growing slower as they fatigued. In one more step, the bullets could come flying. Nowhere to hide. They had little energy left to move. What would she do? Fall to the ground and crawl? But movement caught the eye. Fall to the ground and lay still? But the kids were all dressed in red and bright pinks – like the centers of sixteen bulls-eyes.

Suz scanned the faces of her students who all seemed to have their expressions frozen in single-minded determination. How odd that looked for their cherubic cheeks, still plump with baby fat, to suddenly be held with concentrated ferocity. They were babies. Just babies. They hadn’t had a chance at life yet. She needed to save them. Suz’s heart squeezed down so hard that she almost cried out. She sucked up a lungful of air. “You’re doing it,” she whispered along the line. “Great job. Keep going.”

Suz tossed a glance over her shoulder at the school where screaming could now be heard, seeping through the cracks in the windows, though the shooting seemed to have stopped.

The wail of sirens rose up over the hills, and Suz knew that the first responders were hurling toward them from all directions. They seemed to be gathering and holding near the off-ramp. She wondered why they weren’t coming closer to save the children.

Her class was getting closer to the tree line. Suz could see patterns in the bark. Soon they’d be safely out of view. She needed to get the kids to Jack’s cache fast. They had left, as Jack had instructed, without coats. But in this cold, they were escaping from one life-or-death situation just to find themselves in another. Soon the kids would by hypothermic.

Maggie broke off the line, sprinting back to the school, calling, “My sister! My sister’s in there.” Suz tore off after her, bouncing poor Lolli against her hip bone. Lolli hunkered down and wrapped noose-like arms around Suz’s neck, cutting off her airflow. Suz reached out a rigid hand to grab at Maggie and ran harder. As Suz got closer, she clawed at the air until she caught hold of Maggie’s ponytail. Suz yanked the hair backward like she was reining in a wild stallion. Maggie fell back on her bottom and opened her mouth to screech. Suz knew from past experience just how loud Maggie could be. Without forethought, Suz reached down and wrapped her arm around the girl’s head and mouth and pressed Maggie into her hip. In that position, Suz rose, Lolli on her right hip, and a partially dangling Maggie on her left, sprinted back into the tree line where her students waited.