I am really going to get the person who makes announcements at our school. Now, every time I hear the “telltale beep”, my heart lurches.

This afternoon when it was raining, my heart lurched when the announcements came on… to say that we had rainy day dismissal.

This morning, my heart lurched when the announcements came on… to say that we needed to do attendance.

Yesterday. I was in the middle of designing my Mathopoly math game when suddenly the announcements came on. I was not paying attention.

It murmured, “…..perimeter… secure… teachers… lockdown…”

That was enough to put my nerves into lockdown itself because of an previous incident that began with an announcement.

The teacher was taking this seriously, unlike the last time something like this happened. She pushed back the big round table so that there was a small little hideout in our small reading corner.

She called everyone over. Nobody was talking.

We sat down there tense, and nobody talked.

The teacher using whispers began to explain.

“The point of a perimeter lockdown means that, like, let’s say a bad guy came in, and wanted to kill everybody. We would want to get down and make him believe we weren’t here, so he wouldn’t kill us…”

The teacher was interrupted now by a student. “You mean like the VTM?”

“The what?” we all said, much to the teacher’s annoyance.

“The VTM. You know, Virginia Tech Massacre?”

Now we were all annoyed until somebody said, “This is a drill, right?”

The teacher looked at that person. “Yes, but…”

Someone else piped in, “Because if a bad guy was here, they wouldn’t just say “perimeter lockdown”, would they?”

A knot inside my stomach tightened and loosened at the same time, quite like the feeling you get when two people tug on either of your arms.

We sat in silence, except for the occasional stupid question (“why do kindergartners get snacks?”)

Nobody said anything. Occasionally, there would be a cough that was immediately stifled.

Finally, the telltale beep rang again.

I jumped with relief and with fright. Tense, I grabbed a table leg as I listened.

“Students may now return to normal activity.”

It was as if a thousand pounds of weight was lifted from my shoulders. I jumped back to my Mathopoly game.

My friend groaned, because he was going to play my game, and it was devilishly hard.