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I couldn’t tear away That was the dangerous thing about drealed in it all People naturally let their guard dohen they slept, so h, I didn’t even need a touch to be drawn into it

I couldn’t s beneath the old classrooround Auntil I was off the bed coirls ju huddle at the center of the rooood head taller and four years older than the others, tried to get them to crouch in a line beneath the ith no success Her ar sleeves of her si

And then, the alar open

The sound the bellas the White Noise, its pitch stretched and distorted by the dreairls made a break for the door It didn’t see, or that it didn’t have a visible source

In the place of neat, orderly lines was reen, navy, and yellow uniforhts were on, fire alar the wall I was thrown into the crushing river of bodies, all headed in the same direction--the direction of the smoke

My vision blurred with tears and forced the breath out of h to see so out the blue cabinets fro them over in front of the silver double doors at the other end of the hallway

We weren’t evacuating at all We were escaping

My vision ih the other set of doors and into the cra not fro flames but two small black canisters--the kind PSFs kept hooked on their belts, waiting to be thrown into a crowd of unruly kids

So the PSFs set them off? No, that wasn’t possible It was et the alar and the doors open That was probably the extent of their eency protocol

We were trapped in that stairwell, our bodies pressed against everyone else’s in one shivering mass of nerves and exhilaration I tried to keep my eyes forward and feel for the steps under my feet, but it was hard not to see what the darkness and flashing lights were doing to the other kids Soe of passing out, but soairl under the tide of hands and heads She edged in the botto on her toes, her green uniforency lights, and her arm was above her head, outstretched--toward me?

The nition I saw her rab her hand, but the swar forward By the time I turned around, she had disappeared, too

I didn’t see one PSF or camp controller--not until ere at the base of the stairwell, stepping over, but round Their faces were swollen into bruised round under them

Soes and sent the outside, into what looked like a wasteland of white snow The ground was unnaturally bright under the hts that switched on as the pitch of the alar siren

Once ere out those final doors, ere running

The snoas knee-deep, andbeyond their paper-thin uniforms--most of them hadn’t even remembered to put on their shoes Tiny flakes floated into the deep intersecting lines of footprints, and for athe way the snoas neither flying nor falling Just hovering there, like a held breath Lighting up like a thousand fireflies under the cahts

And then the spell was broken, shattered with the first gunshot

And then it was bullets flying over us, not snow

The screa from the throats of hundreds of kids Five--ten--fifteen--it was impossible to count the kids that suddenly pitched forward, falling face-first into the snow, screaan to creep through the snow like spilled ink spreading, expanding, devouring I reached up to my cheek, to the wetness there, and when I pulled ht through a spray of blood I was covered in it--so down my cheeks and off ht corner of the chain-link fence surrounding the old school I threw a look back over , to the dozens of black figures on top of its gray slate roof, to the dozensout from the first story s and doors When I turned back, the field in front of me was covered in heaps of every color--Yellow, Blue, Green And red So, sobarriers that others had to ju httowardat the air Helpup over her lips, help ate at this edge of the camp; I could see it now that I ithin a few hundred feet of it What I couldn’t see as causing the backup of kids, eren’t dashing through the gate to get to freedom With a jolt, I realized there were almost three times as many kids down in the snow behind ed forith a unified wail, hundreds of hands straining forward My size ht my way up to the front, where three older boys in blue unifor to keep the crowd of kids back froate itself and the one- host to three people: an unconscious PSF, Liam, and Chubs