The Rumors

*BRING!!!* *BRING!!!* *BRING!!!*

I sighed heavily as the fire alarm rang. We were just about to go into the dark room
to learn how to develop film. I had been excited about developing film for days but I suppose it was just my luck. Olivia and I exchanged exasperated glances as the majority of the students raised their fists in triumph as if they'd been the ones to pull the fire alarm. If they hated photography so much, then why take the class?

"Everyone out, " Mr. Andyl dismissed us casually. He didn't believe in order and usually just let us run around the classroom as long as we did our work and didn't bother him too much.

The class dispersed into the hallway along with the 200 other students of my small school, some in single files with their classmates and others in their practice shorts after having come from the gymnasium. I listened silently to the other students as they whispered rumors of a bomb threat. Olivia seemed to be listening intently.

"Do you think it's true?" She asked, her face crinkled with worry.

"We'll find out when we get outside," I answered. No need to worry about rumors. They were almost never true anyways.

The entire school filed out into the football field to wait. Me and Olivia found our friends hanging out at the west side of the field nearest the street.  It seemed they'd let the bomb threat rumors get to them. When I reached them, everyone was silent.

"Hey guys, What's wrong?"

"Everyone says the fire drill is actually a bomb threat" Melissa answered.

I laughed. "No surprise there. You all know everyone makes a big deal about these sort of things!" I tried to reason with them.

They all looked at each other cautiously. Kelly nodded to Melissa. Melissa turned to me again.

"Kelly overheard Mrs. Winston talking on her phone right before the alarm rung. She was talking all urgent-like and it sounded like she was taking orders from Ms. Chapa, the vice principal. Kelly heard her ask if her help was needed to ‘evacuate' the special ed department. She left the classroom right afterwards and Mr. Emmy came in to watch the class. This is Mr. Emmy's off period..." She paused a moment as the idea clicked in my head. Mr. Emmy hated doing anything during his off period. He wouldn't even accept students who had to retake a test.

"So, what exactly does that mean?" I asked curiously.

"Well, she probably would have gotten a sub but everyone knows substitutes are incompetent during an emergency." she replied knowingly and rolled her eyes. "She must have known that it was something big and told Mr. Emmy to watch her class instead. God knows, he knows what he‘s doing. And the special ed deparment never evacuates unless it's a hazard for them to be in the school. They always get calls from the front office so they'll know if it's for real or not."

"So," I thought about it for a moment, "all we know is that this is for real. It could still be a fire for all we know." I tried leading them into my thought process.

"Only one way to find out!" Kelly said with a twinkle in her eye. " Margaret, would you do the honors?"

"Of course. To whom?" Margaret's voice was like a little girl's. Everyone knew her voice was actually much different but she had to use everything at her disposal to seduce one of the student teachers and find out the truth of what was going on."

" How about Freddie?" Maya offered politely.

" No, we already tried Freddie at last week's pep rally. He wouldn't say a word about the surprise the teachers had for the students!"  I answered as I fondly remembered the event. Many of the teachers (only the ones with no self-respect, of course) had come out dancing to My Humps with nothing on but Hoochie clothes. Yes, even the men. We all shuddered together as we recalled. Men in short-shorts were one thing we agreed we would never want to see again.

"We could try again!" She insisted, certain that it would be different this time.

" I'm up for it. Freddie is cute..." Margaret accepted the challenge.

"Okay, Leeza and Olivia should go with her. You two have the best memories. Tell us everything!" Mamie spoke up. She loved stories, with LOTS of details.

Kelly pointed us in the direction of the student teachers and reminded Margaret not to lay it on too thick. "Don't forget what happened last time..." she laughed. Last time Andrew, another of the student teachers, had asked if she wanted to go to lunch with him sometime. She'd politely declined. Margaret wasn't a slut at all, but boys considered her extremely attractive and she liked to use it to get what she wanted. That included extra bathroom passes, lunch money for her friends and even asking them if they could make an absence or two disappear.

We walked near to where the tennis court behind the football field was and I sat down near a tree to play my role. Olivia sat down next to me and we pretended to chat secretively about the fire drill. The student teachers all congregated nearby and we chattered on until Margaret finally spotted Freddie just finishing talking with his friend, Daniel, behind the bleachers. We waited patiently until Daniel left.

"Freddie!" Margaret called. She ran to him as we stood up slowly and dusted ourselves off to buy her some time alone to work her magic. By the time we walked over to Margaret, she was done flirting and was already on the topic of the fire drill.

"We've been out here for a long time." she prompted subtly. He nodded stupidly, wondering why such a pretty girl was talking to him, I supposed. " I wonder if it's just a fire drill..." she put on her scrunched up thinking face, a cute and genius move that would make any guy want to tell her every secret in the world, according to Mathew Myers. I had seen it work time and time again on many boys, and once even on a girl...

"It's not." He said too quickly, blushing in embarrassment. " Well, actually, I'm not supposed to tell anyone. The principal herself told us not to cause any unnecessary panic"

I looked down to cover the shocked expression on my face. Unnecessary panic? Who did they think we were? Orson Wells' paranoid audience?

"Oh no! Is it that bad? Please tell me! I'm so worried..." Margaret looked as if she was about to cry. Another heartbreaking tactic she used only when absolutely needed.

"It's okay, Margaret!" Olivia was very practiced in our information-finding maneuvers. She put an arm around her and patted her shoulder. "Let's go somewhere else. You don't need to hear these lies." she shot Freddie an evil glance and began leading Margaret away. Freddie looked hurt.

"Wait! Come back. I wasn't lying! I'll tell you," he looked around but no one was paying him any attention. " You can't tell anyone I told you" I noted the loophole in his argument. We could tell everyone if we wanted to, but we couldn't say who told us.

"I promise" Margaret moved in closer as though she wanted to protect his innocence in the matter. Olivia and I automatically moved in closer and prepared to memorize the conversation.

" Well," he lamely began. " Apparently the school's been getting calls off the hook these last few days. They were all from the same person but the call was untraceable. Whoever it was used some kind of strange voice system and every time he or she called, he or she said they were gonna bomb the school this week but they never said the exact day. Then they'd hang up and call again 20 minutes later to say the same thing again. They told the police about it but they said that bombers don't call that many times and it was probably just a prank."

"Then what happened just now?" I asked. "If they think it's just a prank, why have we been outside this long?"

"This morning they got another call. Right before they rang the alarm. "Today at ten" was all the person said. So obviously, they wanted to get everyone out of the school long before the bomber threatened to blow it up. But they had to do it in an orderly fashion. The special education kids got out first so the other students wouldn't panic and knock them down on their way out."

"That's typical" Olivia believed in equality and didn't like the fact that the mentally challenged students were deemed more important than all the others.

"I heard something else too...but you might get more scared."

"Tell us!" Margaret pleaded.

"I've also been hearing rumors of a drive-by shooting while we're outside. I heard it from a second-hand, he-said, she-said source, but I thought you might like to know."

A drive-by shooting...and with my friends all lined up against the street?

"We need to get back" I said hurriedly.

"Thanks again, Freddie!" Margaret walked away and waved. Freddie looked dumbstruck. He was probably beating himself up mentally for not asking her to lunch. Hah.

But we really needed to get back to our friends. I wanted to get them away from the street just in case. We half-ran back and told our friends to follow us away from the street. They said they wouldn't budge until we told them everything.

"Come ON, you guys. We need to get away from the street!!" I repeated frustrated. They noticed my urgency and finally began following Olivia to a spot closer to the portable buildings.

Suddenly, a shiny blue car turned up the street. The windows were lightly tinted but I could still make out a white man of about 40 years in the front seat of the car and another younger man, perhaps 25 in the passenger seat. The windows were down. The man in the passenger seat had a glinty black object in his hands. A pistol.

"EVERYONE DOWN!" I screamed at the top of my voice, thinking quickly. Everyone around me looked towards the blue car, and seeing the pistol aimed out the window, screamed, ducked their heads and stampeded away from the street. I was the only one still standing straight, so shocked I couldn't move my feet. The sound of a gunshot knocked me out of my gaze and I turned and ran from the street towards the others. I tripped once on a clump of dirt but I had enough sense to try to make out the numbers on the license plate. But they weren't there. It had been unscrewed. The car made a last turn and disappeared down the street. Shit...someone had almost murdered my best friends and all I knew was 40 year old, 25 year old and blue car. Not much evidence, I  thought. I reached all of the student body crouching near the portable buildings. Anthony, my boyfriend, saw me and stood up, his face shocked. Mr. Sampton ordered him to crouch back down and told him that the shooters could come back but he looked at me in horror. Everyone followed his gaze.

" Leeza! You're bleeding!" I spotted Emily in the crowd.

" Nah, I just scraped my knee!" I called back. Anthony came over to me.

" It's not your knee. Look." he gravely pointed to my shirt right above the right side of my stomach. I looked down, wondering if I had scraped myself there too.

I hadn't. I was staring down at a gunshot wound. It had pierced my abdomen and the blood was currently beginning to run down the edge of my skirt. I couldn't feel it at first. But now the realization that it was there hit me and I felt a surge of the most intense pain I would ever experience. My mind swam with useless worried chatter and screams. The last thing I remember was two familiar hands supporting me, a light kiss and salty water drops on my face. And Anthony whispering in my ear.

" I love you." His voice cracked with sorrow and he could barely speak. "I promise you'll be okay."

It was the last lie I'd ever hear.