This Is Not a Drill

This Is Not a Drill Read Free

Book: This Is Not a Drill Read Free
Author: Beck McDowell
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little town. In Hensonville, a new traffic light is a big event. Things like this belong on CNN. My head feels light and the room tilts a little.
    Mrs. Campbell inhales sharply. Her eyes move from the gun to Stutts’s face. She slowly holds up her hands like in the movies and says, “Mr. Stutts, please put that away so we can talk.” Her teacher-voice has gone trembly. “I’m sure we can resolve this without resorting to . . .” Her voice trails off, but the word
violence
floats in the air with the specks of dust suspended in the slanting morning rays.
    And then, for the life of me, I can’t tell you what makes me do it. In a move that’s totally uncharacteristic of me, I pull away from Jake and take a step toward Stutts.
    “No,” I say without any thought besides making this go away. “Don’t do this. You can’t—”
    “You want a piece of this?” Stutts yells—turning to point his weapon
straight at me
.
    My stomach turns inside out as I stare down the barrel of the gun. All I can think is—
my mother was right. I’m going to die at the hands of a homicidal maniac. Her warnings about strangers have finally come true.

CHAPTER 2
    JAKE
    I SWEAR IT’S ONE OF THE HARDEST things I’ve ever done—keeping still. And what’s up with Emery, arguing with this guy? As much as I want to jump him, I know it’s insanity to take on a man with a gun.
    It’s one of those situations where any wrong move can send things in a direction I don’t want to think about. My dad calls it the Law of Unintended Consequences—you can’t predict the chain reaction of disaster one small deed can set in motion, so you have to think before you act.
    I know it’s better to feel like a wuss than to do the wrong thing, but it really pisses me off, this guy coming into a room full of little kids and pulling a stunt like this. What kinda freak does that? These kids are gonna need therapy for the rest of their lives. Hell,
I
might need therapy—shit’ll mess you up.
    “Mr. Stutts, you’re going to cause yourself a lot of problems,” Mrs. Campbell says. “This isn’t going to—”
    “Just shut up!” he yells. “Shut up so I can think.”
    I calculate the distance between me and the gun, even though I know it’s not worth the risk. I can’t do anything that might hurt Emery, the teacher, or these kids. They’re watching us, counting on us to help them, but all we can do is wait silently for Stutts’s next move.
    Before we started teaching here, little kids really got on my nerves. Like those obnoxious brats in those skate shoes—Heelys—that come at you in the mall like flying monkeys from
The Wizard of Oz
and then swerve around you at the last minute? I freakin’ hate that.
    I only signed on for tutoring because, on the two days a week you’re not at the elementary school, the French teacher doesn’t really expect you to show up in class—kind of an understood senior perk. In my book, a sleeping-in privilege is a big incentive to do anything.
    I didn’t think Mrs. Sherrill was gonna let me do it at first. She’s always on my case for not doing my French homework. I had to turn on the charm to convince her to let me tutor. She finally agreed, but I wouldn’t be her pick to defend a bunch of first graders against a nutjob with a handgun—especially after my run-in with the local po-lice this summer.
    Hell, I wouldn’t be my pick, either. Anytime a school shooting story comes on the news, I always think about what I’d do if I was there. I wanna believe the next-day headlines would read H IGH S CHOOL S TUDENT S AVES L IVES OF C LASSMATES . I always hope I’d be the guy who leaps in front of the speeding bullet to save the beautiful girl. Or at least maybe the dude who talks the bad guy down and gets him to hand over his weapon. Okay, I’m not gonna lie—I just don’t wanna be the kid who crawls out from under a desk with pee stains on the front of his pants after the shooter leaves the building.
    My dad

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