Editor’s note: The writer is an eighth-grader at Middlebury Union Middle School, and she produced this reflection in response to the incident last month when a MUMS student was alleged to have been planning a school shooting.
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Fear creeps in. As I’m sitting at my desk, it spreads. The fear that I never thought I would know.
And the adults pretend nothing has happened; we are told nothing. But still, the fear infects us.
The fear that a classmate could have killed us. The fear that weapons were to be brought into our school. I imagine the sound echoing, the blood spraying, the bodies falling. I think of the children who have already died, the students who walked into a normal day at school and never left.
And the fear creeps in, the fear that after all this, after all the blood and screams and tears, those in charge will pick guns over the children.
Ainsleigh Johnson
Middlebury