tribute

We're lying in the dark, under the rickety tables in the back of the drama room.

It's the simplest of all drills. Fire drills and tornado drills, we have to march, you know? We have to crowd in the bathrooms, or line up in the parking lots. There's effort. There's movement. Lockdowns, though, you just sit. You turn off the lights, and you sit, and wait.

Lockdowns stress the hell out of me. Nothing else really does. It's the peace and quiet, you know? You're sitting there hiding and you can't make a sound, you can't laugh it off, can't joke it away. Because then the imaginary gunman will hear you. Whether he hears you or not, though, he knows most of the classrooms have kids in them. He is not fooled by the dark.

It's the beginning of the Shakespeare class, in the morning, and we're lying way in the back of the room, against the wall, on our backs, staring up at the bottoms of tables. The doors are closed, and the lights are off, and I'm thinking about last year's lockdown drill, how I had volunteered to be the "classroom ninja," standing guard at the door by the scissors drawer, and how I didn't know how to fight a gunman with scissors, so I had to google it, and the teacher thought that was funny. I didn't tell anyone I was so useless. They trusted me with their lives every day in that class, or they just didn't think about it.

I'm lying on my back, staring up at the table, with one knee raised in the illusion that I could get up and run if I had to, and Charlotte is lying next to me, on her side. Her heart isn't like mine, it panics and worries, but this time it is slow and sleepy and peaceful. Mine is typically steadier and calmer than hers, but just this once, I'm scared. I'm not scared of an imaginary gunman, I'm scared of the world we live in, and Charlotte reaches out and wraps her hand around my rib cage.

She is the safest thing in the entire building. We are in the safest room, with the best hiding corner, and the thickest walls. We are also in the back of this room, with at least twenty kids in front of us, curled up on the floor, sitting against the walls, whispering to each other and playing games on their phones. Charlotte's optimism is like handmade armor. She melted that metal. She welded it. She put it on herself.

She buries her face in my shoulder.

It's been fifteen minutes or so, and I'm thinking about the editorial I wrote last year about how lockdowns are like duck-and-cover drills. I'm remembering how one kid asked the cop pointed questions about locks and bullets and bricks and backs. I'm remembering how the cop looked sad. I have my hand on her elbow, and I'm thinking about bombs dropping, hiding under tables like this, and how all it really takes to kill a bunch of people is wanting to. That's all it really takes. There's nothing else we can do. Of course they'll know to shoot towards the floor. Of course they'll know we're in the classrooms, even though the lights are off. Of course they'll be able to open the door.

I'm remembering how Mr. Wood told me I should get that editorial published.

I'm remembering how I never did.

Someone somewhere is snoring very loudly, and Charlotte plays with the fabric of my shirt absent-mindedly, and it is dark, but not that dark. It is quiet, but not that quiet. Someone near me lashes out in the dark, and there is a sudden bang, like a high-pitched explosion, something hard hitting the metal leg of the table. No one is snoring anymore. "Oh, crap," someone whispers. "I think I got coffee in your hair, Shady."

"It's okay," I whisper back. "I've had kids throw up in my hair. Now I just get to smell like coffee." A few kids giggle appreciatively as I reach back and feel the completely underestimated sticky wetness at the back of my head. It is dark, but not that dark, and the snoring starts again. The floor is comfortable and I am tired but I am too scared of the world we live in to sleep.

No one asks the cop any questions this time. We just keep lying in the dark.

The floor is terrifically dirty, but we aren't thinking about that, and one of my hands is on Charlotte's knee and the other is on her elbow and she is the safest thing in the entire building because I googled how to stab a gunman with scissors almost a year ago. "Most schools in America won't have to use these drills," she will tell me later. "Most husbands don't kill their wives."

In the margin of a used copy of The Things They Carried, on page 31, after the sentence, "But the war wasn't all that way,"  there is a single written note which states, simply, "But enough of it was."

Enough of them will. Enough of them do.

So we lie in the dark and we think about dying. The drama teacher pulls on the ends of his shirt collar, which is what he does when he is nervous or bored, and I can't reach the Snapple cap in my pocket, which I pop when I am nervous or bored. It is dark, but not that dark, and I crane my neck backwards towards the door, which is locked, but which might as well be unlocked, because we don't play rock-paper-scissors with guns, do we?

We don't know how.

Most husbands don't kill their wives.

She welded her own optimism and she buries her face in my shoulder.

It is dark, but not that dark.

leafbug

We had sweet potato fries for dinner last night.

My mother had worked pretty hard on the meal, harder than she had in weeks, and cooking meals is sort of her creative platform. There was chicken and salad and a big bowl of avocado sauce: not guacamole, but avocado sauce.

None of us had ever seen anything like it, but my mother's leaps of creativity are almost always successful, so we trust them. If not, it is only for having gone too far, which, in the art world, is usually a good thing.

She was in a fairly bad mood, because no one had been brave enough to pour enough of the green foamy sauce onto their food, and because she had worked hard on it. My siblings and stepfather and I were eagerly reassuring her of her talent and heart, and our love and appreciation for her and all that she does. She pouted and rolled her eyes and passive-aggressively stabbed at her plate with her fork.

"I found a bullet," my brother said suddenly and unexpectedly, producing out of his breast pocket a small round copper object of significant size and shape.

"Where did you find that?!" my stepdad asked, suddenly offended at its presence.

"On Green Street," he said, turning the bullet around in his fingers, searching desperately for affirmation and praise for his discovery. "It makes me wonder, you know, why was it there? What size is it, what gun, you know? Who fired it? Why?"

"Put it away!"

"Okay." He tucked it back into his pocket, with all the shame and sorrow in his eyes of a child whose refreshingly strange excitement has been shot down.

The dog was scratching at the backdoor, and my stepdad opened it and spoke to her in his special dog voice, which I have always found demeaning, even though most people do it. He walked out and closed the door, while my mother glared at the bowl half full of avocado sauce which would not be eaten.

My stepdad returned a few moments later with his hands cupped together, face filled with childish excitement as the dog slipped into the house from behind him. "Guys, guess what I found!"

"What?!" The kids kicked their little legs under the table, grinning and laughing.

"A leafbug!" he said, holding onto the edge of its wings with his fingers so it didn't fly away.

The three children cheered. "A leafbug?" my mom said, turning around. "Hey, I wanna hold it!" He placed it into her hands, and the kids climbed off the benches and crowded around her.

They marveled at its smallness and color, its delicate wings, the unbelievable sureness of life in its little green frame. My brother reached his hand out to pick it up, and my mother told him, "Hey, it's my turn!" They were all just six years old again, fighting over holding a bug at the dinner table.

"Come on, Heather," my stepdad said. "It might fly off."

Right as he said that, the bug spread its leaves and flew clumsily and noisily into the air over the table. The girls screamed, and the boy shouted, and my stepdad scoffed, "Heather!" and the bug landed in the middle of the almost-empty pan of fries, folding its wings, embarrassed.

"See?" my mother said. "It didn't go very far."

No one did anything but sit back down and finish eating. We watched the insect wander around the pan for a while. "I think it's missing a leg," my stepdad said, because it was limping like a cripple, and we all turned our heads to look it over. Sure enough, one of its back legs was missing. We made small sympathetic sounds, watching it limp around the pan, and I made a joke about having a leafbug over for dinner, and my stepdad said I should take it outside.

"Grab it by the wings," he said.

"I'm not going to do that," I apologized, and scooped it into my hands, explaining about damaging moths' wings and how maybe leafbugs are similar in that regard, and he nodded.

I sat outside and opened my hands, letting the leafbug wander around my fingers. It was an impressive little beast, really. Its tiny body heaved in and out, catching its breath from the adventure, twitching its antennae to taste the sweet outdoor air again. It crawled to the tips of my fingers and nibbled the potato grease off of its little hands and feet, one by one, taking its time before lifting off  over the fence and away.