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I can't believe this is happening to me. That was the only thought that entered Avery Coldstons mind as he watched his best friend get shot in the head. There were screams from some of the other hostages in the room but Avery was to shell shocked to do anything more than blink.

He had now been locked in this stupid English room for three hours. In the beginning there were 10 kids in each class not including the a** holes with the guns, now there were only seven. He recognized the kid with the gun. He was in his homeroom. James something. Avery couldn't seem to wrap his mind around the fact that his school was being held hostage by a bunch of punk losers and that it seemed like every hour on the hour someone was getting shot.

How could this happen to him? He started to wonder about his other friends and his girlfriend Kate. They'd been dating for seven months now. A new record. He started to think about what she'd look like dead. Immediately he tried to push the thought from his mind, but it seemed like the image was burned into his retinas.

It doesn't matter anyway; he thought to himself, none of us are going to survive. He suddenly felt overwhelmingly claustrophobic. He looked at the clock. It was 10:59. James something went right up to a girl whose name Avery could never remember, and pulled the trigger. BANG! Another life lost. Another headstone in this graveyard of a school.

* * *

Why me, thought Kate Relaquart as she sat it the back of the room listening to another gunshot go off. The events of the morning ran thru her mind. She couldn’t believe how naive she’d been to think that today would be the best day of her life. That was before the first shooting. She thought maybe it was all a joke. How stupid she had been

It all started early this morning when her boyfriend Avery picked her up for school like he always did everyday except today there were seven of roses on the passenger seat of his convertible. A symbol for each month that they’d been dating.

She of course had been overjoyed by the unexpected gift. She smiled and asked who the roses were for. He looked at her and smiled back and said “The best girlfriend in the world” She really wasn’t expecting a gift. In fact she was half expecting him not to show up after the fight they’d had the night before. She couldn’t even remember what it was about now.

The talked and laughed and kissed occasionally as they rode to school. Just before she got out to head to first period he stopped her and said, “ I love you”. She smiled even wider than she had before and told him she loved him to. With that they headed to their lockers.

That was when the announcement came over the loud speaker for all students to report to the gym for an emergency meeting. That’s when hundreds of students were shot and the rest who tried to leave the gym found out in their horror the doors were all locked. The remaining two hundred or so were then split evenly between the seventeen gunmen. The gunman then proceeded to take them to take them to separate classrooms. That was when the shooting started. You could here the guns go off like clockwork.

She glanced at the clock. It was 10:59. Time for another shooting. She watched as the guy got up and started walking around the room with the gun out. He was walking towards her and it seemed like he stopped right in front of her.

She could feel her heart stop. She was sure she’d probably die of a heart attack before she’d die of a gunshot to the head. She watched breathlessly as he raised the gun in what seemed like slow motion. She closed her eyes in anticipation and her the sound of the gun going off. She heard a scream. She opened her eyes and saw that the girl who had been sitting to her left now face down on the tile in a pool of her own blood.

She gasped as relief flowed thru her veins. Then she wondered why she was even relieved in the fist place. What’s the point of postponing the inevitable? Sooner or later she was going to die here. Whether it be the next hour or in the next seven. She felt like she was playing Russian roulette except instead of one gun cartridge being filled they all were. And she did not like the odds of that.