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It was a typical Wednesday morning when our principal's voice crackled through the intercom, cutting through Mrs. Peterson's chemistry lecture. "Attention students and staff. We need all students to remain in their current classrooms immediately. This is not a drill."
The room fell silent. Mrs. Peterson's face went pale as she quickly locked the door and pulled down the window shade. My heart started racing. In all my four years at Lincoln High, we'd never had an unscheduled lockdown.
For the next three hours, we sat in darkness. No phones allowed. No talking. Just waiting. The only sounds were distant sirens and helicopters overhead. Sarah, who sat next to me, was visibly shaking.
Around 1 PM, Mrs. Peterson cracked the door and spoke quietly with someone outside. When she turned back to us, tears were streaming down her face.
"Students," she whispered, "something terrible happened at Roosevelt Elementary this morning. There was an incident involving one of our former students."
My stomach dropped. Roosevelt was where my little sister Aaliyah attended fourth grade. I'd walked her to school that morning like always.
At 3 PM, they finally let us go with police escorts. My mom was waiting, her face red from crying.
"Aaliyah's okay," she said immediately, but her voice shook. "But honey, there was a shooting at her school. Three teachers are dead."
The news broke that evening. Marcus Chen, a 19-year-old who'd graduated from our school last year, had entered Roosevelt Elementary with a shotgun. He'd specifically targeted Mrs. Williams' classroom, Aaliyah's classroom. But something had stopped him.
According to witnesses, Marcus had been walking through the hallways when he encountered someone in the main office who talked him out of continuing. Security footage showed a twenty-minute conversation before Marcus surrendered his weapon.
The person who stopped him was David Kim, a 23-year-old substitute counselor covering at Roosevelt that day. David had somehow convinced Marcus to give up his plan, potentially saving dozens of children's lives.
What wasn't announced until Thursday was that David Kim wasn't just any substitute counselor. He was Marcus's older brother.
The media painted it as heroic, brother saving brother, preventing worse tragedy. But when I saw David being interviewed Friday night, something about his expression bothered me. He looked haunted, not relieved. He kept saying: "I should have known sooner."
That weekend, while scrolling through social media, I found Marcus's old posts from high school. The warning signs were all there. Anger, isolation, posts about wanting to "make them pay" for years of bullying. Most disturbing were his comments about Roosevelt Elementary specifically, writing about how the teachers there had "failed him" when he was younger.
But buried in his posts from six months ago was something that made my blood freeze. A direct message exchange with someone whose profile I recognized immediately. Someone who'd been asking Marcus about his "plans" and offering encouragement.
The profile belonged to David Kim.
Monday morning, our principal made another announcement: "Students, we need to inform you that David Kim, the counselor credited with stopping Wednesday's attack, has been arrested. Police have discovered evidence that he may have known about his brother's intentions in advance."
The truth was devastating. David hadn't heroically stopped Marcus. He'd orchestrated the entire incident, planning to be the hero who "talked down" his brother after a carefully controlled shooting. The three teachers who died weren't random victims. They were specifically chosen because they had disciplined David during his own troubled time at Roosevelt years earlier.
What haunts me most is remembering how David looked during that interview, saying "I should have known sooner."