---

Thoughts and Prayers

by Meg Elison

---

he’s over by the gym

Maddie’s phone buzzed once and she glanced down and saw the text. She had long schooled her face to not react to notifications, but she had no idea what this was about. When Mrs. Bethel turned her back, Maddie carefully slid out her phone.

The text had come from Daniel, her friend from first period. They often split a large iced latte in the morning, sharing their secret coffee obsession that they both hid from their parents.

Thumb flying in silence, Maddie texted back: ???

Mrs. Bethel’s class was on the far east side of campus, on the basement floor. The gym was on the far west end, so the sound of it didn’t reach them until it was too late.

he’s headed toward the library lockdown your class

Maddie’s hair stood up on her arms. She was already rising from her seat. A few of her classmates looked at her as she stood up, especially her two besties, Sloane and Graciela. She looked at both and silently made her hand into a gun.

“As you can see from the change over time, this species is—” Mrs. Bethel stopped talking when the lights were turned off.

“Did the power go out?”

A few seconds later, two phone flashlights turned on, followed by a score of others.

“Lower those, please.” In the shaky beams, Mrs. Bethel had a hand up in front of her glasses, white with the glare, searching to see who had done this.

“Madeline? Did you turn off the lights?”

Maddie was still standing by the switch. “We have to lock down,” she said, but her voice was so shaky that it barely carried to the last row.

Mrs. Bethel shook her head. “What?”

The sound of gunshots, far-off popping noises that might have been anything, if the room hadn’t gone silent, if Maddie hadn’t gotten the warning.

“Lockdown,” Mrs. Bethel said, immediately. “Good job with the lights, Madeline. Sloane, Graciela, please help me move this cabinet in front of the door. Good job, girls. Just like we practiced. That’s great.”

The class was very quiet. Every ninth grader in this room had been doing these drills since they were little enough to call the problem a “bad guy” instead of an “active shooter.” Someone was wheezing, but the sound was cut with the pressurized squiff of an inhaler.

More popping sounds, a lot more. Sloane sat beside Maddie and took her left hand.

“Sounds like a big gun. Maybe an AR-15.” Derek’s low voice was barely audible, coming across the room.

Maddie squeezed her friends’ hands.

“It’s far away. The library, maybe.” Graciela’s voice was shaky, as if she was near tears.

Mrs. Bethel’s whisper was sharp. “It’s a good idea to text your parents, if you want to. If they hear this is happening on the news, the first thing they’ll want is word from you. Say whatever you need to say, ok kids?”

The teacher’s face was lit by her own phone. Maddie guessed she was texting Mr. Bethel, who taught English up on the third floor.

The three girls dropped hands and reached for their phones.

thx for the warning, Maddie fired off to Daniel. u ok?

She flipped over to her conversation with her mother. Hey you might see on the news that there’s a shooter at Central. I’m ok. My class is on lockdown. I’m in the basement.

Maddie’s mom wouldn’t look at her phone for hours. She worked in a vault, counting money on huge machines and talking to people through bulletproof glass. Chances were this would all be over long before her mom could text her back.

A spray of shot reports, louder now with echo coming off the walls. Closer. Somewhere in the room, a kid made a whimpering sound.

Maddie copied and pasted the same text to Elena, who would be expecting the girls in her circle that night. Elena responded at once: know, will, dare, and keep silent.

“We’re going to stay quiet,” Mrs. Bethel said in a soothing voice. “We’re all going to stay quiet and be kind to each other. It’s a good idea to be close to someone right now, maybe hold hands. Take deep breaths.”

Sloane’s phone was ringing, the vibrate intense and unending. She held it to her face, whispering. “Dad? Yeah, I am. I know. I know. I know. I am. We’re trying to stay quiet. No, the teacher is here. No, Dad, she knows. She’s calm. We’re all calm. We can’t. I can’t. We’re in the basement. I know. Yeah, Dad, I know. No, I love you too. I’m ok. I have to go. I can’t. I have to. I love you, too.”

“Do you think somebody already called the cops?” That sounded like Derek, but Maddie couldn’t be sure.

“I’m texting with 911 right now,” Mrs. Bethel said. “Is anybody else texting with 911?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Me.”

“I just don’t want us to talk more than we must. Sloane, good job talking to your dad. That was very quiet. Good job.”

A long period of silence. Maybe five minutes without any gunshots. Inside it, Maddie’s imagination gave her a whole movie. Mr. Wallis, the soccer coach, leaping out from behind a pillar and kicking the shooter in the back of the knees. Ms. Stephanik, the registrar, knocking him out with a huge vase of flowers, because her desk was always decorated with new flowers from her husband.

And who was the shooter? Obviously a student; wasn’t it always a student? That weirdo kid who got suspended for stalking his ex. She transferred to Eastern, he came back two weeks later looking like he hadn’t seen the sun in all that time. Or that smelly gamer kid who said he was just making a joke about a pipe bomb, he didn’t even know how to build one. Or someone really quiet, someone she’d never even see coming.

This time, the sound of screaming before the shots. Screaming that stopped, and then started again. Squeaking shoes on the linoleum. The drag and bump of chairs shoved around a classroom. This time, much closer. Somewhere in the classroom, someone was crying. Maybe more than one person.

“My mom hasn’t answered me,” Graciela said. She was crying, now. Maddie put an arm around her friend.

“She’s just working,” she said. “She’ll see it. You can get away with anything right now, like tell her you snuck out with me two weeks ago, and she’ll let it slide. Try it!”

Graciela sniffled, not quite a laugh. “I just want to tell her I’m sorry I had a fight with her. What if that’s—what if that’s—what if—”

Maddie squeezed.

Graciela’s phone went off again, and this time she showed the screen to Sloane and Maddie both. It was Elena.

know, will, dare, and keep silent

use what you have, everything you have

“We’re going to be ok,” Mrs. Bethel said. Her words were fairly drowned out by the sound of screaming in the corridor. Their corridor. The echo was familiar. The shooter was headed their way. When the shots came this time, they were loud enough that several kids covered their ears. The tiled hallway echoed them back mercilessly. The screams went on and on. Crying behind it.

Maddie wiggled and turned so that she was facing Graciela and Sloane, instead of between them. She stuck her phone back in her pocket and reached for their hands.

“I am a circle. Within a circle. With no beginning. And never ending.” She couldn’t really sing it, not without being too loud. But she could whisper it rhythmically so that her friends would recognize the chant.

Graciela picked it up at once, nodding in the dim cell phone light. “I am a circle. Within a circle. With no beginning. And never ending.”

Sloane was shaking her head, tears shining on her cheeks. “I can’t, you guys. I cant.” But she didn’t drop their hands. She worked slowly to get her breathing under control. After a few repetitions, she picked up the chant, too. “I am a circle. Within a circle. With no beginning. And never ending.”

“That’s great, kids. Praying might make you feel calmer. Just keep your voices down, ok?”

A voice from just outside the door made the whole room jump. “Janet? Janet, are you in there? Janet?”

Mrs. Bethel went to the cabinet they’d moved against the door. “Farhad? Is that you?”

The voice choked and coughed. “It’s me. I’m alone. The shooter went back up the stairs. Janet, please let me in. Please. I’m shot.”

Four or five kids scrambled to move the cabinet, one of them leaning their phone upright against the leg of a desk to provide light. Two of them grabbed Farhad Ansari around his shoulders and dragged him in. The other three shut the door and pushed the cabinet back so that it was flush, its edge right up against the door handle.

Mr. Ansari was bad off, that was clear. He had two obvious wounds in his chest and upper thigh, but there was so much blood that it might have been more. Maddie’s chanting faltered as she smelled the copper-penny-in-the-mouth odor of all that gore.

Mrs. Bethel’s teeth were chattering. “Derek, can I have your hoodie, please? Anna, are you texting 911? Can you let them know we have a man here, 56 years old, multiple gunshot wounds? Give them Mr. Ansari’s name, ok? Tell them our classroom number. Answer their questions.”

Anna was nodding and typing, not looking at the teacher.

With shaking hands, Mrs. Bethel unbuttoned Mr. Ansari’s shirt and pushed up his undershirt. She took Derek’s hoodie from him and pressed the puffy cloth against the wounds. She held pressure there for a few seconds before losing consciousness and slumping down on top of her colleague’s body.

Far away, the sound of more popping. Hundreds more shots.

Maddie realized she had not yet heard any sirens.

“Ok,” Maddie said. “Ok.” She rolled Mrs. Bethel off of Mr. Ansari. She pulled off her own sweatshirt and folded it up beneath her teacher’s head. Then she turned to Veronica.

“Can I have your belt?”

Veronica noisily undid her thin leather belt and gave it over. Maddie got Sloane to help her get the tourniquet around the man’s leg. He screeched through clenched teeth when they moved him.

“Sorry sorry sorry,” Sloane whispered, reaching under his knee to grab the tongue of the belt.

“Ok,” Maddie said. “You’re going to be ok. We’re all going to be ok.”

Directly overheard, not in the first-floor corridor, but clearly in a classroom, they heard the shots again. Screaming, crying. They heard bodies hit the floor. They heard someone begging, whimpering. It went on and on. More kids around Maddie were crying, too.

“We’re going to be ok,” Maddie said, her voice shaking.

No sound of sirens. No radios in the hallway. Nothing.

Every phone in the room was going off.

Maddie’s hands shook as she threaded the belt and pulled it tight against Darren’s hoodie. Blood on her hands, cold and sticky. Blood on her shoes, making her slide and scrabble.

“Mr. Ansari?” Graciela was touching the man’s face. “Mr. Ansari? Should we try and keep him awake?”

“I think that’s for head injuries,” Sloane said. “Remember when that nurse told us that a tourniquet is like a magic bracelet?”

“That was second grade,” Graciela whispered.

“Magic,” Mr. Ansari said dreamily. Blood on his lips. Had it come from without or within?

“Mr. Ansari, who was the shooter? Did you know him?”

Eyes cloudy, Ansari nodded. “It’s that Chesterfield kid. I always knew it would be him.”

Every head in the room turned to look at Derek Lodge, Kevin Chesterfield’s cousin.

“Oh my god,” Derek said. “Oh my fucking god.”

More gunshots upstairs, some of them hitting the floor. The concrete between stories held just fine, but kids ducked and covered all the same.

“I hope the cops don’t kill him,” Ansari said. The blood was definitely coming from inside him. It bubbled inside his mouth, obscene red froth. “He’s only a freshman.”

“I hope they do,” Derek countered at once. “That fucker had better be dead before I see him again.”

Graciela’s hand came away from Ansari’s head wet. “Cold sweat,” she said.

Sloane nodded.

Maddie reached for her friends again, her hands bright with gore. “We have to do something,” she whispered.

“Do what?” Graciela’s eyes were wide. She dropped Maddie’s hand and pulled her phone back out. “Come on, Mom.”

“Why don’t we do what Elena taught us?”

Sloane scoffed. “For this?”

“She said to only use it when it was some serious shit. What’s more serious than this? She said to use what we know.”

Graciela opened her mouth to speak when they heard screaming again, this time back on their floor.

“Do you think he’s looking for someone?”

“Seek and ye shall find,” Ansari said, his voice dry. “Anybody have some water?”

Someone passed their prized pink Stanley over. They could hear the ice clinking inside as Graciela held the straw to his mouth.

“Ahhh that’s good. So cool,” Ansari said. His lips had stained the silicon straw with red.

“My mom says she’s on the football field,” said a voice in the front of the room. “She says the cops haven’t even come into the building yet.”

A soft murmur ran through them.

Mrs. Bethel did not twitch or stir. Her breath was slow and even.

“Come on,” Graciela said. “Come on, let’s try.”

Sloan looked at them both, and then nodded. “I always thought if I had to do this, I’d be using period blood.”

Graciela shook her hands out. “Not today.”

Down the hall, the sounds of struggle. A body ramming a blocked door. More shots.

“Let’s get some light.”

Graciela had a kickstand on her phone; she set it up to shine of white on the dirty linoleum tile. On its glass surface, texts from her mom finally sliding upwards.

A few kids looked on, but in the semidarkness, they couldn’t be sure of what they were seeing. Most of them were deep in their phones, tapping out what they expected to be their last words.

“Forgive us, Mr. Ansari,” Graciela whispered, though she was pretty sure he was past the point of caring.

Sloane didn’t see any reason to apologize; there was plenty of his blood pooling on the floor. She laid her fingertips into it, warm and not yet tacky.

Maddie re-wet her still-red hands in the cold and congealing lake of life, and the three of them began to lay the sigil as they’d been taught.

“Algiz,” Sloane said, “to protect us from our enemies.”

“The splinet, like a shard of bone in your throat,” Maddie continued. “No enemy feasts on me without feeling my wrath.”

“The shape of my enemy,” Graciela said, sketching an Armalite rifle in fresh blood she took from the dying man’s chest upon the floor. “And the cedium, because no weapon formed against a witch shall prosper.”

Their hands went widdershins together, encircling and sealing their charm.

Crashing in the hallway, very close now. Another obstacle, more gunshots. Screaming. The sounds of running feet. A bookshelf or a cabinet falling over. Chaos without end.

“No one is coming to save us,” Graciela said, laying her hand in Maddie’s.

“We have to save ourselves,” Sloane agreed, her hand warm and sticky with blood.

“So mote it be, and strike down my enemy,” Maddie said, looking at her sisters in the circle. Her eyes flashed in the light of the phones. Graciela’s mom called and called and called and called.

When Mr. Ansari finally died, they felt it. A cord ran through them now, a cord made of him. And the shooter. And the blood on the hallway floor.

At their door now, his shoulder against it. The cabinet shuddering.

“So mote it be.”

“Mom, I’m sorry.”

“So mote it be.”

“Come one, dude. Come on.”

Shuddering cabinet, staggering backward. A single gunshot at the doorknob.

“So mote it be.”

Bethel sat up, straight as a bolt. Ansari jerked, a dead body spasming. In the hallway, the sound of several guns at once, firing even as the order was yelled: “Drop it! Drop it right now! Get down on the ground! Get down on the goddamned ground.”

Later, the news said “a hail of gunfire,” so mote it be. They said “a tragedy,” a circle within a circle. The paper did the statistics like they would for baseball: the most casualties for a shooter under sixteen, the deadliest shooting in New Mexico this year. So far. We know, we will, we dare. We keep silent.

When it was safe, Maddie stood up and smeared the sigils out of legibility with her blood-slimed shoe. It was hours before they got out of that room, before the cops zipped Ansari into a bag.

When that small coven learned that their spell to eliminate all enemies had taken not only the shooter but every cop on that floor, they were not surprised at all.

Later, when they told their tale, Elena touched their foreheads with hers and told them that there was so much more she could teach them.

---

Host Commentary

First some disclosure. Last year on April 17th, there was a mass shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Two people were killed and seven people injured. I live in Tallahassee. I have friends who go to or worked at FSU. I texted to see if they were OK. They were. Well, as ok as anyone can be when in lockdown because of an active shooter. So I may have bias or just a little bit of experience. It’s up to you to decide which.

Now some facts. According to Wikipedia, as of March 31st, there have been 98 mass shooting events, mass shootings defined as at least four people being shot during the incident. 115 people were killed and 477 people were injured in these attacks. According to an analysis by The Washington Post, there have been over 400 school shooting events since 1999. According to an article by NPR, the school safety and security industry is valued at four billion dollars and will continue to rise. From the article:

“…vendors in an expo hall showcase panic buttons, bullet-resistant whiteboards, facial recognition technology, training simulators, body armor, guns and tasers.”

That’s education budgets buying tasers, guns, and body armor. The article also says:

“Researchers say investing in school communities that promote a culture of emotional support and trust, as well as robust mental health services, is key to preventing gun violence, as most school shooters are current or former students and are suicidal.”

Most schools can’t have this because some people object that it’s gay and soy and beta. It’s probably bad for the economy. According to a former religious activist,

“I think it’s worth it. It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That’s a prudent deal. It is rational,”

You wonder if he’s reconsidering that… wherever he is.

That’s the obvious horror. The real life horror. But in this story, there’s something else going on. You have a group of high school freshmen girls defending themselves against a male shooter through magic. On the surface, it’s kind of affirming. Very against the patriarchy, very girlboss, very The Craft. Of course if you’ve seen The Craft, you know that girl power is a lot darker than The Spice Girls portray.

Now genre fiction is full of, well, essentially child soldiers. But they’re going after vampires, evil wizards, and despotic sci-fi dystopias. They’re not real. This is. The shooter isn’t possessed by a demon, doesn’t have a brainwashing chip, isn’t trying to kill the mother of the resistance leader. He is just ordinary and deadly. These kids are 14 years old and are being forced to kill. It’s self-defense, but it’s still murder. However, these next couple of lines show what they’re been driven to.

“No one is coming to save us,” Graciela said, laying her hand in Maddie’s.

“We have to save ourselves,” Sloane agreed, her hand warm and sticky with blood.

It’s horrific that they had to learn that this specific Lie-To-Children is a lie. Hell, the lie we tell ourselves that American cops ‘protect and serve’. They can, but they don’t have to. I’ll link an article explaining this comforting fact in the show notes. That abandonment is horror.

Then they’re Elana. What exactly is this woman teaching them? I mean, the spell they cast seems necessary but drawing sigils in blood is a red flag so to speak. Did Mr. Ansari die from his gunshot wounds or from powering the spell? Is her phrase, “Know, will, dare, and keep silent”, empowerment or indoctrination? She says she has more to teach them. Is she equipping them for a world that is cruel and uncaring or is she training them for a darker purpose? I don’t know. They don’t know. That uncertainty is horror.