When I was driving to Arapahoe High School that morning, I drove past the soccer fields and there were what looked like hundreds of geese standing in the field. I thought this was particularly odd, because although I’ve never really driven past the soccer fields to the school, I never expected for such a large quantity of geese to be gathered in such a crowded field.

After lunch, I went to my Studio Art class, and low and behold my graduated friend was there to visit us. I enjoyed his company, the elective I was able to relax in, and the flow of the day as it was going so far.

Quizno’s for lunch, easy classes right after; it was looking like it was going to be a great friday.

My graduated friend left as he needed to grab lunch, and my best friend Riley and I then headed to our next class for fifth hour, World Lit. Our class just finished the book Maus, by Art Spiegelman, and was about to watch a presentation about him, when suddenly, something extremely tragic happened.

As the video started to play, we heard a loud bang coming from the hallway. It only sounded as though somebody dropped something large so I didn’t think much of it then, until a few seconds later, two more bangs rang through the halls of Arapahoe. In a split second, our class looked at each other with disbelieving eyes, and blood withdrew from my teacher’s face.

Within the next instance, our entire class bolted to the corner of the classroom, kicking off papers while climbing over the desks, as everyone crammed their way as close as they could away from the entrance. In seconds, our teacher locked the door and whipped the lights off. I heard another couple shots, screaming, and somebody’s voice shouting threats to my colleagues.

My entire life had changed in the course of 30 seconds.

Adrenaline was pumping through every vein in my body, but I could not release it. I was crammed between my fellow classmates, scared to death in a dark room, not knowing whether this would be the last time any of us would ever see each other ever again. None of us knew what was happening outside of our class; who the shooter was, who he had just shot at, and who—among all of our friends out of 2200 at Arapahoe—could be gone from our lives forever. All I could do was sit there and pray to God.

What made this worse was that the projector was still on and the movie was still playing, sound on full. Any shooter wandering down the halls could’ve picked our classroom out of the other completely dark ones to open fire into, and that kept popping into my mind. However, the movie stopped, the projector turned off, and we were left in a dark room. The only sounds I heard at this point were the cries of my fellow classmates and the shouting of officers in the hallways. I didn’t hear a single word from the video.

After spending about an hour in this classroom, we were finally escorted out of the building by the S.W.A.T. team, hands raised in the hair.