The class was silent as they focused on the classwork given to them. No one made a sound , it was as if you could hear a pin drop on the ground.
Axel Swift sat at his desk hunched over a textbook reading the contents and solving questions . He was of scrawny build, dark hair, freckles and blue eyes and a face that seemed to li,e being punched. He wore nerdy glasses and a face mask to cover the bruise he had gotten today. He didn't even want to think about the black eye he had and how he was going to explain it to his mum.
He sighed as he thought of what happened earlier that day . He was bullied every single day and this was no different. He had been minding his own business when a group of boys attacked him and gave him a good beating and dumped him in a bin for the whole school to see.
He gripped the pencil tightly in anger. What did I do to deserve
this ? He thought. It still didn't help that his girlfriend had broken up with him because she couldn't bear to be seen with a guy like him and to make things worse, she had broken up with him in the school hallway for the whole school to to see.
He subconsciously massaged his bruised cheek and winced with pain. Suddenly, a paper hit the back of his head and he grunted. There was a magnet wrapped in the paper and the words on the paper read "Bitch".
He looked up to see Devon Baston laughing with his friends and frowned in anger.
" Who the hell are you looking at ?"Devon sneered at him. "You want another beating, bitch! Maybe the one we gave you is not enough."
Axel turned away to see Riley, his ex-girlfriend, laughing at him and whispering with her friends. She looked at him and scoffed. "I can't believe you dated a loser like that."her friend beside her told her.
"Can't believe it either."Riley said,twirling her pencil. "I must have been crazy. "
Axel heart fell at those words.He remembered when she was like him, when she confessed that she liked him, the places they hanged out. It was magical and he thought it will last. It all started falling astray when Devon started wooing her. He thought she will be faithful but she proved him wrong. He never knew about her desire to be popular, her desire to stand out and make people worship at her feet. He didn't see the hints: her missing his calls, not replying to her chats, meeting up in odd places and giving flimsy excuses. He found out only know when she broke up with him. He was blind and paid the price of it with humiliation. She was a bitch and he just found out.
He watched as Devon shifted his desk closer her to her and kissed her on the lips and whispered something in her ear and made her giggle. He never achieved that. He couldn't even make her smile.
Devon Baston was the star basketballer and was popular with everyone but he was a ruthless bully and bullied Axel any chance he had and know he had stolen his Riley. He blinked back tears and decided to focus back at his books and finish before the teacher came back.
He solved more questions trying not to allow their chatter to distract him, when he suddenly stopped. The hairs on his nape stood up. He looked up and looked around the whole class. He frowned as his classmates showed no reactions. "Am i imaging it" he thought. It didn't feel like it and as he pinched himself he knew he was not imagining it. He definitely couldn't deny it. Something was wrong!
The feeling was increasing, his heart was beating rapidly and he began to sweat.
Suddenly, as if he was being controlled he drove himself to the ground, upsetting his table and chair. A second later, a huge burst of bullets came crashing from the window into the room as students screamed and drove down. Windows exploded, hole drilled chairs and tables came crashing down and light bulbs exploded like fireworks.
Axel gulped down his saliva as the girl beside him dropped down with a hole in her head and she began to twitch rapidly gurgling, the she was silent. She was dead, stone dead. Axel felt like vomiting as the gunshots continued. Suddenly he grunted as a bullet grazed his shoulder. He laid low on his stomach and stayed still in terror.
The gunshots continued and so as the students, screaming until their voices got hoarse. Axel's heart was beating rapidly and he began to sweating profusely . He has to do something but what?
But as if a switch went off, the gunshots stopped and the place was silent. Axel cautiously looked up, then got up to see students sobbing, six students dead, and lot of them groaning from injuries. Axel took a deep breath and looked at his left shoulder. He gave a sigh of relief as he saw it was just a flesh wound.
He looked around the class and saw that Riley was sobbing with a flesh wound at her hip. "Serves her right" Axel thought in delight. Devon was groaning with a foot wound." I guess that's the end of his basketball career before it even started." Axel thought with glee.
A group of teachers burst into the room and gazed at the class in horror. The principal burst in after thensurveyed the class before giving an order.
"Get 911!"He barked at a nearby teacher and immediately went to help a student. The teacher ordered immediately scurried out to do as she was ordered.
Axel stood there watching and then turned to the back of the class where the huge broken windows where. Out of the window, there was a huge uncompleted building where gaps of blocks were windows were meant to be were. Axel knew in his heart that the shooters were there. It didn't take a detective to figure out that.
The problem was why did the shooters attack students? What was their motive? Axel could only think the words "What is going on?"