There is poison, somewhere. Some believe the toxin has taken its residence in the air or the water. It could be clouds of smoke wafting in through windows, invisible and suffocating, or a dark swirl through pipes and pouring out through water fountain spouts. It could be spread by touch, a lingering venom that soaks through skin pressed together in the dark corner of a classroom or left in fingerprints on desktops and doorhandles. It could be those darn phones, a light that infects his brain and spreads across text messages and Instagram stories. Maybe it’s a lack of these things, a vine disconnected from the stem and left to wither away, that’s responsible. As of today, all we know is that the children are dying.
It is a sudden onset, a wave that rises and crashes over the most vulnerable of us, so unforeseen that no one believes it could happen to them, until it does. That’s what we thought, too.
When the screaming stopped, the silence was a breath held as if plunged underwater before the sirens began in the distance. When the stampede of footsteps found their path to nooks and crannies, there was stillness except for our collective heartbeats. Our training had come to be called on, in the way they swore it never would.
There were backpacks strewn across the picnic tables, abandoned relics of the sunny day it used to be. Remains of sandwiches and dented water bottles littered the grass, deemed less valuable than the precious seconds they had left. How many false alarms had this toxin spread? These children were not sure that this was it, but there was no room for error.
Last year it was a kindergarten classroom that this poison seeped into most notably. Elementary schools make up a fifth of the victims, but high schools make up nearly three-fifths. Can you see them? There are children curled into small balls of fear, covering their heads and cowering in corners, but some are smaller than others. Tears stream down on all of their faces, but how old are the ones who know to muffle their cries? Babies, all of them, for they were all born to someone who is sobbing by the phone right now or grabbing their keys or collapsing into the nightmare that was never supposed to spread into their homes. They don’t dare allow their eyes to wander, to glance at the dining table or car seats or small shoes strewn near the doorway for then they might imagine returning to a home to empty beds and empty chairs. Speed limits are suggestions as they flood the staging area where they await the unimaginable. Mothers, fathers, some no longer either.
We are quiet and try not to breathe too loudly as teachers lock doors and cover windows, blotting out the light for fear that it might expose a foot under a desk. Do we believe the darkness will save us? What risks can we ask our children to take? Phones are no longer confined by any pretense of rules and text messages create a net of information, woven across the very channels that might have caused this. Rumors and photos and videos are scraps thrown to the seagulls because we are desperate to believe that this isn’t what we think it is. Names and accusations float behind these channels, for fear is best handled when it has a target.
The worst part is the silence, as we crane our ears to hear what we cannot imagine the effects of. It is a pane of the thinnest glass, this silence, and there might be a stone hurtling towards it; we await the shattering, anticipating the first shot of what may be many. Who do you know here? Where are they? Little siblings are not near their protectors and cannot be called for fear of the ringing. How could you leave them? What will you do?
There is a little boy running through the woods. When the poison took hold on the first, he ran, a rabbit from a wolf. These woods are semi-familiar, less so due to the drumming of his heart in his ears and blurred by the tears filling his eyes. Was it bravery that pushed him away or fear? Can you call a child a coward for running for his life? His feet pound a furious rhythm across sticks and leaves and he darts around trees as fast as he can, faster than he ever could before. Who has he left behind? But his thoughts cannot stray back to the infection ground, for he must push forward. He knows there will be grateful arms for him to run into, should he reach them in one piece.
What do the blue and red lights spell out? They cannot mean safety if they are only summoned by danger. Do the kindergarteners have to be reminded not to cheer if a firetruck arrives? Do the high schoolers have to make a choice when the fire alarm is pulled? What is worse, to be fooled or to be choked by thick smoke? Do the middle schoolers know they should not trust the announcement of safety, and do they all flinch when the door handle is jiggled, when the test arrives?
There is poison in our schools, and we don’t know how it spreads, right? For there is surely no world in which we understand this venom, where we know its method and madness alike, and have solutions rotting in boxes? No parent would send their child to a place that was unsafe on purpose, would subject the most precious of us to an unimaginable and entirely preventable fate? No object can mean more than this little one who loves unicorns or dinosaurs, no argument can be more valuable than this life you held in your arms only this morning. How do you stomach it, shepherding the lambs when a wolf might be standing in the corner?
This acid of a poison is very, very rare. It almost never happens. It cannot be prepared for, realistically. These words mean nothing to the mother who was only given her daughter’s shoes. They are cruel to the father who was given nothing, for there was nothing left.
I will be brutal here, for you have raised me in a brutal world. Do you know what these poisons do to our babies? They are unsuitable for hunting in the woods for they are so corrosive that there is nothing left for dinner. There is no use for them, except for the one released onto us.
The truth is worse, for it does not matter how the poison took root as long as it is growing. It will select its victim, carefully, to create a perpetrator. It will spread into his heart, his lungs, his spirit, his soul. When it has completed its course, there will be nothing left of him, either. Who allowed him to get this bad? Who didn’t notice that he stopped showing up to class, didn’t see the isolation that he withered in? Who failed to save him, and is this their fault? Who is at fault? My fear will consume me without a target.
Today, the lunch boxes will be collected at the end of the day. Today, parents will pick up their children and cherish them until the bickering resumes. Today, the doors were unlocked from the inside and the children emerged from the darkness, saved. Today, the dinner table will not have tragic gaps and the sports games will be rescheduled for the next day. Today, lives are disturbed and not destroyed. Today, the glass was not shattered but only lightly fractured.
Life did not end today, but that means the children must face tomorrow.
The Carrborean published a parent's perspective last week. Other coverage of the incident on 4/14 can be found here. And an update from the Town of Carrboro is posted here.