Anything+But+a+Normal+Day

It started out as a normal day at Seaside Middle School. The same long, dragging classes and loud, annoying people.Everything was normal until, in third period, there was a scream. A brief, yet horrifying scream. It had come from the girls bathroom in the downstairs eigth grade hallway, where a girl now lay dead in a pool of blood.

Suddenly the proncipal's voice came over the intercom; the school was going into lockdown. No one had seen anyone enter the school, that was the scary part. For ages it seemed kids in their classrooms huddled against inside walls, wishing they could see their friends and families one last time of this was the end.

Now we focus in on one particular student in one particular room: Ronald Beachly in Mr. Franzen's eigth grade english classroom. Instead of letting his mind be succumbed into a stupor by terror, he was thinking how he could escape and alert the police. Of course, the first thing that came to mind was the telephone, but the crafty intruder, or intruders, had cut the lines.

So he grabbed a few friends and started carrying out his plan. Suddenly there was a loud rapping on the door. Everyone froze but Ronald who roused his friends from their terror-induced stupor and continued with his plan. But everyone was reassured when they heard the principal's voice saying, "It's okay, it's me, open up!" and a slip came under the door verifying that it was school faculty. So Mr. Franzen jumped up and flung the door wide, only to find the principal held with a knife to his neck after doing what was needed of him. Behind him was a large man wearing a mask, holding a very large gun. But Ronald had kept calm and was now ushering students out a window, down a rope of hoodies and t-shirts, and hopefully to safety. The last thing the gunman saw was Ronald's hand disappearing down the rope. He promptly used his big gun to take care of Mr. Franzen and ran to the window, but there was nothing there. The kids had rounded a corner, out of sight of any windows, and were now making their way down street after street to the police station.

In some stories police don't believe children just because they're children and end up suffering because of it. In this story, that was not so. The group burst into the station wild-eyed and screaming and when the cops finally got the story, they wasted no time. They flew to the school, sirens blaring, and before long and school was surrounded and the murderers captured. It was found out later during interrogation that they were searching for a Ronald Beachly, who was known to have developed a power source immensely powerful that they wanted to aid their weapons. But Ronald had outsmarted them.

Sadly, many lives were lost for Ronald because the intruders had gone through many a classroom taking many an innocent life looking for him. No one had seen them enter because they had dug a tunnel that intercepted large pipes leading into the school. The scream had come from the poor, unfortunate girl who had been in the bathroom when the men came up through the pipes. They had meant to kill her without noise and remain stealthy and unnoticed but the sight of a group of large men coming out of the floor of a bathroom is a tad disconcerting and she had screamed. A knife blade ended it abruptly but she had perhaps saved a few lives by alerting the school. They had then gone to the ofice, cut all the phone lines, and taken the principal captive so they could get into the locked classrooms.

But now it was over. Ronald's power source safe, the school okay, and peace restored. Ronald spoke at a memorial ceremony for the lives lost saying things like, "We will honor them in our memories," and, "I take all the blame for these lives lost." But no one else blamed him. What more could he have done?