We’re not even a month into the 2024-25 school year, and two kids and two teachers have died.

As most of you have probably heard by now, on Wednesday morning, a 14-year-old opened fire at his high school, where he killed four and injured 9. According to the Washington Post, it was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. school in more than a year and marks Georgia’s first fatal school shooting since at least 1999.

So, now, as the students of Apalachee High School are mourning their classmates and teachers, students around the country are afraid they’re next.

I can only imagine that their lockdown drills are seeing advancements and appear more frequently, the same as they did for me when I was in school. And, despite how hard the administration and staff work to protect kids and themselves with new drills, it’s not enough to stop it from happening again.

This week, following the shooting in Georgia, a coworker — who graduated high school in 1986, while I graduated in 2019 — asked what it was like to be in school since shootings became more frequent.

As he said, it didn’t happen much, or at all, when he was in school.

So I told him how frightening it was.

Lockdown drills became a standard in schools after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. However, I don’t recall starting those drills until middle school, which would’ve started in 2012 for me.

That was when our drills were to hide in the corner that couldn’t be seen from the window in the door. We all sat huddled together, quiet as can be. And, though we were fully aware it was a drill, I can remember being anxious and hearing my heart pounding in my ears.

In December 2012, one of the most infamous shootings took place in Newtown, Connecticut, where 28 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Seeing it on the news and hearing the chatter of it was a lot to take in at 11 years old.

Moreover, it was hard to understand.

Not that I can understand it now, at 23.

Gradually, through my time in middle and high school, drills amped up, likely because of the increase in school shootings we saw nationwide.

Around the time after Sandy Hook, teachers were then required to keep their doors locked at all times and most covered the windows in their door with black construction paper.

Lockdown drills also became more frequent and scary, to say the least.

At some point, drills advanced to staff members acting as a shooter, checking each door handle throughout the school during drills to make sure it was locked. I can still feel the way my heart sank and my stomach rose when I heard their presence — again, fully aware it was a drill.

Near my junior and senior years of high school, which started in 2017 and 2018, “lockdown” drills became “active shooter” drills.

In February 2018, in Parkland, Florida, a 19-year-old former student killed 17 people and injured 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It was the deadliest school shooting at a high school, passing Columbine, which resulted in 13 deaths.

There’s a certain silence after school shootings when you’re actively going to school. Maybe the silence is reflection, or maybe it’s out of fear, or maybe it’s just that we all know what happened and don’t feel the need to discuss it further. It’s both a silence and an unusual kind of chatter.

I realized that most of the chatter surrounded the subject but didn’t necessarily discuss it. It was around those times when we would discuss the “what-ifs” that made it feel too real, even though it’s good to be prepared.

In my senior year, there was a certain classroom I was always a little afraid to be in. In general, we talked a lot as a class in there, but we also spent several different days discussing the “what ifs.” What scared me the most was our discussion about attempting to leave the room through the window. The classroom was on the second floor on the inner perimeter, overlooking the library.

A classmate asked if we would jump into the library should we have to. Then he asked, “What if we broke our legs?” We talked about the better or worse outcomes, because, though we could still get away, we could also become sitting ducks. There was no good option — ever.

It was around that time the “run/hide/fight” tactic became more popular. Coming hand-in-hand was also our practice of barricading the door. It was something we tried to do as quietly as possible, moving and stacking heavy furniture.

In that same classroom, we practiced on days that we didn’t have drills. We worked through strategies, like what should be the base or how we should position what’s on top so that it would fall through the door should it be opened, knocking down a potential shooter. The “fight” strategy encouraged us to find something in the room we could use as a weapon, if needed, like scissors, heavy books, etc.

A lot of changes were made that year, including after a shooting at Santa Fe High School in which a gunman pulled a fire alarm to draw people out of classrooms before killing 10 and injuring 14.

At my school, when the fire alarm went off, we were then told to wait for an announcement that there was a fire — or, if it was a fire drill, that it was actually a drill — before making our way to the nearest exit. Our alert for active shooters was also done over the public address system.

Reading through articles about the shooting in Georgia, I saw something about classroom video screens being used to alert students and staff. It didn’t mention if there were other alerts, but I can’t help but wonder if that might be the new way to go about things.

When I graduated high school, I was so thankful that I made it through public school with only a few threats here and there that never saw progression.

But the fear didn’t end there.

The shooting at Oxford High School hit a little too close to home in 2021, and, in 2023, a gunman opened fire at Michigan State University, about an hour and a half from where I was going to college at the time.

I experienced that same silence in my college classes following those two events. I also heard the same chatter and felt the fear with each “what if.”

Then I graduated from college, again relieved to have made it through safely.

But the fear didn’t end there, either.

Now I worry for my cousins, one of whom goes to MSU and had to experience that fear firsthand.

Down the road, when I eventually might have kids, I’ll be fearful for them, too.

In the meantime, I feel for every student currently in school, just trying to get an education. I understand the fear they feel when each drill or threat takes place. I can only imagine the fear and trauma they’d endure should there be an active threat.

The world we live in is too familiar, with kids dying at a place they should feel safe.

Torianna Marasco can be reached at 989-358-5686 or tmarasco@thealpenanews.com.