Excerpt from Only Child by Rhiannon Navin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Pop pop pop

Quiet pop sounds at first. Miss Russell was right in the middle of telling us about what pages in the math book were for classwork and what pages were for homework. The pop sounds made her stop talking, and she made wrinkles on her forehead. She walked over to the classroom door and looked out of the glass window. "What the ...," she said.

Pop pop pop

Then she took a big step back away from the door and said, "Fuck." She really did. The F-word, we all heard it and started laughing. "Fuck." Right after she said it, we heard sounds coming from the intercom on the wall, and then a voice said, "Lockdown, lockdown, lockdown!" It wasn't Mrs. Colaris's voice. When we practiced lockdown drill before, Mrs. Colaris said, "Lockdown!" through the intercom, once, but this voice said it a lot of times, fast.

Miss Russell's face got whitish and we stopped laughing because she looked so different and wasn't smiling at all. The way her face looked all of a sudden made me scared, and my breath got stuck in my throat.

Miss Russell did a couple circles by the door like she didn't know where she should walk. Then she stopped doing circles and locked the door and switched the lights off. No sun was coming in from the windows because of the rain, but Miss Russell went to the windows and pulled the shades down anyway. She started talking very fast and her voice sounded shaky and like squeaky. "Remember what we practiced for the lockdown drill," she said. I remembered that lockdown meant don't go outside like for the fire alarm, but stay inside and out of sight.

POP POP POP

Someone outside in the hallway screamed very loud. My legs started shaking around the knees.

"Boys and girls, everyone in the closet," Miss Russell said.

When we practiced lockdown drill before, it was fun. We pretended that we were the bad guys and only sat in the closet for like a minute until we heard how Charlie opened the classroom door from the outside with his special key that can open all the doors in the school, and we heard him say: "It's me, Charlie!" and that was the sign that the drill was over. Now I didn't want to go in the closet because almost everyone else was already in there, and it looked too smushed. But Miss Russell put her hand on my head and pushed me in.

"Hurry, guys, hurry," Miss Russell said. Evangeline especially and David and some other kids started to cry and said they wanted to go home. I felt tears coming in my eyes, too, but I didn't want to let them come out and all my friends were going to see. I did the squeeze-away trick I learned from Grandma: you have to squeeze your nose on the outside with your fingers, the part where it goes from hard to soft, and then your tears don't come out. Grandma taught me the squeeze-away trick at the playground one day when I was about to cry because someone pushed me off the swing and Grandma said, "Don't let them see you cry."

Miss Russell got everyone in the closet and pulled the door shut. The whole time we could hear the POP sounds. I tried to count them in my head.

POP—1 POP—2 POP—3

My throat felt very dry and scratchy. I really wanted a drink of water.

POP—4 POP—5 POP—6

"Please, please, please," Miss Russell whispered. And then she talked to God and she called him "Dear Lord" and I couldn't understand the rest she said because she was whispering so quiet and fast and I think she wanted only God to hear.

POP—7 POP—8 POP—9

Always three POPs and then a break.

Excerpted from Only Child by Rhiannon Navin. Copyright © 2018 by Rhiannon Nevin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.