Excerpt from How to Be Safe by Tom McAllister, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

On TV they speculated. Could it be terrorism? Maybe it was a student. Maybe it was a drill gone horribly wrong. A disgruntled former employee. A random act of violence. An escaped convict. An angel of death. A different kind of terrorist. To be on the news, you just need to own a suit and be willing to guess about anything. You become someone who opines for a living. Opinions need to happen fast, or they don't count.

They were grasping for suspects, and they showed pictures of recently fired employees. They showed my face. They said my name. This is Anna Crawford, they said. She was recently fired from her job as an English teacher for insubordination. She posted a message online saying she hates the place. She said, and I quote, I should've burned the place down when I had the chance. She added hashtag bitter hashtag spite hashtag fuck that place. On the screen, the text said: former teacher had motive.

Until that report aired, I was unaware that I had been fired. I thought I was suspended.

The knocking started minutes later

* * *

It was the media first. They filmed me through the windows. And I remember thinking, beyond anything else: I am not wearing a bra. They are going to see that I'm not wearing a bra, and it is going to be on TV.

The news was running on a five- second delay, so as I watched the media assembling outside my house, I was also watching my recent past self on the screen. She looked so much younger than me. I felt a pang of nostalgia for the life I'd been living just minutes ago.

I felt the international media rustling through my pockets and ransacking my life, dumping out drawers, hoping to find evidence that I had committed a mass murder a mile away from my home. I felt their hands all over me, violating me. I opened my door and shouted: "You do not have permission. I don't grant it to you."

I shouldn't have opened the door. When the barbarians are at the gates, you do not lower the drawbridge, even if you have something really important to say. One of them entered my house, and there was a scuffle. The next thing I knew I was in the back of a police car, still being filmed. Later I would watch the video and see that I was laughing as they drove me away. I can't explain that. I don't remember it at all.

Excerpted from How to Be Safe by Tom McAllister. Copyright © 2018 by Tom McAllister. Excerpted by permission of Liveright / WW Norton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.