It's a normal day,
I go to school with my sister.
It's quiet because it's morning and we're too tired to talk.
We enter the school with the normal slow, shuffling feet of our peers.
We get to our lockers and part ways for the day.

It's a normal day,
until it isn't.
Until my school becomes a building riddled with victims.
Because someone felt like they had no life left to live,
So they chose to take the lives of their peers.
Incite fear into every soul in the halls.
Take lives that will be forever lost.
And ruin those that survive.

What teenager can escape the deaths of their peers unscathed?
What teenager can bear the guilt that surviving costs?

I fear every day will be my last.
I fear that I may come to school one day and not come out.
Or worse, I fear that I will come out,
but my sister won't.
I fear for my friends,
my peers,
my teachers.
I fear that the lives of the people I care about and my own
could be changed or taken away so violently fast.
I shouldn't have to fear this, but I do.

I can't count the number of times,
I have entered a room and immediately planned an escape.
Or how I have memorized my sister's schedule to know where she is.
So if this were to happen,
I could desperately try and convince myself that she is out of harm's way.  
I can't count the number of times I have heard a loud noise and not known what it was.
And the immediate panic I have felt overwhelm my body.

Many say that the children are the future.
But how can that be so when they're dying by the hand of a gunman?
How can they be the future, when they might not even have a future themselves?
And how can people think that having a gun is more important than the life of someone who hasn't even begun to live?

It's not more important,

I just hope people will realize that before it's too late.