Guardians of Light
an excerpt

The four o’clock bell rang out across the almost empty campus. On the football field, several dozen football players ran drills. Behind the bleachers, cheerleaders made signs for Friday’s game and practiced a few difficult stunts. In the library, students were bent over books, or explaining to others in hushed tones. A lone teacher graded papers in the teacher’s lounge. Two or three groups of students loitered either in front or behind the school. A few solitary students wandered the halls. All had good reasons for being at the high school. At four, they were going about their lives as they always had. By the time the clock struck five, their lives, unbeknownst to them, would begin to change. By the next day, almost all of them will have wished they had gone home after school. That they had gone anywhere. And all because of one girl witnessing something she couldn’t even begin to understand.