My mom and I left the house at probably noon. My mom wanted to do some shopping and I really wanted to go to Barnes & Noble. So she said that if I would go shopping with her, be patient, and be polite, she would let me go to Barnes & Noble. When we got to Mayfair Mall, I sat down in one of the comfy chairs there and literally twiddled my thumbs. My mom started making me get up and put clothes back that she didn’t want, or hand her the clothes she did want. It was nice getting to spend time with my mom, but my 10-year-old patience and attention span did not like it. I had finally had enough and I was ready to burst. I marched up to her changing room and then…

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! A lady and her daughter ducked and started running.  Everyone was alarmed, and me? Well I didn’t know what was happening. I was waiting for my mom to come out of the changing room to explain it all. But after my mom didn’t come out, I ran up to her changing room at the exact moment when she came out.  When we ran into each other, my mom said, “Geez Zoe!” I saw others were running into a storage closet, so I grabbed my moms’ arm and tried to get us in there too.

My mom yelled, “What are you doing, Zoe?”

It was obvious she didn’t know what was happening, so I said, “Didn’t you hear it?!”

“Hear what?”

BOOM! BOOM!

“Oh, shoot Zoe!”

“Come on, Mom!”

We got into the storage closet and we saw the mom and daughter. We heard and saw them talking to a 9-1-1 operator. I gently whispered to my mom, “What was that?”

“Stay really quiet Zoe,” my mom answered, so tense and scared. “Those were gunshots.”

I felt just like the way those characters say in the stories: Frozen and scared. I saw my mom texting my dad.

We stayed in that closet for a half hour until a store clerk found us and moved us to a smaller office room with more people inside. There was no lock on the door but we propped stuff up against the door to keep it closed.  A couple was watching the news on their phone. Apparently, a 15-year-old boy got mad at one of his friends and came into the mall to confront that friend with a gun.

Eventually, the SWAT team arrived with the keys and unlocked the door. We got out and they told us that we had to run and stay together. When they said, “go!”, we all ran. They formed a protective circle around us, leaving us no room to breathe. But when we got to the exit, the police officers made sure we were ok and told us we could leave. Leave. That was the thing I had been wanting to do for some time. They told us to just walk into the parking lot to our cars.

When my mom and I got home I felt so relieved to just hug my sister, my brother, and my dad. I didn’t know how much I missed them just thinking about not seeing them.

With the hot tears rolling down my overheated red face, I was thinking about the fact that I needed to not dwell on the past. I wanted to be focused on the present. I learned that I can’t take advantage of what I have because I have a lot. I wanted to make the most of having my family, and being able to see them every night. So to be more connected with my family and spend more time with them, I wanted to try to be my very best self.

© Zoe. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.