My Teacher Threatened To Expel Us If We Hid From A Shooter. I Disobeyed Her And Saved My Classmates. Now She’s Claiming She’s The Victim?

Digging Up the Past

Day 18. I couldn’t sleep again so I started googling Ms. Brown and found this old Reddit thread from 2019 where someone asked, “Who is your worst teacher?” Three different accounts mentioned her by name, talking about her mind games and how she’d pick one student each year to torment. The thread had been deleted but the cached version was still there on the Wayback Machine, so I screenshot everything and sent it to our lawyer.

Day 19. The school board meeting turned into complete chaos when parents started screaming at each other across the auditorium. Half of them wanted Ms. Brown arrested immediately and the other half thought she was being scapegoated, with one woman yelling that Ms. Brown saved those kids by maintaining order.

Ben’s dad stood up, even though they pulled out of the lawsuit, and shouted back that she nearly got them all killed. Security had to clear the whole room while people were still pushing and shoving in the parking lot.

Rebecca Harris, Daniel’s mom, filed for a restraining order the next morning after Ms. Brown’s supporters started showing up at our houses, taking photos of our front doors and posting them online with our addresses. The judge said without direct threats it was just free speech though, and Rebecca sat in the courtroom crying while the judge explained that taking pictures from public property wasn’t illegal.

Taking Action

That same night I couldn’t sleep and kept scrolling through my phone looking at all the comments defending Ms. Brown. Around 3:00 a.m., something inside me just snapped. I grabbed my laptop and started pulling up the audio recordings from that day that the news had released. The timeline was public record now thanks to the investigation.

I synced up Ms. Brown’s exact words with the sounds of gunshots in the background. Setting up my phone against my desk lamp, I hit record and just started reading from the transcript.

“I didn’t approve any lockdown drill today.”

Bang echoed from my laptop speakers.

“Sit down or you’re all getting zeros.”

Bang, bang.

My hands were shaking but I kept going through every single thing she said while kids were dying down the hall. When I posted it to TikTok at 4:17 a.m., I didn’t expect anything. By noon, it had 2 million views and climbing fast.

Other kids from school started making their own videos showing what their teachers did. Mrs. Garcia from Spanish had everyone under desks in 8 seconds. Mr. Peterson had his whole class in the storage closet before the second announcement. Coach Williams literally carried two freshmen who froze into the equipment room.

Every single teacher except Ms. Brown had their students hidden within 30 seconds.

The hashtags exploded across every platform. Teachers save students showed heroes while #BrownChoseControl showed our classroom still sitting at desks while gunshots echoed.

That night around 2 a.m., Tyler showed up at my house without warning. His mom had found him having a panic attack in his bathroom and drove him over. We sat in my driveway until the sun came up, sharing earbuds and listening to old playlists from before everything changed. He kept whispering the same thing over and over like a prayer.