An excerpt from David Orsini’s
Vanishing by Degrees

Arrival

The lift-off comes when we are least expecting it. We ascend as if our bodies are space capsules hurling through an endless void beyond the rims of earth. We’ve been told to be ready at all times. So familiar are the days that precede it, though, so apparently safe from malevolent harm or from murderous enemies, that we are no longer anticipating the rapid fire of a rifle or the barrage of bullets tearing through our flesh and hurling us across the long corridors. Those corridors, spattered with our blood and cluttered with our crumpled or sprawling bodies, go on gleaming with polished surfaces and with the afternoon light of the June sun that streams incandescent rivulets through the panoramic windows. But the sunlight cannot retain the tranquil glow that, only minutes earlier, it brought to the southwest wing of our school in Green Hills, Maine. The glow has turned eerie, touching as it does our fallen and disfigured bodies.
There has been no Code Red warning. There has been only our split-second awareness that a killer is in our midst and firing bullets from his AR-15.
Even my ability to predict the future has failed me. My devious ways have clouded my foresight. I have not anticipated this terrifying moment when a killer is rushing upon us.
“It’s Henderson!” Dion Williams shouts, his deep, usually assured voice tightening with fear.
The jagged sounds of the shooting cause all of us to turn and to pause, though only for a moment. A tall figure at the opposite end of the hall is heading toward us. He is wearing a helmet, a camouflage combat uniform, a flak vest, and army boots. His large, rough hands are grasping the AR-15 that he has just fired. He is Henderson. He’s often posted photos of himself on Facebook and on Instagram wearing that same uniform and wielding the same rifle. With swift strides he is moving toward us, past the sprawled and bleeding body of Ms. Patel, our biology teacher, and past the bullet-battered body of Mr. Marchand, our Advanced French teacher and our JROTC instructor.
“He’s shooting at us!” Dion yells, still not quite believing what he sees.
Henderson keeps firing his rifle, moving with methodical steps toward us.
The eleven of us, close friends ever since we bonded in the first grade, have been walking at a brisk pace. We left our biology class only minutes earlier and are making our way at the end of the crowd of other juniors and seniors that, like ourselves, are hurrying on to their next classes in the southwest wing. Now, without another word, we eleven friends and the twenty other students who are there turn from Boyd Henderson and race across the corridor, weighed down though we are by our backpacks and impeded by our scrambling and jostling. Some of us bump against one another. Some of us push forward the hastening figures in front of us. A few of us scream with terror.