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Bombshells and Buttercream
Three days before my seventh birthday, the day a fourth grader threatened to blow up my elementary school, I was worried about catching lice. We were carrying our backpacks in black garbage bags that smelled like stale chemicals to suffocate the bloodthirsty bugs. It had been a week since the outbreak and every itch was an indication of guilt.
The threat was written on the fourth graders’ bathroom mirror in blood red permanent marker. We all remember this bathroom—the one inside the classroom no one ever used unless they were absolutely desperate, the one where every flush and every rushing faucet was magnified across the entire room. The threat was simple, as such extortions are: I have a bomb hidden in the school and I’m going to blow it up! The culprit left the marker in the sink. Water droplets pinged off it all morning, until Joshua Perkins walked in, saw the red scrawl, and screamed.
I had no idea what a bomb was back then. I was more disappointed that the message wasn’t written with a pun—the name of my school was Way Elementary—“I’ll find a WAY to blow up the school!”
It seemed like a missed opportunity.
The school was put on lockdown. Almost none of the students knew why, we figured it was a particularly elaborate drill. Since the students were suspects, no one was evacuated. We scratched our heads and continued writing math problems in pencil. No one looked up until we heard the rustling in the hallway. Police officers were inspecting every crevice of the stained yellow ceiling tile and every spot on the linoleum floor with blue flashlights. I wondered what they were trying to find; I hoped they wouldn’t arrest me for sneaking a chocolate bar into school. I tried to leave the classroom but my teacher stopped me, “You can’t go outside yet, it’s not safe. We have to wait until the police are done searching everyone’s backpacks.” She stared at me the way teachers do when they mean business.
The police didn’t find a bomb in our backpacks. So, they dusted the permanent marker with white powder and fingerprinted the fourth graders. Some had to be fingerprinted multiple times because they kept fidgeting. By the end of the day, all the fourth graders had two black eyes from touching their faces with ink on their fingers.
If the sun were to spontaneously combust at this very millisecond, we would have seven minutes of light left on earth before eternal darkness. Seven minutes for the last of the released rays to find their way to earth. The average time of emergency responders is seven minutes. Seven minutes to decide if we live or die. The moment after we take our last breath, our brains engage in a seven-minute memory sequence before shutting down for good. Seven minutes for our lives to flash before our eyes. Seven minutes before the lights go out. Seven minutes to wonder how such small people could do so much harm.
On my seventh birthday, I have eight birthday candles—one for good luck. I was lucky to have reached that day at all. The police found the perpetrator—a fourth grade boy—the same day. I never learned his name; the older kids all looked the same to me back then. No one ever spoke about the incident again. It was as if a bomb had blown up our memories, stuffed the shrapnel into garbage bags.
It has been three years since the bomb threat. On my first day of fourth grade, three years after the bomb threat, all of my schoolbooks are covered in faded black fingerprints. Black, like the color of the lice I catch from Joey Perkins later that afternoon. That night, when I wash my hair with stinging vinegar, I can wash the bugs down the drain. But this time, the memories are here to stay. Ignorance is bliss until you are ten years old.
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Sofia Spencer
Sofia Spencer grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She recently graduated from the University of Michigan, where she studied history and creative writing. Previously, her work has appeared in anthologies from Rudderless Mariner, Exeter Publishing, and the Residential Review. Sofia currently lives in London, where she is pursuing a masters in prose fiction at Royal Holloway, University of London. In her free time, Sofia enjoys exploring museums, food markets, and coffee shops—even though she almost always gets lost.