Tessa’s POV
The bullet hits me squarely in the shoulder.
I let out a scream of pain and sink to the ground, immediately clasping my right hand over the bullet wound in my left shoulder. Blood seeps through my fingers in an instant, gushing out of me at a speed that makes me dizzy and sick to my stomach. The pain is endless a deep, gnawing agony that has me seeing vivid flashes of black and white.
“Please…” I murmur, not sure who I’m pleading to as I kneel at the schoolbus steps. “Please, I–”
Two of my colleagues manage to haul me onto the bus. I stare up at the ceiling as the door slams shut behind me and we hit the road. Every jostle of the schoolbus bumping along the gravelly path sends new waves of pain ricocheting in my body, and tears stream freely down my face as I try my very
