A shooting sent my school into lockdown. Minutes later, I walked home through broken glass and the memory of bullets.

At 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 7, I was sitting with my classmates on the fourth floor of Parkway Center City Middle College, where I am a freshman. It was the end of our school day, and we were in an ugly, bland classroom, feeling idle.

We were there for a college-prep course. When we finish our work, we are allowed to leave the building early as long as our parents give permission. I and many other students had finished, so we were texting and calling our parents, waiting for them to give us the OK to leave.

I was texting my mom, but she wasn’t writing back. “Please respond, he won’t let me leave until you say I can,” I nudged. I called her four times, and each time it went straight to voicemail.

If my mom had answered the third call, and I had left the school, I probably would have been shot.

I say that because a few seconds after I made the fourth call, we heard a noise outside. The sound of gunshots. Just a few pops, at first.

We all fell silent. Some of us were trying to figure out if it was just sounds from the high-rise construction happening nearby. Maybe it wasn’t gunshots.

But then more pops followed, shattering that hope.

At first, we didn’t know if we should duck, or run and hide. The teacher took over, and rushed us out of the room, ordering us into the large office belonging to the assistant principal. Stay away from the windows, he urged.

Stay away from the windows, the assistant principal urged.

A voice came over the school PA system. “ATTENTION: THE SCHOOL IS NOW ON LOCKDOWN.”

During the lockdown, I stayed standing, away from the windows, as the assistant principal had demanded. I spent the time thinking about the people who had left school early, hoping they were OK. The other students and I didn’t talk much. We texted our families to let them know what was going on. My mother didn’t respond, but I kept sending her updates.

All told, a couple of dozen shots rang out, echoing through the winter afternoon. Once silence returned, our principal — who was in the room with us — stuck his head out the window to see if the scene was clear.

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We waited in the building for police to arrive and investigate. Sometime around 3 p.m., we were told we could go home. It all happened so fast.

The shooter had not been caught, so I was nervous walking home. As I walked to the subway, I noticed broken glass on the sidewalk. I hoped that the shooter was not still in the area. I was more cautious than usual.

When I got home, I texted my friends to make sure they got home safe, too. We decided to download a purple app that lets you add friends and track their locations. We wanted to always know where our friends were. After I got home, I stayed inside. I didn’t want to leave.

That night, I lay in bed thinking about what I would say to the shooter, if I ever got the chance.

Did you get any joy out of that? Out of scaring a group of kids? Out of leaving 20 bullets just a block away from my high school?

The next day, I woke up thinking about what happened. I walked back to school, past the spot where bullets had been fired only hours before. I tried to pay attention in class, even though my mind kept going back to the sound the shots made on the other side of my classroom windows. I tried to pretend everything was OK. But it wasn’t.

Brooke Fulton is a freshman at Parkway Center City Middle College and a student in Mighty Writers. She lives in Kensington.