Isolated in a lunchroom during an active shooter crisis, the newly elected student body president at a continuation school must confront her friends’ emotional breakdowns and the escalating danger to keep anyone else from dying.

SYNOPSIS:

Four friends, and recently elected student body officers, arrive late to their continuation high school. The “at-risk” students include LASHAWN JACKSON (17), a confident and popular black woman; JIMMY SHEA (18), a wild Irishman with hidden addiction issues; MICHELLE LI (17), an underachieving and secretly gay Asian; and WILL CARSON, a seemingly happy Native American. They discover that PRINCIPAL MARTIN (54) received a death threat earlier that morning. And when a cherry bomb explodes outside the school, they assume there is an “active shooter.” Students are in lockdown and barricading the doors, with the student body officers isolated in the lunchroom. They rely on text messages from ALEX (16), a resourceful Middle Eastern student, for updates during the chaos. DEPUTY SHERIFF ROXANNE MARTINEZ (40) is sent to investigate the active shooter claim.

When the math teacher falls ill and is transported to the hospital, poisoning or drugging is suspected. Meanwhile, the Deputy is extra nervous for her unpopular and presumed autistic daughter, SILVIA (16), who attends the school. A gunshot is heard outside the school, and the Deputy sustains a head injury and is taken by ambulance to the hospital. Lashawn and her friends use Earbuds to isolate themselves from the chaos. They are shocked and frightened when a SWAT team breaks down the kitchen door. As the SWAT Team clears the school, another student, JASON (16), falls ill in one of the classrooms. The chaos leads to anxiety and depression among the 49 members of the student body, but especially for Will and Silvia.

Lashawn, Michelle, and Will are stunned even more when Jimmy is found in a small bathroom in the kitchen, dead from a heroin overdose. No one saw it coming. Why? He faked being okay! The SHERIFF (50s) and the principal mishandle the situation as they have all day, and to make matters worse, unstable Silvia has her mother’s service pistol aimed at the principal. Lashawn vows to solve all the day’s mysteries if Silvia doesn’t shoot the principal.

Lashawn interrogates Jason, who was revived by an antidote for an overdose victim. She finds a long fuse and a cigarette lighter in Jason’s pocket, implicating him for the cherry bomb, and a strawberry stem that links his symptoms with the math teacher’s. She finds a similar strawberry stem in Mr. Simms’s wastebasket. She returns to the hostage situation in the lunchroom and explains all the events of the day involving Jimmy for drugging Ms. Simms and Jason, whose strawberry was meant for the principal. There was never an active shooter, and Deputy Martinez accidentally shot herself. The constant threat of school shooters and the rising mental health crises in high schools may benefit from role models like Lashawn Jackson.

THEY FAKE BEING OKAY