In Short – Issue 5 (Spring 2026)

May 31, 2026

Image credit: Untitled #4 by Eman Shumail

Children Dream of Malls

By Desiree Cooper

I’m stashing our haul from T.J. Maxx into the trunk when someone’s car alarm goes off. My granddaughter, 7-year-old Allie, freezes.

“Sounds like a level three lockdown,” she says, testing the air for danger.

“What’s a level three lockdown?” I ask, feigning calmness. I’m raising my grandchildren—Allie, Jax, and JK—on my own, and this is the first I’ve heard of it.

“That’s when an alarm goes off, and we’re supposed to push our chairs up to our desks,” Allie says, parroting her teacher. “Then everyone—my friends and my frenemies—go over to the carpet. Then I lock the door.”

My heart is a fluttering sparrow.

“Why?”

“So when the man comes with the gun, he can’t get in. Then, Mrs. Pack turns off the lights, and we have to lay down.”

When I was a child, we crouched beneath our desks in case the Russians unleashed a bomb, but no bomb ever landed. We went to movies without finding the closest emergency exit and spent all day at the mall, never thinking about where we’d hide from an active shooter. What can I say to my granddaughter? Don’t worry? It will never happen? 

“I sit and stomp my feet,” Allie says, her eyes gone glassy. “My shoes light up and make the darkness happy.”

It’s nearly noon before I realize I have forgotten to pack JK’s water shoes (again). Summer Wednesdays are water splash days at the preschool. I don’t know how the teachers manage all the wet clothes and deranged children. But JK loves the water; it’s his favorite day.

Annoyed, I throw the shoes in the car. I’m one traffic light away when I notice a fire engine, its lights blinking, in what looks like the KinderCare parking lot. As I get closer, my eyes begin to puddle. There’s an ambulance and a police car, too. I can see the children outside the building, the teachers trying to keep them in line. I squint through the tears, trying to make out my baby. My precious baby.

Parking, I jump out of the car, forgetting the shoes again. JK breaks loose from the group and runs into my arms.

“Look!” he yells. “The fireman came to visit!”

It’s not water day. It’s not even Wednesday. Apparently, it’s public safety day. Just one more day my child didn’t get murdered at school.

“Get up, the sun is shining!” I sing-song up the stairs to kids’ bedroom.

Allie, the easiest to wake, sits up smiling. I wish my little brown dumpling could stay this way forever. But she won’t. In fact, she will be different by the end of the day.

In the early afternoon, my phone pings, and then my inbox does, too. Both messages are from the YMCA, where all three of my grandchildren are in summer camp. There’s been a security breach. They won’t tell us what happened, only that we must pick up our kids immediately. I tamp down my terror, telling myself this must be procedure—like when a suitcase is found at the airport or a bomb threat is called in during finals. The boys barrel into the car, full of theories; Allie is quiet.

At home, I pretend all is well. And isn’t it? Evidently, a Y member had a gun in his gym bag, which a child saw and reported. All hell broke loose, but it was a false alarm. Guns happen.

Days later, Allie starts talking and won’t stop:

We were playing when Ms. Lexi blew the whistle and yelled at us that this time, it’s real. I thought a stranger was coming with a gun. I thought we were going to die. For a little 7-year-old, that’s a lot.

We were sitting on the floor, not crisscross applesauce, but with our feet straight out. We were sitting in that pose for a whole hour. No talking. I was scared. I started crying. Ms. Jamey told me to be quiet and stop crying so the bad guys wouldn’t get us.

Afterwards, I didn’t want to play. I was still crying.

I feel like it’s still going on.

The kids have never been to the theater, so I bought tickets for “Stomp.” The show is loud, but I’ve brought noise-canceling headphones for little JK just in case. Allie, almost eight, is all dressed up like we’re at the opera. Ten-year-old Jax is strangely stoic.

We begin our climb to the nose-bleeds. The higher we go, the more Jax asks questions. Why are there so many people here? Why did we have to come? His steps are sluggish. I start to lose my patience. I’ve sprung a lot of money for the tickets, for a chance to expose them to something new. I don’t appreciate his preadolescent moping.

When we get to our row, he grabs the seat next to me and reaches for my hand.

“What’s going on, Jax?” I ask, alarmed.

“I’m scared,” he says, looking around nervously. “If something happens, we’re too high to get out.”

I pull him into my arms, trying to stave off a panic attack, and he is a toddler again, willing to believe whatever I tell him.

“Just enjoy the show; there’s nothing to worry about,” I say as I take his hand in mine, hoping that, for a few more hours, it won’t be a lie.

Desiree Cooper (she/her) is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, and former attorney. She is the author of the award-winning flash fiction collection, Know the Mother, and editor of the groundbreaking 2026 anthology, Black Summers: Growing up in the Urban Outdoors. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, MSNBC Daily, Flash Fiction America 2023, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, Fractured Lit, and noted in The Best American Essays 2019.