Brooke Werner

Writing Workshop
AP Language and Composition
Regent Street

“Ooh, she’s right. That’s cute,” my grandmother chimed, enthusiastically agreeing

with my mother. A feeble attempt made to try to get me to make a choice. I shrugged

meekly, not able to make the slightest of decisions. I maneuvered around the

aesthetically pleasing clothing displays. “She can’t make decisions. Shopping makes

her more anxious than usual. Not sure why we’re bothering,” my mother muttered to my

grandmother as if I couldn’t hear her. My aunt knew it was best to stay out of it. My head

was pounding like someone was beating in my skull with a metal baseball bat. “Can we

just go?” I mumbled. My mother’s eyes darted to my grandmother’s, exchanging

glances. “Don’t you want to keep shopping? You still have nothing to wear tonight for

dinner! Your cousins are wearing…,” my mother rambled. I turned to walk out, ignoring

a cheery salesperson acknowledging me on my way out.

The sun was setting, a ticking clock, counting down the hours until I became

seventeen. Seventeen isn’t a good year. It’s the eerie year between a young 16 and a

terrifying 18. I trailed behind the trio of matriarchs, not too far though, as we were on

Regent Street, the “Michigan Avenue of London” or at least that’s how my grandma

explained it to me. The crowds were massive, making single people unidentifiable. We

passed international, prominent name brands I recognized: Pandora, Swarovski, Nike,

among others. Turning the corner onto a street with lesser known shops, we wandered

into one we didn’t recognize. With no luck, we walked out half an hour later.
 We lingered though the streets, no aim to get any particular place. Unsettlingly, a

man sprinted by my aunt and I, shoving me as he ran into a store. My aunt glanced at

me, her eyebrows furrowing. My grandmother and mother were farther down the street,

out of eye. What sounded like busy chatter a moment ago now sounded angry. An

agonizing scream pierced the air. A canon of different people screaming “Run!”

engulfed us. The uneven thunder of footsteps swallowed my aunt and I from behind. We

whipped around, the biggest mass of people ran toward us. I froze in fear but my aunt

grabbed my arm, yanking me to the side. My mother’s helpless screams caught my

attention, “Brooke! Brooke! Brooke!” I locked eyes with my grandmother who had my

mother by the arm. We sprinted into a British Gap-esque store with other runners. The

employees screamed instructions at us, pointing toward the stairs.

A group of strangers including my mother, grandmother, and aunt rushed down

the stairs. I heard several large thumps, something smacking against the staircase. I

whip around, my grandmother is laying diagonal down the stairs behind me. Filled with

adrenaline, she gets up immediately, despite hitting her head on the steel staircase. All

of us, a group of strangers, gathered in the emergency stairwell. Two younger women, a

mother with two children, a girl my age, a man, my aunt, my grandmother, my mother,

me. All strangers thrown into an unnerving, unknown situation. Silence overtook

everyone for a minute. A wave of questions exploded. ​What’s wrong? What was

happening? Why is this happening?​ Words were being thrown out: shooter, gun,

terrorist. I checked my phone. NO SIGNAL. I tried texting my friends anyway...“uh

guys”....“there’s a shooting I think”....“i’m hiding in a store”. MESSAGE NOT

DELIVERED.

The little boy wailed, complaining of a cut on his hand. The air, thick with anxiety,

overwhelmed me. The two young women bolt out the back door, leaving through the

emergency stairs. The girl about my age leaned against the heater with a stone-cold

expression. Naturally, my outgoing grandmother tried to make conversation. We soon

learned that she was on a vacation with a friend, who she had gotten separated from in

the crowd. I stood quietly for quite some time, partially blacking out. Usually, in an

anxious state, my heart pounded quickly revealing my heart . In that moment, I felt

nothing, utter emptiness. Instead of the typical sinking feeling, I felt light, almost like I

wasn’t standing. A moment passed, I saw myself.​ ​My grandmother whispered

something into my ear. I glanced at her, not having heard a single word. Suddenly, I

was whipped back. My eyes hyper-focused on dark bruises, almost black in color,

beginning to form along my grandmother’s forearm.

Noises emerged from the stairs. Everyone seized with a quiet intensity. The

employee from earlier swiveled into the stairwell, “The doors are locked. I don’t know

what’s going on...I heard gunshots from outside.” An audible breath was let out by

everyone in the room. The employee promptly went back upstairs to see what was

happening. Any other day, this small bay before the emergency stairs would be empty.

The store was covered in fun colors and advertisements while this small bay was dark

grey stone, void of any fun.

 Quite some time later, maybe an eternity, the employee returned. He quietly “The

police say it’s okay to leave.” The room surfaced with an overwhelming amount of

questions. None of which the employee knew the answer to. As we walked back up the

stairs, the store was a mess. Pushed over mannequins laid on the tiled floor; random

clothes were littered everywhere from knocked over racks. The policeman at the door

greeted us, the opposite mood of the salesperson earlier in afternoon. He ordered us to

go down a certain street, mentioning that the area was still an active crime scene. He

gave us absolutely no information on the situation. My grandmother insisted the young

girl come with us. She contacted her friend on my phone, speaking a language I could

have only assumed to be German.

After walking around for 10 minutes, trying to find a main street to get an Uber,

we safely assumed we were lost. My grandmother, an ambitious woman, looked left and

right as she walked right into the street. She knocked on the window of a car, motioning

for the man to roll it down. In some cases, a stranger knocking on the window might be

frightening to a driver, however my grandmother is a 4’11 woman with a small frame,

wearing expensive clothes.

“Hi, I’m Kathy. I’ll give you $300 if you can get us back to our hotel.”

“O-Okay ma’am,” he sputtered as he unlocked the doors. She jumped in

shotgun, as my aunt, mother, and I crawled into the backseat. Because of the

commotion, the eighteen minute drive took over an hour and a half. As we drove, we

learned that he had no idea of the chaos happening outside. He spoke in a thick

European accent, I think it was Polish. I was in charge of the navigation back to the
hotel. “Wh-wh-what’s the address of the hotel?”, I spoke, although it came out as barely

a whisper. My aunt, who sat next to me, pulled up the address on her phone for me to

copy. My hands shook violently as I tried to type in the hotel address. After several

failed attempts, my aunt took over the navigation.

Back at the hotel, the incident was all that ran for the next 24 hours on all the

news channels. My grandpa spent the night anxiously pacing across the hotel lobby. My

uncle, who’s not usually very expressive with his feelings, spent the night glued to our

sides. My father, who’s usually not an angry person, spoke furiously about terrorism. As

we sat at the hotel bar, my family was erupting in fast chatter about the situation,

analyzing every bit of information. I stayed silent, watching the clock. Happy birthday. I

was seventeen.