After a novel by Francine Prose

Francine Prose's novel After opens with the news that three students at Pleasant Valley High School just killed five kids and three teachers and critically wounded 14 others. As word of the Columbine-style shooting spree spreads through nearby Central High School, the students are understandably shocked.

Little do they know the worst is yet to come at their own school

As the title suggests, it's what happens after the Pleasant Valley shootings that's at the heart of the book. First, a grief and crisis counselor named Dr. Willner arrives at Central. Then come the metal detectors, and the strict dress code (no Commie red is allowed), then the random drug tests and the subversive "Bus TV" where students watch ultra-patriotic "Great Moments in History" every day on the ride to and from school.

The story is chillingly familiar. We read about these things in our newspapers all the time -- for every catastrophic event, there's an equally catastrophic overreaction.

For Tom Bishop, the novel's narrator, and his best friends Brian, Avery and Silas (part of a sub-clique known as the "Smart Jocks"), life gets increasingly more rigid and unforgiving with each ring of the school bell. A far cry from life at Central before the school killings:

Everyone had a place; you were allowed to be who you were. I mean, whoever you were. It was totally live and let live. But after Pleasant Valley, all that began to change.

It all starts with Willner, the creepy counselor.

Dr. Willner was very tall, with a beard. He looked a little like Abraham Lincoln, but without the sweet-natured saintly part.

He reminds Tom of the Lincoln robot at Disney World, which should remind astute horror fans that the Hall of Presidents is where one of those Stepford husbands used to work. In one way, Willner wants to turn the entire school population into robots.

Willner speaks in a stream of psychobabble and, in nightly e-mails sent home to the parents, he encourages them to start lacing their conversations with "sharing," "reaching out," and "exploring our feelings." Those parents who succumb to Willner's suggestions soon begin acting like pod people straight out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (a movie which becomes central to the novel's plot).

The repression begins cloaked in good intentions (as most repression does) as the adults merely want to prevent another Pleasant Valley tragedy from happening in their town. At his first school assembly, Willner tells the student body:

"We can no longer pretend to ourselves that it can't happen here. And so we must change our lifestyle to keep our community safe and make sure that it won't happen. It means sharing our feelings, becoming better people. Beginning the hard work of healing and recovery. Working through our fear and grief. And in the process maybe giving up some of the privileges that we may have taken for granted. I am afraid that circumstances make it a virtual certainty that some of the privileges that we all have enjoyed may have to be taken away."

Under the Willner Plan, students are expected to put the good of society before their own individual well-being. A hunting novel, They say its for your protection, but what happens when protection goes too far and what it means to have freedom extinguished

No one knows why.

If you break the new rules the punishment is severe.

And the rules keep changing every day.

School feels like a prison.

Students and teachers begin disappearing. There's no way to stop it. -- in the name of safety.