I went in for an easy layup. 6 to nothing. We were going to win this.

The people around me were cheering, filling the small community center gymnasium with a light roar of applause.

This was nothing new. I was used to this, not to be full of myself. But despite all the noise and people, I always noticed this one boy. He was pretty good looking, as far as 15-year-olds go. He already had a partner, a teenager I believed to be named Az. I liked them and their eyes. They always watched me with eyes that hid a storm inside, impossible to tell how they were really feeling. But, that's not why I cared about him. It was because of the way he looked at me.

Not like the creepy guys that lingered outside of my high school, like I'm something to be savored, eye candy. Not like my parents and coach, critically watching me, to make sure every move was the way her coach taught me, the way I had been drilled to do.

He watched me like he was watching a graceful bird take flight. He studied every movement like it was water moving in a creek. Appreciating the way I moved when I ran or took jump shots. And it was pleasant. Because even though we had never talked outside of exchanging hellos', I knew that he didn't watch me because I'm a good player, or because I'm the highest scorer. He watched me because of how I play. How my body moved. And it was nice to be judged not on shot accuracy, but about the way I could take a free throw in one fluid motion.

So when I somehow sensed that his gaze had abruptly been moved elsewhere, I turned around.

He was standing up, his face masked in concern and confusion. He looked like he was straining to hear a sound, straining to see what was going on.

I followed his gaze to the door at the back of the gym. Why was he looking over there? I paused momentarily to try to hear what has captivated his attention.

A faint popping sound could be heard. A few more people in the stands stood up, gazing at the door with a concerned look. The sound got louder. It was like gunshots. I heard them some nights during the rare hit-and-run a few streets down in my neighborhood, but they couldn't be here. Not in this court. Not in my home, my safe place. It could never happen here.

I turned back to Antonio and opened my mouth and

The glass window on the door suddenly exploded, riddled with holes, glass flying everywhere like water droplets. A thud came and a figure kicked the door open, running into the room.

Screams erupted again, but now they were because of a different shot.

The figure had her hood up, but wisps of long, dark hair were flying out from beneath the navy blue garment. They were holding a gun. A large, ugly thing spraying bullets out.

It seemed the whole room was held in place, frozen by shock. Then, one of the bullets took their mark. A streak of red dropped down a man in the crowds' shirt. His body flopped over the people in front of him, sprawling on the edge of the court.

Pandemonium.

Pure and primal.

People began to trample each other, tripped by the fallen. Everyone was in too much of a hurry to get away, driven by pure instinct, to try to stop the hooded shooter.

She carried on her path of destruction, turning the gun and bullets spraying out.

I stared, almost mesmerized by the sickly, deadly, precise way the bullets carved into the sections of people. Snapping out of it. Moving. My mouth is open but I can't hear the screams. I run.

And a bullet grazes the back of my calf. And I stumble as the heat of the pavements that I dropped ice cream cones on and dribbled my first basketballs on as a girl skims across the surface of my leg except it's multiplied by 10 and hurts worse than tripping in a screen on court and I hobble forwards but my life is with me in this place of death and I'll be fine.

The door is so close and I'm tucked underneath the bleachers where I hobbled to. It hurts less than it initially did and I'm able to think straight, without seeing my memories of a life I thought I'd loose back there. There is some blood, but it's a graze. I didn't hit anything vital, just my sense of security.

I take a deep breath and shift towards, peering around the edge of the bleachers and see the girl has stopped shooting because everyone is either escaping, hidden or dead. There are bodies everywhere and this, a single girl is the culprit. I wouldn't believe it if I saw her walking down the street, in the hallway between classes at the supermarket.

I want to live. I need to run. I start limping towards the door. The door is already open, propped by somebodies arm. Thank God, I have a clear path. 

I'm ready to run when I hear a click. I turn around.

Then.

She raises the gun to meet her forehead. Her shoulders are shaking, but I can't hear her crying. Can you cry if you have the ability to do this? Wreck this many lives? Cause this much pain? Are you human?

I don't have any room for emotion right now. Only shock and instinct and observations.

She raises it to her head and looks up the ceiling, as if someone is talking to her, giving her instructions. Her lips move and the gun goes off. She falls. The ultimate causality.

I get up, half-running towards the door, towards the flashing lights of the ambulance.

I stumble outside and EMTs rush towards me. The graze from the bullet is throbbing to a sick beat that makes everything around me pulse. They take my pulse. Wrapped my leg in a bandage. I sat and let them push me to lie down, drink some water. I needed my family, but I could meet them at the hospital they said. I was going to be ok they said. I didn't feel ok. I felt like I had died, but came back, leaving everyone else to go on, to somewhere without me, in this place of grief and pulse.

The ride to the hospital was longer than the ride to the community center. It felt so, even though they were the same difference apart. It felt like the longest ride of my life.

I was stitched up and bandaged and cleaned and gently pushed out into the hallway to make more space for more patients who had more injuries. I sat in one of the chairs, letting the maroon fabric cushion me, as the weight of the world pushed me down. All around me, doctors bustled by, nurses checked their manila folders and people walked by, oblivious to the terror I had experienced. It was such a normal hospital, with the patients and staff doing normal hospital things. I didn't get how everyone could just carry on their life as normal, unaware of the terror that had just happened. I wanted to get up and scream, "Can't you see what's happened? Someone do something!", but no one could see inside me, and see what I saw. No one could take it back and make everything safe again.

A teenager came over and sat beside me. I looked up and saw it was. It was... Az, the partner of Antonio. I remember them through a haze, back to a time that was Then, to a time that was Now, but the name was the same, despite the Thing that had happened in between Then and Now. 

Az was staring at some unknown fixture on the sanitary pale walls, their grey eyes wide open, tears making them shine, but completely dull and hollow, like a doll in a shop, waiting for someone to fill with purpose. 

"He took a shot right to the back of his head. Lodged in the brain stem. He didn't stand a chance." They said with no emotion like she didn't realize what they were saying, slurring their words like they didn't have the energy left.

Then, they let their head drop down to their knees and let out a wail so sudden and full of pain that it shocked me that it could emanate out of a human being, like an animal. An animal calling another back from a place they didn't know. Because isn't that what we are when it comes down to it? Animals. That's the only logical way to create this much horror. It's the only way a 15-year-old child could make a noise like now. It's the only way I'm still alive. Because we're we want to survive and we don't make sense.

I put my own grief aside for this person, who had lost so much with one pull of a trigger. My parents and sister were alive. And their boyfriend wasn't.

I cried for Az, but I also cried for our community. My sense of safety, how easy it had been ripped to shreds, with bullet holes. How someone could just not be, not exist with one piece of metal through them. How little space we took up, how little time we had.

So we sobbed together, our tears filling the space, proving we could take up a little more space, however small that would be. Our shirts and cheeks grew damp. We let our eyes paint a watercolor version of the harsh lights and pallid walls. We let our noses clog up to the scent of blood and minty antiseptic.

And we both put our cried and put our heads down.