“BLAOW! BLAOW!”
Loud gunshots filled the air, and I tried to take off inside the house, knowing that my cousins were inside, but this nigga grabbed me up, putting his hands on my shoulder, trying to push me out.
“Nigga, what the fuck are you doing? My cousins are inside. Move!” I screamed at him, trying to get inside of the house, but he pushed my ass out, and he ran out with me.
“The shots coming from in front of the fuckin house. What sense that make for you to run inside the house, and one of them bullets fly in, hitting you right in the head? I’m sure everybody on the inside knows to take cover and get the fuck down. You get the fuck down too!” he barked at me, yelling at me like he knew me from way back to me snapping on me like this.
“I don’t give a fuck about anything that your saying to me right now. I need to get to my fuckin cousins!” I screamed at his ass, getting in his face.
More shots started firing from the front of the house, and this crazy ass nigga all but tackled me to the ground. He had me lay on my back, while he kneeled before me, with his gun in his hands, checking around, just in case somebody came out here, and he had to blow their heads off.
“You need to chill the fuck out. If something going to happen to your cousins, I don’t think they would want you to walk your ass right into the middle of that shit. Stay the fuck out here and stay down!” he barked at me again.
As angry as I was, I knew that he was right. The sound of the guns erupting fire went on for at least two more minutes. WhenI didn’t hear anymore shooting, that’s when I attempted to stand up, but he reached his hand out, pushing me back down.
“Stay down. Gotta make sure these niggas don’t spin back,” he let me know, as he stood on his feet, still looking around, making sure the coast was clear, and once another two minutes went by, and he realized that the shots stopped, that’s when he reached his hand out for me to take it.
Pissed that he had pushed me down on the ground, plus stopped me from getting in the house, so that I could check on my cousins, so I didn’t even bother reaching for his hand.
I stood up on my own, and once I was on my own two feet, I used my hands, so that I could dust off some of the dirt that had gotten on me. When he saw that I didn’t take his hand, he sucked his teeth. You could tell that he was offended.
“A motha fuckin thank you would be nice!” he had the nerve to say.
“What the fuck am I thanking you for? The fact that you tackled me down to the ground, or that you prevented me from going inside to get to my cousins?” I screamed at him, pissed that he wasn’t understanding my frustrations right now.
“Thank me for exactly that. Tackling you to the ground and preventing you from getting to your cousins. Your lil’ ass would have been stretched the fuck out the second you walked through the house. Girl, them bullets were flying inside from the front. No disrespect to your cousins but fuck your cousins right now. This a dog-eat-dog world. You gotta do what the fuck you gotta do to stay alive. The point that I was trying to get you to understand was that I’m sure they had already sought shelter from the inside. You were willing to die, just to walk to them, when they were probably already down, in place, waiting for the guns to stop ringing?” he shot, and as he was snapping on me, you could see the veins that were popping out of the side of his neck.
“Stop speaking to me as if you fuckin know me,” there was so much anger in my voice, as I walked around him, so that I could get to the door.
“That’s probably the only thing that we’ve agreed on thus far. I don’t know you, yet I just saved your motha fuckin life. Next time, I’ll just let your stupid ass get hit!” I allowed him to get the last word because arguing back and forth with him wasn’t as important as getting to my cousins.
I made it inside the house, and it was as if a tornado had struck in here. Before I’d walked out of the house, there had been so many people standing, and sitting around, but the house had cleared out. The few that were left inside, you could hear them screaming and panicking from what just took place. So many things inside the house had spilled over. The lamps, the dining room set, and there was glass all over the floor, which I’m sure was from all the floor to ceiling windows that surrounded the house.
“Bean! Beannnn!” I could hear Ari screaming for me. I walked through the house, and I found her coming down the stairs.
“I’m right here. Where is everyone else?” I asked, and when she saw me, you could see it in her eyes that she was relieved.
“I told Janiyah, and Zaria to go. They just left. I was looking all around for you. What the fuck! Girl, you scared the shit out of me because I couldn’t find you. Come on. Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she said, pulling my arm, and before I walked away with her, I turned around, and Dolo had made his way back inside the house.
He was still holding his gun in his hands. There was an angry mug on his face. The two of us locked eyes for a few seconds, but neither one of us said anything.
I ran out of the house with my sister, and the aftermath of the front of the house was even worse than the inside. Seeingthe way the bullets had torn up the front door, shot up a lot of the cars that were parked in the driveway, and just damaged the property was crazy. So many people were standing around the front of the house. You could hear women crying, and I was looking around, trying to see if there were any bodies laid out on the ground, but I didn’t see any.
Ari parked her car on the next block, so we walked through darkness, quickly getting to it, and as we were inches away from the car, she pulled her keys out, unlocked the doors, and we quickly got in. She barely gave the car the right amount of time to start up before she was pulling out, speeding out of the community, going through the communities gate, and before I knew it, we were out onto the main road.
Two seconds later, her phone started ringing, and I saw Zaria’s name appear on the dashboard. Ari reached over, answered the call, and it connected through the speakers in the car.
“I found her. We just left,” Ari let her know.
“Where the fuck was she? And who was those niggas that was shooting?” Zaria screamed from the other end of the phone. You could hear the fear, and the panic all in her voice.
“I don’t know. Let me call you back. I need a second to process this shit. You and Janiyah need to go the fuck home. Don’t go to no after party, none of that shit. Please, just go the fuck home!” Ari snapped.
Zaria assured Ari that she was going to drop her sister home, and then she would head home herself. After that, Ari hung the phone up, and she released a sigh, as we pulled up to a red light.
“Where were ya’ll when the shooting was going on? Still on the couch?” I asked after a few minutes of silence had gone by.
“No. We were upstairs in the bathroom. Zaria had to go, so we all went upstairs with her. Literally, as we were walking out of the bathroom together, that’s when the shots rang out. I triedto go down, but it was niggas on the steps, blocking, not letting us down. Once the shots stopped, I made Zaria, and Janiyah leave. I checked all around the house, and I didn’t see you. I went out back, and I didn’t see you, either. That’s why I went back upstairs. Damn Riot. That shit scared the fuck out of me. Where did you go?” she asked.
