When the bullets hit him, first his arm, then his stomach, it doesn’t feel like he’d always imagined it would. Because of course, as a Black boy growing in this neighbourhood, he’d imagined it. He’d thought it would feel hot and sharp, like the slice of a knife; instead, his entire body goes cold, like someone has filled his insides with ice.
The blood is a surprise too, not how much—he’d pictured it pooling around him—but how little, a warm, sticky trickle flowing from under his jacket where he fell to the ground.
He hears heavy footsteps and voices coming closer, two of them. One is calling for an ambulance. They’re talking loud and fast, not to him but to each other.
“Check his ID.”
“No, don’t touch him.”
“Fuck!”
And then: “Where’s the gun? Get the gun!”
One of them says this over and over.
There’s no gun. He wants to explain, but no words come out of his mouth…






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