Page 51 of The Woman with the Target on her Back (Grassi Family)

Traveler

I’d been in the middle of a drive-by.

A drive-by.

I was having a hard time wrapping my head around that even as I listened to the bath fill as I pulled off my clothes, watching my reflection.

I wasn’t sure that had fully ‘clicked’ yet.

I’d been dropping off food to a charity when strangers came driving past andopened firewith the intent to kill.

Me.

Because, let’s face it, there was no one else inside that building who could be considered a target.

It wasn’t the first time there’d been a drive-by in the neighborhood. But in the past, the targets had been men standing out on the street, or even the buildings where certain crews lived or congregated, lessening the chance of hurting innocent people.

But to shoot up a soup kitchen?

Jesus.

There could have been little kids inside. The elderly who weren’t getting by on their fixed incomes and needed a hot meal.

They didn’t care.

What kind of monsters acted like that?

And what if someone had been hit? A kid? An old lady? One of the men and women who devoted their lives to feeding the lesser fortunate in our community?

How could I live with myself, knowing those bullets had been meant for me?

Was I being selfish by staying?

Should my next move be hightailing it out of the area? Going somewhere else?

Would my absence make my community safer?

Those were my thoughts as I lowered myself into the too-hot water. It burned at my skin, turning it pink, but still, a shiver coursed through me as I sank down.

The shivers continued as, it seemed, the numbness wore off, and the reality sank in.

It had all happened too quickly for me to truly experience the moment before, but I felt like I was reliving it in the tub.

Aurelio’s yell.

August’s lightning speed as he shoved me to the floor, then covered my body with his.

He crushed me into the unyielding floor, covering me from head to toe, making it so that a bullet would have to rip through him to get to me.

He had been willing to take a bullet for me.

Aurelio had been shot. A graze, sure, but he’d been bleeding pretty bad for a while there. It must have stopped on its own, though, because he clearly hadn’t gone to the ER like I’d begged him to do.

“Fuck,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes as I felt the stupid, useless tears start to slide down my cheeks.

There was no winning against them, though. It seemed like I just needed to let them flow, to empty out.

Only afterward did my mind seem capable of moving forward in the day, thinking about the hospital, about the nurses and the doctor, about the scans and the medical jargon I’d been trying my hardest to keep up with.

---