I'm just a kid, 16 ½ years old. The half year matters. I'm getting older. I play b-ball and f-ball at Park View High School and can palm a ball. I like rap, rhyme and rhythm. I hang with great kids, no h8ers, and I'm blessed that they seem to like me. My Mom and Dad are fine. My Dad's white and my Mom's black. So I'm like President Barack although I'm Caleb and my parents are race-reversed.

Like a verse I'd rehearse. The other homes on Pullman Court are like ours - all nice - very much the same. My friends joke I'm "black Irish" -- so we're going out tonight – to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It's quiet in my house so I'm going to sneak out now, and go out with my friends.

Huck Finn did this kind of thing. Right? We are going to a party, and got some beers to drink. I'm feeling like what must be kind of drunk, having a swimming, spinning, swooning feeling like my head or my consciousness is pulling away and then coming back again.

We're going home now -- after 2 in the AM. We're trying to figure out in the dark which is my house from the rear yards. We found a window unlocked. In a few minutes, I'll be tucked in, dead to the world. My hands are free to steady myself.

There's some guy in the hallway on the way to the stair well between me and my room. He's acting all upset. Who is this guy? Why is he up and no one else is?

What was that noise? A gun? I'll just run past him and get to my room, get to bed, and sleep. I'll be safe then. If I'm in my room, then maybe no one will realize I was out at all.

What is that loud thundering sound? God, I'm being pushed so hard and fast on my left shoulder. It's breaking me, knocking me down, like no pain I've ever felt. It's coming through my shoulder, through my heart! I can't breathe. I feel faint, cool in the face, and this warm wetness washing over my chest. What has he done to me? He's behind me. I can't turn to see. So fast this is happening, and yet seems so slowly happening like to someone else. I want to stay awake, not to sleep. There's this unimaginable mind-numbing suffocating pain.

Now there is nothing, the absence of sound and feeling. This must be a dream. I'm in the mid-distance between the window I entered and the sun door I'm entering. Like through a mist, I feel my parents holding each other and crying. Men are coming, reassuring them, to no good effect.

I hear words spoken of warning shots and .40 caliber bullets.

They say I was in someone else's home; that was my home I'm having a waking nightmare.

I see my body on a shiny metal table torn apart, the left side a grizzly bloodstained mass, things not in their right place, and sense my parents want to see me – what was me – my body – what's left - but no one will let them.

If only someone would speak for me, say what happened tonight – so everyone could know. No worry. Soon I'll wake up. It's what we all talked about at school, how those 20 elementary school students were killed in Connecticut, that's what has me dreaming this, that and the drink. Such a thing could never happen in Loudoun!

Just a kid!