It’s been a while since this happened but, about a few times every year, sometimes when my mind drifts off I think of this memory and it somehow feels like it all happened a week prior.

Is it a good memory? You might disagree with my take once you read the rest of this chapter, but I would say it has its good sides, somehow.

IDK. I just think about it a lot.

My family gets together for a week four times a year almost like clockwork. I say almost because there’s a slight adjustment to the specific week each year. The four times are:

  1. Whatever weekend-to-weekend dates include New Years Eve & Day.
  2. Thanksgiving Week.
  3. Whatever weekend-to-weekend dates line up with the summer solstace.
  4. The third week of spring.

However, this time we didn’t meet on the third week of spring - Doing the math in my head I think this was the last week of winter?

Anyway, the family was all together at my house in LA for the first full day. The adults partied hard and drank harder. I had been silently surveying how much and many of the adults were drunk and it was - surprising to me - lower than I expected.

I was absolutely starving and wished I could go get a burger. A lot of the times the adults wanted the three of us kids out of the house. They would hand us each a bundle of twenties and said to be home before midnight. It was a riot. The three of us got arrested once in New York for trespassing a few years after this memory happened. A night in an interrogation room killed the rest of the week for all of us, but that’s a different story for a different chapter.

Part of the adults partying hard is that they woke up late enough for lunch to be pushed back several hours to three-thirty. It was about 3 PM, and I wanted a burger. It was a Sunday. I very distinctly remember realizing that I had plenty of extra cash to just go get it but I can’t quite remember why I didn’t. It’s a toss up between me being so mad about it that I just sat there and pouted or that Josh (my cousin) and his dad wouldn’t be here until Monday, and my parents didn’t want him to feel left out if Jessica and I went out on our own. I know for a fact that Josh did indeed got here on that Monday, but neither of those explinations seem correct.

Okay maybe it’s not that clear. But I promise you, the next part is crystal clear.

“Pssst!” my Jessica, my sister, whispered to me. I ignored her. I was very hungry, and hungry me was is irritable.

“Pssst!” she hissed.

“What?..” I moaned.

“I wanna show you something…”

“What do you want to show me?”

“I have to show you. You’ll like it. I promise.”

I groaned and rolled my eyes as dramatically as I could. “Fine…” I uttered .I knew she wasn’t going to let me say no.

I stood up. She instantly bolted into the house and up the stairs. I reluctantly jogged after her. The sound led me to my dad’s office.

It was an old looking room. The house was built in 1987, but this room in particular seemed to be from the 1920s. The wooden floors creaked no matter how carefully you walked on them. The walls had wallpaper with a thin vertical stripe pattern. Wooden trim went three feet up the wall. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined most of the walls. A massive rug covered the floor, leaving only a couple feet of exposed hardwood floor next to the walls. The room always reeked of old books and smelled of tobacco. There was a minibar next to some chairs in one of the corners.

Jessica stood next to the bookshelf on the far side of the room, “Do you know what’s behind this wall?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Watch.” She said. She dragged the chair that was at the desk over to the bookshelf. She then stood on it to reach behind a book on the uppermost-shelf.

I heard a flip switch of some kind. A little door in the wall trim swung open. A safe was on the other side.

“I’ve been guessing combinations for the last month. I finally got into it last night.”

“What’s in it?”

“Gimmie a second,” she had already started entering the code on the dial. A few seconds later, I heard a little clink. She rotated the handles, creating a loud clink. I was eager to see what was inside this massive safe. I pictured cash.

Jessica opened the door. The first thing I saw was the guns and ammo clips. There were large guns too. I then noticed gold and silver bars, as well as some plastic things that I correctly deduced were LTO tapes

“Have you ever held a gun before?” Jessica asked. I shook my head. I leaned in a bit to investigate the contents further.

Jessica grabbed a handgun out of the safe, making sure to keep her finger from the trigger.

“I hadn’t either before I found this,” she answered. She gawked at the gun, rotating it around in her hand. It was really large for a handgun. Every piece was completely matte black. No sheen at all.

“Is it loaded?”

“Yeah,” she said, pressing the magazine release. She showed me the 6mm bullet on the top. She slid the magazine back into the grip.

I hadn’t held a gun either, but we had still been taught basic firearm safety and usage. It’s why my sister knew knew generally what the magaizine release was.

“Here, hold it!” she handed it to me.

I still generally knew how to handle guns. I also knew to always check the safety. It was on. I knew never to put my finger on the trigger unless I intend to use it.

It was way heavier than I thought. The outside of handguns are entirely plastic, so the weight’s really deceiving. I thought it would weigh as much as a toy, or a toy that is filled in plastic instead of hollow. I gripped it tighter to handle the larger-than-expected weight.

“What do you think?” She was really excited to show this to me.

I told her it was heavy.

“I know right? Give it back to me,” she held out her hand. I handed it back to her exactly how you’re supposed to.

“Have you ever fired it?” I asked. Jessica was correct – I really liked seeing this.

“I haven’t even turned the safety off.”

“Wanna try?” I suggested.

Jessica shrugged, “why not?”

She removed her finger from the trigger. She turned off the safety switch. She stared at the gun after.

I don’t remember any of the next few seconds. The next thing I remember after was a gunshot.

Jessica looked startled. She juggled with the gun twice before dropping it. I was startled as well, but I was mainly focused on the people outside this room—gunshots are really loud. Like, really loud. There is no way my parents did not hear that. We were gonna be in so much trouble.

Then I noticed the pain in my leg. Then I looked down and saw the blood. I immediately fell down and began to squeeze my thigh. I still hadn’t fully registered that I had been shot – I was in too much pain.

Jessica didn’t help. I think she just stood there in shock.

The next thing I remember was my dad literally kicking the door in. We didn’t lock it, but I guess that was a half second faster.

“What did you do?!” he yelled at Jessica. She didn’t respond.

“Were you standing up when you were shot?” my dad asked. I didn’t respond. He pushed my arms away from my wound. I barely registered that he was there. I started to cry. I tried to curl back up and hold my leg, but my dad pushed me back down with ten times my strength.

“Were you standing up?” he asked louder.

I nodded.

My dad then grabbed both my arms and dragged me over to a chair on the other side of the room with my arms. I tried to escape his grasp to grab my leg. I caught a glimpse of my sister still staring at me from a distance. I couldn’t gauge her expression but she was standing the same way as when I first saw her after the gunshot. I also noticed family members streaming into the room. They all seemed very worried.

Somehow, through my blurry tear-filled vision, I had noticed that I was bleeding, and eventually deduced that I had been shot. I don’t even remember Jessica pointing the gun at me.

“Grab it!” my dad pointed at the gun. Either my mom or my aunt went to grab it.

I further deduced that I was shot in my lower leg. My dad dragged another chair over and forced my leg on top of its back. I don’t know how he was able to keep me from reaching towards it.

“I’m gonna fucking puke. I’m gonna fucking puke” my mom said.

“Bathroom is right there, Lisa.” my dad nodded towards a closed door as he unbuckled his belt. He put it around my leg as tight as he could, buckling it to make a tourniquet.

My mom puked on the floor.

My dad huffed at my mom, “Grab me the phone.”

My mom was also in shock or something and didn’t move. My uncle stepped into action to grab the very much rotary landline phone that is still in that office to this day. My dad dialed a number with one hand and kept me from moving with only the other.

“Hey, Donald,” my dad said into the phone with very little sense of emergency, “My son got shot, how fast can you be at the house?”

I don’t remember how, but I had squirmed out of my dad’s single-arm reach and I pushed my leg down to the ground.

The burst of pain that resulted from my leg hitting the floor made me scream so loud my voice was horse for the next few days.

Apparently, Donald is “the guy” my parents know for treating gunshot wounds on short notice. I remember he was actually quite nice to me and understanding about the pain I was in. He checked in with me several times in the weeks afterward. I haven’t seen him since.

I was very lucky. The wound missed any major blood vessels, and any bones. I couldn’t walk for a week, and had to go to physical therapy for a month. My dad didn’t let me forget how lucky I was. He told story after story about people who got shot and were permanently disabled, from not being able to flex a muscle as well, to permanently loosing use of a limb. I didn’t pick up a gun for at least five years after that.