"Alex, some kid just got killed." Elle was standing in the doorway of the diner. I was standing behind the counter, where I waitress most Saturday nights. It was probably ten o'clock and the place had been strangely quiet. Me and the only three other people in the place stopped and turned to look at the shaking teenage girl with the curly auburn hair standing in the doorway, eyes wide.
"What?" I dropped my order pad on the counter and rushed over. "Who?"
"A girl from the South side." I could tell Elle was scared. "There was a fight in the Columbus lot. "Christina was there."
"Is she okay?" I asked quickly. It wasn't like Christina to get into fights. She was the responsible, mature one, and she only fought for the same of self defense. Whenever Lacie and I got into fights, she yelled at us.
"Just come on." Her voice was pleading.
I dropped my apron uniform and ran out of the diner. We ran down the street, shoving people out of the way in the sidewalk, our feet pounding on the sidewalk. We turned into the lot and I almost crashed into someone standing in front of me.
There was a ring of people standing around. In the center of the lot a girl lay, bleeding from the head, her arms flung out next to her on the pavement, dark hair splayed out on the ground. She couldn't have been more than fifteen, my age. She lay in the pool of yellow light coming from a street light above the dark lot. It was a gunshot wound, I could tell. Kids stood around her in awe, doing nothing, just staring.
Nothing like this had happened since I was a little girl, when the gangs were at their peak. The last time a kid had gotten killed in this town was when I was eight. A boy got stabbed in a back lot. Then there was the police lockdown, the riots, and then it was over. Nothing like this had happened since we were just kids. We weren't kids anymore.
"It was a Columbus girl, wasn't it?" I heard Gemma's voice whisper. Gemma, Christina, and Lacie had come up behind Elle and I.
"I think so." I whispered.
"If she was, then we need to get out of here." Christina said quietly.
"We should all get out of here before the police shows," Lacie said. I nodded, not taking my eyes off the girl. Blood was pooling around her head, staining her white shirt deep red. "Come on, we're getting out." I pushed through the kids, dragging Lacie's arm. We pushed through the small crowd to the outside of the lot.
"Police!" A girls voice yelled, and the flashing red and blue lights flooded the lot. I locked eyes with Christina. The five of us were from the East Side, where kids aren't thought of very well in the eyes of the authority. There were kids there that were robbers, drug dealers, and criminals. If we were caught at the scene of a murder, especially that of a Columbus girl from the other side of town, it wouldn't be good. "We'll go through the alley." She said, and we ran out, sliding through a hole in the chain link fence. We ran through the narrow alley, hopped the fence, and turned the corner onto one of the safer, bigger streets in town.
