“All of my students' grades went up. They even did the homework! My students actually looked forward to class each day.”

— April Holland, Teacher, Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School

STUDENT ANTHOLOGIES EXCERPTS

Mariano Trujillo’s “The Good Die Young”

in Writing Outside the Lines: Stories of Change by San Francisco Youth

A time my life changed was when my 14-year-old cousin David got shot in the head. David was cool. He did not like gangs or violence. He did like girls, clothes and shoes. Girls thought David was cute. David had long hair, too. He was always confident and he always had everything in order. David did not like fights. Every time there was a fight, he would call his mom and tell her come pick him up. He liked sports like baseball, basketball and football. But all that went away just because of a gun. It happened like this:

My cousin David was in Oakdale with his friends and me, and we found a gun. It was a pistol. When we found the gun, we were all discussing if we should pick it up or not. We decided to pick it up and take it back to David’s grandmother’s house. Then I said, “Take the bullets out.” So David took them out, and we started to throw them at each other. We were young and did not understand that was serious. When we got to his grandmother’s house, we thought we had taken all the bullets out, but there was still one in the gun.

David’s grandmother’s house was nice. She had a big house and a little backyard. She also had four bedrooms and two bathrooms. When this happened, we were in the living room. We started to play with the gun. It was weird holding it. Then we were throwing the bullets at each other and one of David’s friends was twirling the gun around his finger. He didn’t know there was a bullet left in it. His finger hit the trigger and the bullet that was in the gun hit David in the head.

The blood got all over my shirt and I fell on the ground. Then I crawled into a corner. I was freaked out. David’s friend got a towel to try to stop the bleeding, but it wouldn’t stop. The neighbors came and saw David on the ground with his friend holding a towel to his head. They called an ambulance and it came and took David to the hospital. While he was in the hospital, he died.

We all cried, and then we called our families and told everyone about it. We told David’s friends and even his girlfriend. We got to see David for the last time. Then the next day we buried him.

Hi, my name is Mariano Trujillo. I was born in San Francisco and I grew up in the Mission. My hobbies are playing soccer, baseball and football. My favorite foods are Mexican food, Chinese food and Filipino food. My favorite color is red. And I like to keep it real with other people.

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