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Enjoy the Caribbean. It's a quiet place where nothing happens, the type of place where people go and retire to sip on pina calaadas all day.

However, a few houses next to mine lived a family that was not like the rest.

They had the biggest house on the street and lived luxuriously. Their kids would play with me. the five when I was maybe 11, and she was always at my house.

I knew my mom and the neighbors were concerned about a five-year-old

being all day outside and not arriving at her house until midnight on school nights,

but it was a quiet place where nothing happened, so no one got worried.

When Tiny turned six, her parents threw a giant birthday party for her, and

all the neighborhood kids were invited. I wanted to go. They had bouncy houses, water slides, and everything a kid could want to play with, but my

parents didn't allow me to go. I never knew why. I suppose it was just because my mom didn't know her mom. I remember feeling very

sad because everyone was there and I was playing alone at my house. After the birthday things went back to normal and one day we were

all playing and talking about what our parents did for work. We asked Tiny and her siblings but none of them knew what they

did except traveled a lot and they were always at meetings. I didn't pay much

attention and we all continued with our day.

One night we were playing on the street when we started hearing loud pops coming from

Tiney's house.

I'll never forget that day. The neighbors, including my mom, came out rushing us inside yelling that it was gunshots.

Some of us got into my house and we stayed there as my next door neighbor who was a cop ran towards Tiney's house.

All we saw after the gunshots was a black van rushing down the street and almost killing a dog.

Some men entered the house.

Tiny inner siblings wanted to go check what was going on, but everyone forbade them to go.

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