This morning, as my family and I were getting ready to head out to the beach for a Labor Day picnic, my niece had just watched her boyfriend leave her house when she heard gunfire. She ran outside in a panic, worried that Jamal had been hit. What she found was a faceless boy lying on the sidewalk. She said she couldn't recognize him at all, his face was completely gone and she was overcome with shock and tears. Then she noticed his shoes and realized it was a good friend of hers, a friend of her boyfriends as well. This all happened before noon today. According to my neice, he was 16 and had recently been kicked out of his parents' home and was trying to find himself. The news says that he was 17. No matter, he was a child and he was gunned down in cold blood in broad daylight on the street. Naturally, everyone was shook up and sad. Jamal, my niece's boyfriend vomited. My mother's first instinct was to get them away from there as quickly as possible. The police had the street blocked off so we had to pick Jamal up from 7-11. We kept our plans to go to the beach and, although our hearts were darkened today, we did our best to uplift one another with love. I think the ocean helped as well. They smiled and laughed a lot as waves knocked us all around. RIP Charles.