Turning 14 in Cincinnati: 'I worry about surviving'

Introduction by Managing Editor Laura Trujillo:On March 21, 14-year-old Jashawn Martin was shot as he passed by a fight on his way to see a friend. Eight days later – a day after she attended Jashawn's funeral – 14-year-old Tyann Adkins was shot to death as she waited to get her nails done. The boy who shot her was 14, as was the boy who called 911 and tried to save her. Not long after, a 14-year-old was part of a robbery at DeSales Market in Walnut Hills that left a father of two begging for his life.

In the newsroom, we routinely deal with crime – shootings and robberies, death and grief. But somehow these violent episodes crept into our heads and we couldn't get them out.

It was the number 14.

All three of us most closely connected to this project – editor, reporter and photographer – have children who are 14 or close to it. We thought we knew 14. But through Jashawn and Tyann, through kids who commit crimes and kids who are their victims, we realized 14 is not easily known.

In some neighborhoods, 14 is the sweet spot between childhood and adolescence, a time of unguarded emotion and untempered enthusiasm. In others, it's an abrupt introduction into a complex, confusing and sometimes even violent world.

This project, which we simply call "14," is a rare chance to view three such neighborhoods – Avondale, Evanston and Walnut Hills – through the eyes of the 14-year-olds who live there.

We don't have the answers to the violence and hopelessness that has taken hold of some young people in those neighborhoods. Neither did the 14-year-olds we interviewed. But as they opened their lives to our questions, we understood that we will never find answers unless we listen better to them.

So this is our start. We invite you to enter the world of 14.

Malik Nu'qman says the three things he values most in life are his brothers, his mother and his bike.

His family, in part because they're the buffer between him and the harsher realities of his Avondale neighborhood. His bike, because it's his means to get around it.

At 14, Malik feels a constant tension between wanting to venture into his community and the fear he'll be jumped or shot if he strays too far. It's not unfounded. This spring, Jashawn Martin and Tyann Adkins – both also 14 – were shot to death within eight days of each other, one in Avondale, the other in nearby Walnut Hills. Malik knew them both.

On a recent Friday afternoon Malik has just ridden his bike back from Bengals Park on Reading Road, where he spends weekends hanging with his friend Jordan until it gets dark and the park is no longer safe because of fights and drug-dealing. He walks the bike up the 24 steps leading to his house, which he says is slowly sliding down the hillside it sits on and will soon force his family to move. The bike can sit on the porch as long as Malik does, but at night it has to be stored in the living room beside the fish tank. In his neighborhood, he says, you don't leave out what you don't want to be gone.

Malik, who is seriously annoyed by years of adults telling him he's smart and has potential, prides himself on not having to learn things the hard way. Since he was 6 or 7, he has studied TV crime shows to prepare himself for unexpected dangers. He has a plan for what he'll do if someone breaks into his home and comes after his family, which he says has never happened. He has a plan for dodging a drug-related shootout, which he says has happened several times. And he has a plan for staying out of fights that break out in front of him, which he says happen all the time. "I've never gotten hit by a car, but if I did, I'd ball up. I'd have some damage but I wouldn't get killed," he says in his slow, deliberate way. "I try to think of things before they hit me."

The approach didn't exactly work four years ago when he was 10 and riding his bike to the store to get chips and fruit punch. A bad group of kids was hanging on Reading Road – "you could say there was a vibe I picked up" – so he turned down Lexington, only to run into a second group who taunted him and started closing in. He flew his bike by them, got to the store and stayed inside for an hour, trying to decide what to do. When he came out, his bike was gone. He made the half-mile trip home on foot, hiding in backyards and dodging across streets in the dark. It took him two hours. "All I remember is my heart was beating really fast. I had to get home."

Home is where Malik feels the safest. Where he can watch Scooby-Doo and play his favorite video game, Call of Duty Black Ops 2 ("It takes my mind off other things because all I'm thinking is fight and kill.") cook with his mother, and figure out how to deal with Ms. Watson, his 24-year-old math teacher who alternately frustrates and fascinates him. "She's like a flickering light," he says. He resents that she sometimes blames him for the trouble caused by the boys who sit behind him. "She points at me. 'Malik, why are you making farting noises?' in this shrill voice." Three times he has gone to the office to report her to the principal. "He really didn't care."

Malik admits that he talks too much, tries to "keep things at average" with his grades so people don't make fun of him and once was suspended five days for punching someone who was capping on him. "It affected their face – I gave this person a black eye and a bloody nose." He was scared to tell his mother, who makes it her business to know where her son is at any given moment and who, after considering one of his ill-advised actions all night, simply walked into his bedroom the next morning and smacked him. This time, she only asked if he had won or lost. He said he believed he had won, and went to his room on his own to reconsider his behavior. "I learned I had to control my temper. You can't get people to slow down and stop capping people and everything will be a happy place – it's never going to be like that."

Making peace with life's realities is something Malik is very good at. The day he stayed too long at the Avondale library, saw people emptying out of a car on Burnet Avenue and a man in a white T-shirt pulling a gun from his pants, he just rode his bike as fast as he could for home and said nothing about it to his mother. "Probably because I was scared she wouldn't let me go outside anymore. I really like to be outside, just not outside to see that."

Overall, Malik, whose name means "the most high" in Arabic, describes himself as calm, brilliant (he says the word slowly), short-tempered, funny, "lazy but not lazy at the same time," kind, caring, loving. His mother says he's a social butterfly and a good boy who comes into her bedroom before he catches the 6:16 a.m. yellow bus to his Bond Hill charter school, asks if she wants a glass of water and goes downstairs to get her one.

That's Malik following his Third Rule for How to Treat Females: Always treat a lady like a lady. If she needs something, go get that need. His first rule is never hit a woman, even if she pushes you to the limit. His second is never use a woman and then drop her by the side.

He says if he ever has children of his own (he thinks he wants two), he will definitely be part of their life. "If I wouldn't, how would that make their mother feel? That would be breaking all my rules at once."

He saw his own father for just two days when he was 12, he says. "He gave me his number before he went back to Florida. He called and asked me if I wanted to talk to my sister. That's when I found out I had a sister. I talked to her. All I remember is I asked her favorite color and she said blue. I asked her name and she said Dazina, and then the phone went off. I think my father hung up the phone. I called back and nobody answered."

Malik kept calling for the next two years. Then he deleted the number. Asked who the father is in his life today, he says, "Nobody."

When he says it, a shadow crosses his face. He says his face goes blank like that sometimes, like when he heard that Jashawn, a boy he used to shoot hoops with in Walnut Hills, had been shot and killed March 21. "I didn't want him to be hurt. I didn't see him being hurt, but he's dead. I didn't want him to be dead." Malik doesn't cry at funerals, in part because there have been so many deaths in his neighborhood and family – including a cousin shot to death in prison – and in part because young males like him have to be smart about when to show their emotions.

"I have two different personalities. When I'm on the street, I turn ghetto so that I won't be beaten up. I try not to stand out. If I'm in a crowd, I try not to be the weird one. I'd look at someone, and if I knew you, I'd try not to show I knew you."

He slides down deeper into a chair on his front porch and hikes his feet up on a pillar. "This is the real me," he says. "I wish I didn't have to be two." His tone is resigned.

Having his feet elevated to eye level reminds him of one of two things he worries about: shoes. Girls cap on boys who have broken-down shoes, he says. He's asked his mother for a new pair but she works 60 hours a week providing home care for seniors and people with disabilities, and there are always bills to pay. He hopes this week there's something left in her paycheck.

His second worry is harder to address. "I worry about surviving. If I make it through a day without getting hurt and it's a happy day, that's the best day of my life – and if nobody gets hurt. But you can't go a whole day without seeing fights or car crashes, or people getting jumped, shot, anything. If you can get through one day without seeing none of that, that's the best day."

His chances of living to adulthood, he says, are 50-50.

Asked if this is hard to hear, his mother Khad'ja Touray, says, "Not hard at all because I only have a 50-50 chance. So it's a reality check."

Like many boys whose fathers are absent from their homes, Malik feels a responsibility to watch out for his family.

When a boyfriend threatened his mother, Malik looked for something sharp to pass her to defend herself. "I was little, but I did what I could do," he says. "She'd tell me to hide but I wouldn't. It's not my nature to sit and hide."

Which brings Malik back to the matter of his bike, being 14 and his neighborhood. He likes the way the trees are planted in Avondale, how they line the streets. He likes all the colors of the houses. "It's beautiful, but every day you have to survive. It's beautiful but these killings have to stop."

Sometimes, if he's unsure if it's safe to go somewhere, he'll cross the street to talk to his mother and make it seem he can't go rather than he's scared to go. "But I am scared. Sometimes, not always."

He has rules for moving around his community . Never go anywhere a crowd is gathered. Don't go into certain apartment buildings, like the Poinciana on Reading Road, where Tyann Adkins was shot and killed in March – except that he goes there anyway to check up on his cousins who live there. And assume that in any gathering of teenagers, at least a third are carrying a gun. "When you're in Avondale, they walk around like they're grown but they're not. Grown men have guns but they keep it close. But these guys walk around and flash it out. They want you to see their guns, like, 'If you're messing with me, I'm going to shoot you.'"

It's one of the reasons his mother constantly reminds him to be careful and to keep his circle of intimates small. Just like violent things happened to these other kids, she tells him, they can happen to you. You are not exempt.

Malik hears her. He says he starts each day not with prayer, but with hope. Prayer sometimes doesn't work, he says, but hope gets you through the day. Hope and your own best instincts.

"If I'm going to the store, sometimes I have to take another way to get there. If I go outside, I have to make my way to a point without getting shot or getting into a fight." He pauses. "And I usually make it there. I mean, I'm here now."

It was a crime people couldn't stop talking about -- three teenagers in Halloween masks barging into DeSales Market in East Walnut Hills in the middle of the day, putting a pellet gun to the owner's head, reducing a customer to begging for his life, stealing their wallets and fleeing to a suburban mall to buy clothes with their credit cards.

It was a ruthless act that belied the boys's age. When their identities hit the street, the name of the youngest - a 14-year-old from Evanston - was passed along as a question.

Malek Green?

Malek Green, the freshman forward who scored 28 points to lift Taft over West High? Malek Green, who gets As and Bs and wants to be a math teacher? Malek Green, known for breaking up small fights and walking away from big ones?

Malek, who didn't have a criminal record and whom nobody thought ever would?

"I thought it wasn't a really big deal at first. I didn't have to do anything. I was just there. They said, just come in there." Two days after his release from juvenile detention, Malek sits at his dinner table, trying to explain his actions. His head is mostly down. His voice is quiet. A monitor is attached to his ankle. His mother, who has made sure Malek has done everything the court asked and apologized to his victims, sits at his side.

One of his two worst moments, he says, was disappointing her. The second was seeing what they put their victims through. Of the customer, Malek says, "He was scared and stuff. He said he had kids right there near. And I know a lot of things was going through his mind, like is he going to lose his life."

Only later did Malek realize how easily he could have lost his own.

Malek says one reason teenagers commit crimes is they fear being viewed as a punk, "getting looked at like a lesser person, or like they're afraid of things."

His mother gives him a long, serious look. "I need to know the people who I be around," he says slowly, soberly. "If I'm around somebody who's talking about negatives, or about doing something wrong, I need to find an excuse to to leave -- or just walk away."

Terri Simpson remembers the moment she first told someone she was pregnant. She was 13, in a summer school program, and she told a friend at the top of a slide.

"She said, 'Quit lying!' and pushed me down the slide."

Terri wouldn't mention her pregnancy again until she was too far along for an abortion.

Now her son Terrion is a toddler who sleeps in her room. "He doesn't usually stay up late, but I do be tired," says the ninth-grader from Avondale, who gets up at 5:10 a.m. to catch a bus to Withrow University High School, leaving her son with her father.

Four days a week, she stays after school until 5 p.m. for tutoring. "Then I go home, play with him for a minute, give him a bath, feed him, and then I've still got homework."

She says it matter-of-factly, and with a smile. On weekends, she relies on help from her vast group of siblings – "I'm like the 14th kid." Her teachers are supportive and, overall, her friends have stood by her. But she admits having a baby and keeping up with ninth grade is harder than she thought.

"If I'm taking a test, and I think I can't do it, I think of my son and I think I can't give up. He motivates me."

She smiles again. "But I don't play a lot."

Tony Hill knows things a 14-year-old shouldn't know.

Like how it feels at age 10 to be sent outside because his mother had a boyfriend there. And to stay outside all night.

Like what it's like to go to the refrigerator and find nothing – really nothing -- there to eat.

Like breaking that news to his six younger sisters and brothers.

Like breaking into cars and buildings to get money to feed them.

"When you finally hit that rock bottom, it's like, wow, I just don't care anymore," says the Taft eighth-grader who moves among Avondale, Over-the-Rhine and other neighborhoods. "And your hands get sweaty, and you just do it. When I was breaking into cars, I didn't care whose stuff it was. It just needed to be mine, just so I could feed my family. The only thing that would have made me stop was money."

He's spent time at 2020, the Hamilton County youth detention center. He's been suspended from school for an altercation with a former girlfriend. But he says jail time isn't the answer for any kid. "When you take somebody to jail, it's not stopping them. It's just making their minds go different – thinking how could I have tricked the cops, how could I have found a different way to run. It's like putting a cover on a fire – it's not going to put it out."

What has put the fire out for Tony is an AAU basketball team called the Cincy Buckeyes and his coach, Jesse Cheatham, "who is right at my shoulder telling me what's right."

Basketball, he says, is "my getaway key. When I play basketball, you can't do nothing but get better. As long as I have Coach Jesse, the chances of my being on TV doing something wrong are zero to none."

Alexis Lindsay's best day of eighth grade was the first day of school, when her friends were excited to see each other and she got to meet new people.

Her worst was the day she came to school knowing her best friend Jashawn Martin wouldn't be there.

Jashawn would walk Alexis home from school, meet up with her at Owl's Nest Park in East Walnut Hills to talk about people or a new song they both liked, and keep an annual Lazer Kraze date on her birthday. Most days they'd stop for a hug on the way to their third bell classes at Withrow University High School.

On March 21, Jashawn was shot to death at the corner of Essex Place and Taft Road in Walnut Hills. Police say he was on his way to see a friend but stopped to watch a fight.

Alexis says she thought about Jashawn's decision recently, when she went back to Owl's Nest Park. "I was sitting in a corner and these girls were arguing and then these boys jumped in. I was like, 'My friend just died from watching a fight. I'm going home."

At her school, she says, sometimes people stand on cafeteria tables to get a better view of a fight.

Alexis has always been the steady, quiet friend who people talk to about their problems – so much so that sometimes she's smiled but not really listened. She's listening now.

"I want to help people," she says, wiping tears from her cheeks. "I want to be there for them to talk to. I want to listen – cause it's hard out here these days."

It was the best moment of Armanie White's junior high football career. Maybe, he says, one of the best of his life. The sixth game of the season for the Withrow Tigers. The coach calls for Number 30. Long, lanky Armanie goes in and catches a Hail Mary pass – with one hand.

"Everybody was hurraying me, and hitting my shoulder pads and saying good catch." Armanie's practiced-passive gaze is gone and he breaks into a smile.

At 14, being known is an important thing in Avondale, and Armanie White is a kid everybody knows. As soon as he checks in at home after school, "I leave back out," he says. He tries to stay out of the way of bad things, he says, but sometimes they find him. He has a July 5th court date for the theft of a bicycle. He's been to juvenile detention. He's had a warrant out for his arrest.

His parents warn him. A lot. They tell him bullets don't have names on them, that they can hit anybody. They tell him to be aware of what's happening around him. They tell him to not to hang out at certain spots.

"And I don't," he says. "But sometimes I'm just there on accident."

That's what he believes happened to his friend Tyann Adkins, who was killed in an Avondale apartment on a Saturday afternoon, waiting to have her nails done. The two had gone to school together since preschool. He calls her "my little baby."

Sometimes he hears gunshots when he gets up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. "I think, somebody's getting shot. Or what if one day that was me? Or, I could get shot just being somewhere at the wrong time."

"Stuff happens anywhere," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "But I'd like to live somewhere peaceful – if I could just find somewhere out there that's peaceful."

Grady Chapel lives in Avondale but he hangs out elsewhere – Newport on the Levee, Downtown on Fountain Square, Tri-County Mall. And he always hangs with the same four guys. His brothers.

"I don't really have friends," he says. "I think of them as associates. I don't think I should have friends. I don't trust nobody, really. You get close to somebody, and they turn their back on you."

At Hughes High School, where he's an eighth-grader, he's an outfielder on the baseball team and an offensive and defensive lineman in football. He says if he had to name an actual friend, he'd probably pick someone he plays sports with. But an incident last year at Bengals Park in Avondale convinced him that his mother was right about never letting your guard down.

A group of teenagers "came out of nowhere," and told Grady they wanted to fight him. An acquaintance who was with Grady said he wouldn't let the fight happen, but didn't have the power to stop it. Grady saved himself by running to a stranger and asking to use her phone to call his mother. "It was her daughter's birthday, and she didn't want something bad to happen," he says.

For Grady, it was a turning point. "I don't want to be in Avondale all my life. Nothing's really out there, and something's always happening," he says. "My three oldest brothers have jobs. They're all trying to get money, and that's my plan – to get a job and get money. I trust my mama, my grandparents, my brothers, that's it. I don't really need friends."

"I don't understand how somebody can take somebody else's life."

Jalen Owensby says out loud what students at her school have been thinking since two of their Withrow classmates, Jashawn Martin and Tyann Adkins, were shot and killed in March.

But Jalen, who lives in Evanston, has been trying to make sense out of losing people to violence since she was six years old.

"My uncle came and picked up my cousin and me at school and took us to the hospital," the eighth-grader says, remembering back to 2006. "I saw my brother in the room. I went over to hug him, and he didn't hug me back. And I realized he wasn't there any more."

Her 20-year-old brother, Rodney Owensby Turnbow died a day after being shot by an acquaintance. His death came seven years after a cousin, Roger Owensby, died after a struggle with Cincinnati police officers – a death that led up to the 2001 riots. Last summer, another cousin, Justin Owensby, was found shot to death in Westwood.

"To me, it's a curse, because a lot of my family members are getting killed back to back to back," she says. "If I got shot and killed, it would be hard on my parents. I'm the only kid in the house and my dad already lost one. I plan on moving to Atlanta. I don't want to live in Cincinnati because I don't want to be an innocent female who gets killed."

Some of Jamir Parker's friends have started smoking. It's making him think he should be hanging around more positive people. Meanwhile, he's working on stuff of his own. "I go to school to work on academics. I'm working on basketball and other sports, and on getting taller."

Jamir, a ninth-grader at Withrow, thinks people his age shouldn't have to act older. "I mean, it's 14," he says. He likes roller skating, going to Kings Island and going to the movies – with females.

Do females like him? His smile is immediate. "Of course," he says.

One of Jamir's big dreams is getting his mother out of Evanston. He'd like to be a professional athlete, or maybe join the U.S. Army or start his own sporting goods company. "The first paycheck I get is going to my mother."

Kids at school joke about selling weed to make money. Jamir says it's something he'll never do.

"I won't because my dad did it – he sold drugs. I haven't seen him half my life. He should be coming home (from prison) in a couple months or a year. I remember a couple times of seeing him."

But his mother, he says, has always been there. "We talk all the time. I tell her everything I do in school – if I do something stupid or get in a fight. And I tell her what I'm going to do in my life so I don't turn out like my father."

The fourth Sunday of every month, young people at New Friendship Baptist Church are called to the front of the sanctuary, where they give an accounting of their grades and activities. Jazonee Burton never leaves the podium without a standing ovation.

Her 3.8 grade-point average in double-accelerated classes and her acceptance at Walnut Hills High School bring tears to the eyes of some church members. They've been watching Jazonee grow up since the age of four.

They've lost neighborhood youth to drugs or violence, so Jazonee's success feels personal, like an answer to prayer.

She looks across the sanctuary where she regularly sings and performs what she calls "praise dance." "This church is very important to me. I've learned to know a lot of people here, and I love a lot of people here."

Jazonee, who lives in Evanston, doesn't hang out on the streets. She doesn't smoke or drink. She doesn't rebel against her mother. She doesn't have a boyfriend.

"A lot of boys at my school are pretty disrespectful with touching girls. I don't think it should be allowed. I try to keep myself distant from that. I have a lot of friends, but if a boy does something I think is inappropriate, I'll talk to him about and if he does it again, I'll go to an adult."

What influenced her was one of her pastor's sermons. "He said we should respect ourselves, to make sure others respect us."

Kimera Starnes' grandmother used to tell her that God gives his hardest battles to his toughest soldiers.

She smiles. "So I thought, I'm the strongest soldier."

The crutches beside her are evidence of her newest battle, a hip fractured while running track for Clark Montessori. Her doctor said it could take weeks to heal; the seventh-grader started walking the next day.

Other wounds, however, took longer.

Her family still mourns the death of her sister, who was killed 11 years ago by her husband. Then two years ago, Kimera's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, her father with lymphoma, and a favorite aunt with diabetes. "My family was kind of falling apart, and school just wasn't a priority. I got held back."

The tough little tomboy who'd take on kids who taunted her for being dark-skinned turned into a determined adolescent who "knew how to deal with a setback." Kimera, who lives in Walnut Hills, entered therapy, caught up on her studies, ran track, played soccer and volleyball.

Now, among her friends, she's known as a peacemaker. "When somebody says something to one of my friends, they want to fight. But I'm the one who says, 'Let's just think what happens if you do this.' I come from a family where violence is kind of like a big thing."

By the time he gets to his Walnut Hills Metro stop for the 6:33 a.m. bus that takes him across town to Aiken College and Career High School, Lamon Owens has already put in a decent morning's work.

Up at 5 a.m. three mornings a week and 4 a.m. the other two, the seventh-grader is in charge of getting his three younger siblings up and ready for school. He wakes them, tells them what they're supposed to wear, calls them down to breakfast, pours their cereal.

Before he and his 12-year-old brother walk out the door, they've done the dishes, wiped out the microwave, sprayed down the counter and swept the kitchen floor. The two switch additional bathroom and kitchen jobs every other week, and they both wash their own clothes.

His family and friends call Lamon "Easy," and after seven family moves, he knows how to get along with almost anybody, and he's almost always exactly where he's supposed to be. Four nights a week that's at the US Bank Boys and Girls Club in Avondale, and the fifth, he's serving on the Avondale Youth Council.

A part-time job at the council nets him up to $40 every two weeks. Earlier this year, after paying off the last $7 he owed on a bike he bought for himself, he got out of his mom's car at a Walnut Hills gas station, walked up to three homeless people on a nearby street corner and handed each one $10.

"My sister and brothers were in the car and the second oldest one was like, 'Dude, you could use that.' I was like, I've already gotten the bike I wanted. I don't need the rest."

Nayla Armstrong has thoughts about being 14, and she is happy to talk them out. She just has to do it quickly because she's leaving for a school field study.

To the Bahamas.

"We're studying marine life," she says, seated in the lobby of her school, Clark Montessori. "But it's bittersweet – I'll be away from my family for 10 days."

When it comes to the worlds of bitter and sweet, Nayla's life has largely been sweet. She's a "sporty kind of girl," she says, who's been swimming and playing basketball since she was 6. Her biggest concern is grades. "Honestly, I struggle with my grades because I have so much to do." Her biggest fans are her parents, 22-year-old sister and 2-year-old niece. "Everybody in my family takes a part in my life. If they can't do much, they'll show up at a basketball game or a volleyball game. I feel blessed."

Nayla, who lives on the border of North Avondale and Avondale, is cautious – she calls her mom to tell her where she's going when she walks the family dog, Red – but she feels safe at home and school. "If there's a conflict, teachers talk to the people who are angry separately, get both sides of the story, then settle it then and there. Usually people get along well here."

While she loves athletics, she plans on being a veterinarian. "Sports can get you educated, but it can't get you educated with a degree – and I want a degree."

Savannah Howard doesn't it find it hard to picture herself at 19, holding down a job, living in an apartment and going to college at Xavier University or somewhere "far out" – which to Savannah means anywhere outside Cincinnati. "I've never been far out to other places," she says somewhat shyly.

What's harder for Savannah is figuring out how to navigate her world right now. Every morning she takes Metro bus 11 downtown from her home in Avondale, and catches the 34 to Withrow University High School, where she's a seventh-grader. Every afternoon, after track practice, she and her best friend Destiny reverse the process, hopping off at the Hirsch Recreation Center for dance practice or to rehearse for the Miss Hirsch Beauty Pageant.

But then comes a 15-minute walk home, during which the girls pass apartment complexes known for drug-dealing and violence.

"Sometimes when it's not crowds, I feel safe. But when it's crowds, I call my mama."

Savannah knows that she is fortunate. Her family lives in a house, not an apartment. Savannah has only moved once in her entire life. And every time she calls, her mother comes for her.

But some days – not every day – Savannah is still scared in her neighborhood. "I fear losing my life, losing my mama, my grandma, everybody in my family. I fear guns and knives. I've never seen a gun, except on TV, but I know people who have been shot. And my mom tells me, when the sun comes down, come in. Cause when the sun goes down, bad things happen."

A closing note from Krista Ramsey

At some point in almost every interview Cara Owsley and I did for this project, these 14 year olds broke our hearts. They're programmed to hope, like any young teenagers, but they live in neighborhoods where hope is at best a gamble.

What could save them is a community that provides the support, structure and safe spaces to help them save themselves. If you'd like to be part of that support, here are three things you can do:

• Help with summer learning programs, service projects or everyday recreation at Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Cincinnati, or help fund their programs. To volunteer, call 513-421-8909, ext. 19, or www.bgcgc.org. To give, make checks to Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Cincinnati, 600 Dalton Ave., Cincinnati 45203.
• Change two lives – a young person's and yours – by becoming a mentor with the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative. More than 977 kids are waiting on you. Or sign up to speak about your career or invite a teen to job-shadow. Call 513-363-5203.
• Tutor, help with projects, donate or just hang out with kids at the Avondale Youth Council. Information, 513-281-0599. Checks payable to Avondale Youth Council, 3618 Reading Road, Cincinnati 45229.

Contact Krista at kramsey@enquirer.com. Read more of her stories here.