NARRATOR: With their mother frequently not at home, Omarina was making regular trips to the Bronx, juggling the demands of her school work and her sense of responsibility to her brother.

OMARINA CABRERA: Hey! Where were you?

I tried very hard not to ever cry in front of him. I hope he does realize that I do care and— and that’s why I do the things I do, and that’s why I always nag him.

So you get transferred, or are you still in the process? What’s going to happen with that?

OMARLIN CABRERA: I don’t know. I’m just waiting.

OMARINA CABRERA: Oh. It’s not going to take long, right?

OMARLIN CABRERA: No. Hope not.

NARRATOR: Omarlin was reluctant to talk about what was going on in his life, or about the bullet that could have ended it.

OMARLIN CABRERA: It came from this way into my arms, and then under my upper ribs on the left side, close to my heart. I don’t know. I could have died, so I thank God that I’m not dead and I can still be here. So I just have fun. I know she’s going to have a bright future, too, because she goes to school. She got her scholarship. So that’s good.

I don’t know. I have to— to have a good life and a good job and kids and be married. That’s it.

NARRATOR: So while Omarina was finishing her sophomore year at Brooks, Omarlin, at age 16, was still in the 9th grade. At the time of filming, he had only shown up for school five times all year. In the coming months, he would be arrested for carrying a knife and for possession of marijuana.

OMARINA CABRERA: I handle stress in different ways. When I get to Brooks, I use it as almost my getaway. I can’t just think and think and think and think about all the things that are going wrong. I just think of all the things that might be going right, you know?

NARRATOR: We returned to Brooks two years later, after a difficult junior year that would determine where, or even if, she would go to college.

LATIN TEACHER: What is oportet? Remember from Latin 20, you had that list of all impersonal verbs?

OMARINA CABRERA: An indirect statement.

LATIN TEACHER: Indirect statement

OMARINA CABRERA: In the beginning, I definitely thought I was going to have one of the best years, but junior year ended up being one of the hardest years of my life. I think the clouds started gathering when we found out that Omarlin was going to be having a baby. And I just remember thinking, like, “What did you do?”

I just thought back to, like, our childhood and how much our parents, you know, affected the trajectory of our lives. And I just— I just feared that he might not be able to physically be there because he’s in a frenzy to provide for her. And my fears came true when he was arrested.

NARRATOR: Omarlin pled guilty to attempted robbery in the first degree and was sent to Rikers Island to await sentencing.

OMARINA CABRERA: I knew that my other half, my brother, the person that I love most in this world, was going through something so terrible that I could never even imagine.

TEACHER: All right, so what is the anti-derivative of 9?

OMARINA CABRERA: All of this anxiety, you know, caused me to lose focus in school.

TEACHER: We’re going to get back to finding the volume of the cylinder, but we’re going to do it through—

OMARINA CABRERA: Junior year’s important because those are the grades that are sent out to colleges. I was, like, having panic attacks just thinking about like, wow, my grades aren’t what they’re supposed to be.

Getting up out of bed was so difficult. Just that day felt like too much for me.

CATHERINE MILLER: I couldn’t fathom the idea that this amazing young lady who had overcome so many things and is on the precipice of moving on to the next stage of her life, and that might all be gone. I knew that an intervention was absolutely necessary, so I drove up to Brooks.

OMARINA CABRERA: I just stopped because I saw Ms. Miller with her, “I’m going to kill you” eyes. [laughs] She’d always say, like, “All right, there’s all these things you can’t control, but what are the things that are bothering you right now that we can fix?”

She got me this poster for my wall, more frames to put pictures of, you know, the people that I love. Just that feeling that I had, you know, people to catch me whenever I did fall just gave me the strength to keep moving forward step by step, step by step.

NARRATOR: While all this was going on, Omarina, with the help of Ms. Miller and the staff at Brooks, was also applying to colleges. The only way she could afford to go was with a generous financial aid package. Her first choice was George Washington University.