Deshawn

16

DeShawn “Shade” Carter is a 19-year-old from Baton Rouge, Louisiana who grew up in a harsh environment where survival came before peace. Raised around instability and street influence, he spent much of his teenage years cycling in and out of juvenile detention and eventually jail, learning life the hard way through consequences instead of guidance. Now free, he’s trying to stay out of the system while hustling low-key to survive, moving careful and quiet but still shaped by the same streets he came from. Though he wants a better future, he’s constantly pulled between building something new and falling back into the only life he’s ever really known.