Page 31

CHAPTER 31

Y ou know, I thought I’d be cooler about seeing a gun up close. Maybe it was because this one was next to a plate of Oreos. Very weird.

“A firearm is a tool, Poppy.” Betty said. “But it is a tool that kills. Therefore, it must be treated with the utmost respect since it can take the most precious thing of all: life. Have you considered that?”

“I want to be able to protect myself,” I said.

“I understand,” she said. “But killing is a line that, once crossed, changes you as a person.”

I thought about all the people who had died, the terrible waste, and the responsibility if it was my fault. “I think I understand.”

She peered at me. “Perhaps you do, but nothing can truly prepare you for the reality. At the very least, you should understand how to operate one. It’s a skill everyone should have whether they own one or not. Because life can bring the unexpected.”

She picked up the pistol, pushed something on the side, and the thing holding the bullets, the magazine, she called it, dropped out. Then she pulled the slide back and deftly caught the bullet that came flying out the top.

“Drink your tea, dear,” she said, and I picked up my cup and drank.

I took an Oreo, too. Well, they were right there and I needed something to hide the fact that I was shaking a little bit.

“The biggest mistake novices make,” Mrs. B. said, pushing the bullet into the magazine, “is they clear the gun in the wrong order. They try to clear the chamber before removing the magazine. All that does is load another bullet into the chamber. See?” She demonstrated. “They think they have an unloaded gun, but it’s not. It’s often the last thing they do before accidentally shooting themselves.”

I nodded. And sitting there, just the two of us, in between sipping tea, she showed me how to properly clear the weapon so it was safe, load it, aim it, and a whole bunch of other things. It was a lot, a five-Oreo lecture.

And then she handed me the gun.

At first, I fumbled with it because it weighed a lot more than I thought it would. Once I had the hang of handling it, Betty had me unload it and do what she called dry-fire, which was pulling the trigger without any bullet. Then she had me load it again while she watched my every move.

Finally, she told me to put the gun down on the table.

“Well?” she said.

“I think—” I started to say, but then Fernanda made this horrible sound from behind us, and Mrs. B. grabbed the gun and tackled me to the ground, and I heard a crack that sounded like a shot, and Mrs. B. jerked as she fell across me, and when I looked up, a guy dressed in black was coming closer, a mask over his face, looking right at me, raising a rifle for another shot, aiming at me, and I thought, I’m going to die .

And then Mrs. B. fired. Three times.

The guy’s head snapped back from the first shot, and he dropped to his knees as the second shot hit and the rifle fell out of his hands, and then with the third shot, he fell face-forward onto the cold hard ground. It was nothing at all like I’d seen in the movies. Just the drop to the knees, and then hitting the ground, all of it in a second, although it was like slow motion for me.

“Is he dead?” I asked, horrified.

“I certainly hope so,” Mrs. B. said.

Fernanda came running around the corner of the house, her broken halter dangling, and stomped on the body.

Definitely dead.

There was a dead guy right there.

I’d watched him get shot. Fall on his face. Die.

I was trying not to scream or throw up when I noticed Mrs. B. had gotten up and taken her chair again.

“Could you text Max, please?” she asked me, calm as ever as she looked at me. “And possibly that doctor who came to town?”

That’s when I saw the red splotch on the right shoulder of her dress.

She held out the gun with her left hand. “Reload please, in case someone else is out there.”

I reloaded, my hands shaking, making sure I was doing everything exactly the way she taught me.

She held out her hand and I gave it back to her, my lust for learning how to shoot completely gone.

I texted Max.