Page 20 of Ariel's Ruin

“Nothing. I’m just liking this feisty new you,” he says. “Where did she come from? Used to be I could hardly get two sentences out of you.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I say. “Especially if you plan on making promises you’re not gonna keep.”

He laughs. I’m not sure I meant to be funny, but I do like the sound of his laugh.

“I guess we got some time,” he says and mounts his bike. “Hop on. I know just the place for your first lesson.”

I don’t need to be told twice. The ride along the tree-lined road is not very long, at least not compared to the one we took earlier. We’re on the road back to Pleasantville, I think, but he veers off it and continues down a root-infested forest road that seems to stretch on and on into darkness. Our destination is a compound of some sort, made up of two wooden sheds, what looks like a chicken coop and a metal shipping container in a small clearing. Broken bottles and trash litter the ground and there’s a fire pit in the center that looks to be well used.

The shadows are long here, because the setting sun no longer reaches it. If it ever does. It looks like a very hopeless place. As hopeless as the places where I was locked up.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, since I’m just sitting there, not getting off the bike. I can’t actually speak. I want to be the feisty girl I was before, but she’s fading fast. He wouldn’t hurt me. I know that. But do I?

“Oh,” he mumbles after a while, glancing around the clearing. “Do you want to go somewhere else? This is where we used to come to shoot when we were younger, but if it’s too scary a place?— “

“It’s fine,” I say and practically leap off the bike before I change my mind. “The only way to conquer fear is to face it.”

He dismounts more slowly. “Where’d you read that? Some self-help book?”

I shrug. “Maybe.”

“The only way to conquer fear is to conquer whatever’s causing it,” he says. “Or better yet, destroy it. But even that doesn’t exactly work like you’d want it to.”

He’s speaking from experience, I can tell by the dark quality of his voice and the way he’s not meeting my eyes.

He walks over to one of the falling down shacks, picks up a crate of empty bottles and cans, and starts arranging them on a wooden slab propped up by bricks on either side.

“You ready for your first shooting lesson?” he asks as he returns.

I nod and swallow hard. I do it again as he pulls out a huge gun from one of the saddle bags on his bike. The barrel is silver bordering on pale gold and the handle is black as night.

“You ever even held a gun before?” he asks.

I shake my head and reach for it, the way I might reach for a snake even though they frighten me to death. Fear is mixing with exhilaration in my chest as my fingers close around the cool grip. It’s heavy, but perfectly balanced.

“I never held a gun before, but I always kind of wanted to,” I hear myself saying. “And I’m only just now realizing that.”

He laughs and stands behind me.

“This is a Desert Eagle,” he says. “And it’s a lot of gun for a little girl like you. I’ll have to figure out how to get you something smaller.”

I grin at him over my shoulder. “This will work just fine. So, I what? Just point and shoot?”

“That’s the idea, yeah,” he says then reaches around like he plans on helping me hold the gun.

I don’t need that, so I don’t wait. I just point at one of the brown beer bottles and squeeze the trigger. I didn’t expect the gun to recoil so hard. I thought the bullet would just go straight like it does on TV. Instead, the force knocked my hand upwards and sent the bullet flying into the sky with a single, deafening bang. My shoulder feels like I was hit by a baseball bat and the casing flying out singed my bare skin just above my left breast. But the noise of the shot drowned all of that out, sent birds screeching and left my ears ringing.

“Whoa,” Ruin says. “This gun’s got a lot of kick. I thought you wanted lessons.”

But he’s grinning from ear to ear as I turn to him.

“What I want is to shoot things,” I say. “And I want to do it again.”

“Go for it,” he says.

But this time he’s gripping my arm and pressing his body against my back before I squeeze the trigger. The recoil still rips through my arms and chest as the bullet leaves the barrel despite him holding onto me. But not as violently. This time I feel no pain. Only excitement. Only elation at holding this powerful weapon in my hands. Of pulling the trigger. Of hitting my target. With his help.

I shoot again and again. And on my tenth try, I actually hit one of the bottles without his hand guiding mine. It explodes into a million tiny pieces, each of them catching what little is left of the light and shimmering like gold.

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