"Bunny." Silas jogged over to me wearing a pair of black workout shorts and nothing else. His chest and forehead were beaded with sweat, and his hair was pulled back in the tiniest ponytail ever. "I was just telling Cole that I thought you could kick his ass."
He threw his sweaty arm around my shoulders and led me over to where Cole was punching a heavy punching bag hanging from a metal beam. With every punch, he exhaled a short, quick breath. He was dressed in the same thing as Silas.
I was not complaining about the view.
"I'm not fighting her. I bet she fights dirty and goes straight for the nuts." Cole did some combo that made my head spin and then stopped and shook out his hands. "But I wouldn't mind grappling around a bit." He wiggled his eyebrows and did a sweep of me with his eyes.
I shoved away from Silas, who laughed as I walked away. Thankfully, the two of them weren't bickering.
Xander and Eli stood just outside another door, and I went to join them. My jaw dropped to the floor as I watched Carly shoot an arrow at a target at the other end of a small field. She didn't hit the bullseye, which was right over the heart of a dummy, but she got close.
"What are we doing, boys?" I moved out in front of them and Eli wrapped his arms around me, putting a hand flat against my stomach.
I'd never seen a bow up close before, and it was much larger than I thought. Carly looked badass shooting it, and my fingers itched to try.
"We're supposed to be lifting weights, but we got distracted by Katniss over there." Xander nodded his chin at Carly. "She's pretty good."
"Have you guys tried it before?" I already knew I was going to try it if she'd let me. How could I not?
"Nope."
"Never."
"You guys are throwing off my focus with all your chatter." Carly held the bow at her side and looked over her shoulder. "Want to try?"
"I thought you'd never ask." I skipped over to her like a kid going to Disneyland. "I've never done it before."
She raised the bow up. "It's simple, really. This is a recurve bow, and the first thing you do is attach your thumb to the finger sling. Then get an arrow." She pulled an arrow out of her quiver. "You put three fingers on the string. One finger above the arrow and two below."
I wasn’t sure what she told me next because a weird feeling, kind of like déjà vu, came over me, and the next thing I knew, she was handing me the bow. What the hell was that all about? I completely blanked out for a solid minute.
I took it, and without thinking, grabbed an arrow, raised the bow, and shot at the target, the arrow hitting right in the middle of the bullseye.
"What the hell? I thought you said you'd never shot before?" Carly huffed. "Probably was beginner's luck."
A weird calmness washed over me, and I held out my hand for another arrow. She handed me one, and I did the same thing, the arrow landing right in the bullseye. It was so close to the other arrow that they could have been conjoined twins. I didn't even know how I was doing it.
"Do you have any moving targets?" Xander had come to stand next to me at some point and was staring at me in awe.
"Yeah. Give me a few minutes." Carly jogged off to a small shed and went inside.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" I glanced at Xander out of the corner of my eye as I examined the bow more closely.
"Just thinking."
That wasn't vague at all. I was about to question him further when Carly came back out with a remote-controlled car and a ceramic rabbit. Cole and Silas wandered out of the barn to join us.
"What's going on out here?" Cole wiped the sweat off his forehead with his forearm. "We heard someone say you have the perfect shot."
Great. An even bigger audience.
It wasn't that I was shy, but itwaskind of weird I could just do something perfectly. Carly wasn't a perfect shot, and she clearly had done it a lot, so why could I do it on the first try?
"Bullseye twice! I've never seen someone do that without warming up. Especially not when they've never done it before." Carly was busy strapping the ceramic rabbit to the top of the car.
"Let's see this for ourselves." Silas rubbed his hands together. "Time for my bunny to shoot some bunnies."
"Is that why you call me bunny? Because you want to use me for target practice?" I narrowed my eyes at him. "You wanted to kill me the first time you saw me?"