The two girls ran down the block through the rain. The school bus pulled away, groaning as it gained speed and turned the corner. Laurie got to the door first, but it was Katie’s house, so she had to wait. Katie struggled to get her keys out of her bag, finally pulling them free. She slipped them into the lock, turning them before sliding the door open. The two girls rushed inside.

It was the first time Laurie had been to Katie’s house. The two had been friends for a little under a year now. They were both in the fourth grade, but Katie had moved there over the summer. The two started talking at lunch one day and found that they had a lot in common. Eventually, Katie would come and spend afternoons with Laurie at her house, but this was the first time Laurie had been to Katie’s.

“You have a really cool house,” she said, slipping her galoshes off and hanging her raincoat on the coat rack.

“Yeah, I’m still getting used to it, but I like it.” Katie kicked her boots off and hung her coat up as well. “Thirsty? I’ve got juice.”

“No, thanks,” Laurie said.

The two walked in and sat on the couch. Katie turned the TV on.

“Where are your parents?”

“I live with my mom. She normally gets home just a few minutes after me so she should be here soon.”

Laurie surveyed the room. It was filled with moderately expensive things. She assumed Katie’s mom must earn a decent amount of money. “So, what do you want to do?”

Katie thought for a second. “I have some old board games. They’re pretty fun. Not as good as video games but I’m not allowed to play those unless mom is home.”

Laurie shrugged. “What do you have?”

Katie got up and motioned for her friend to follow. They went to a linen closet down the hall. Katie pulled a stool out of the bedroom to the left, presumably hers judging by the decoration, and stood on it to reach some boxes stacked up high. “Here, hold this for a second,” she said, handing a heavy plastic box to Laurie. It was unmarked and looked like it was used for storage.

“What is this?” Laurie turned the box around and saw latches that held it closed. She flipped one open.

“It’s my mom’s. She said never to open it. Hey!” Katie had turned and saw that Laurie was opening the box. “My mom said not to,” she repeated.

Laurie flipped the second latch and opened the box. Inside was a gun along with a single clip with bullets loaded into it.

Katie jumped down. She moved around to look. “Wow, I didn’t know my mom had a gun.” The two girls stared at it for a moment.

Then Laurie grasped the handle of the gun and pulled it out. She set the box down on the floor and held the gun, pointing it down the hall. “It’s kind of scary but cool at the same time.”

“Laurie, be careful! Let’s just put it away and play a game. My…my mom will be home any second and we’ll be in so much trouble if she sees it. I’ll be grounded for a month!”

Laurie pretended to shoot, making a soft gun sound as she did. “Its okay, Katie, it’s not loaded. See the clip? It can’t shoot without that part.”

“I know how it works, but still. There’s no reason to be playing with it and my mom could walk in any second so let’s just put it away, okay?”

Laurie turned the gun on its side and examined it. It was shiny and black and very smooth. There was a small switch near the trigger that was flipped forward. She softly flipped it down, forward, down again, wondering what it did. She pulled gently back on the top, and the sliding mechanism moved with some tension. An opening began to appear and a cylindrical bronze object was briefly visible. But Laurie thought better of playing with it any longer, remembering what Katie had just said about her mom. She gently allowed the top of the gun to slide back into place. “Okay, you’re right. We’ll put it away.”

Laurie put the gun back into the case and closed the lid. She pushed the latches down, not consciously aware of whether or not she got them closed. She hand the case back to Katie who had gotten back on the stool. “My mom should be home soon so we’ll just play video games when she gets here. Forget the board games for now.” Laurie nodded.

Katie stood up on her tiptoes. She reached, trying to slide the case back up on top of all the boxes. The stool tipped suddenly. Katie grabbed the edge of the shelf, causing her to lose her grip on the case. She let out a soft yelp, turned to try to grab the case, bobbled it, and lost her footing.

Laurie’s mouth dropped. Both her friend and the case were falling in front of her seemingly in slow motion. She felt horror wash over her as the case began to open in mid fall, allowing the gun to spill out. Laurie knew just a little about guns from her uncle, and she suddenly realized a few things all at once.

First, that what she had seen in the opening of the gun may have been a bullet as her uncles had mentioned that a bullet can remain in the chamber even without the clip of the gun being intact.

Second, that the switch she had flipped was probably the safety and she could not remember what position she had left it in.

Third, that a gun can sometimes fire if it is jarred in the right way, like being dropped for example.

Now the gun was out, half way from the ceiling to the ground, spinning slowly like a bottle on a kitchen floor, looking to point towards a lucky winner to whom it would blow its kiss.

Laurie felt herself press against the wall involuntarily, making her body as small a target as possible. Katie was now a few inches from hitting the ground and appeared to be on the way to a fairly soft landing. However, she was directly in one of the gun’s potential paths.

Laurie was aware of a breeze, like a window had been left open. The gun spun slowly, barrel passing over Katie’s position, up and around, coming around to the ceiling, spinning not quite perfectly, curving towards the wall behind her, towards her face, but still spinning both horizontally and vertically, and still a good foot from the ground. It came around again, crossing over Katie’s legs, her chest, briefly the back of her head, above her, coming back around to the ceiling, and Laurie felt a bit of relief as she saw it would come back around to point not at her, but harmlessly past her and down the hall. This is exactly where it was pointing when it hit the ground.

It landed pointing up from the ground at about ten degrees, right on the butt of the handle. It fired. The sound was deafening but not roaring like in movies. It was more of a pop, like a balloon made out of metal bursting. The muzzle flash left an after-image burnt into Laurie’s eyes. The smell was almost instantaneous, acidic and carbonized.

Laurie looked down the hall. A man was standing there, half way to falling as he leaned against the wall. A spray of red spread across the ceiling a few feet behind him and a fine pink mist was settling around him. As he began to slide forward, Laurie noticed the quarter-sized hole just above his right eye. Blood seemed to pour out of his nostrils and mouth like a tap on a water cooler, but pulsing a bit, more like water coming out of a bottle, the flow receding slightly to allow air bubbles in before coming out full strength again a second later. As he continued to slide forward, Laurie saw the hair on the top and back of his head appeared to be a disheveled mess. There was also red mixing into it from under some sort of flap in the middle of the messy hair. Along the edge of it, she saw something whitish and shiny beside something spongy and pink.

The next thing Laurie knew, a man in a white suit was helping her up off the ground. She had fainted, he told her, but she would other wise be okay. She saw Katie with a blanket around her and a woman that had to be her mother, both hugging each other and crying. She saw her own parents approaching her, tears in their eyes. She saw a police officer standing over the tangled body of the man, writing things on a sheet of paper. She couldn’t focus on any one sound. Her mind seemed to be jumbled in confusion. She realized her parents were hugging her, clinging to her in fact. She managed to make out a few words from the police officer as he spoke to two other officers who had just arrived.

She heard, “pedophile,” “rapist,” “murder,” “convict,” “escaped,” and after a pause, “good riddance.” Laurie couldn’t force herself to understand what it meant just then, but she suddenly felt overwhelmed with emotion. She felt the tears come, hot and almost painful as they began to stream down her face. She heaved once, then again, starting to lose her breath. Her throat began to hurt like she had swallowed a tennis ball. She grimaced. She began to cling back at her parents, grabbing them and pulling them in. She felt her father’s big arms around her and her mother’s soft face against her own. She closed her eyes, and sobbed.