Murder is easy. I don’t know how long we stood there facing one another. I don’t know what took her cousins so long to find us. I don’t know why that gun felt so good in my hand.

The gun, the blessed gun, seemed to rise on its own, the dark barrel glistening in the dim light of an urban night. It was a thing of beauty bearing down upon another thing of beauty, one hard and efficient, the other soft and delicate.

“Is this what you want to do, Danny? Is this who you want to be?”

What else is there to be?

“Why don’t you just run away?” I cried. A drop of sweat taunted me at the corner of my eye, but I didn’t dare wipe it. My thumb cocked the hammer with a satisfying click. I hadn’t meant to do that, to be honest. Been meant to do that?

“I want you to choose, Danny.” She was trying to be brave, but I could see the tremble in her fingers. I could see everything. It would be so easy to just pull the trigger. And blow a hole in the world.

It was that last thought that really got me worried.