The bullets spilled out of the crate, intermixed with the hay that had been used to line the wooden container. Shelly looked up from the toppled crate to me, and then around at the other crates that were stacked around my dorm room.

“What in Buddha’s name…?” She said quizzically, surprise and anger mixed awkwardly with a half-cocked grin on her freckled face. Before I could say anything, before I could really even begin to put together a functional lie or come to terms with the exposed bullets, Shelly grabbed the top of another crate and lifted the lid. It bent back on rusty hinges to reveal a bakers dozen of AK-47’s.

“Shelly look…” My brain finally caught up to the situation, “It’s just a way to supplement my income, you know how rough tuition is. It’s really not what you think!”

Shelly shifted her whole head and stared straight into me. “So you are not staging some sort of coup to overthrow the dean?”

“Of course not!” I said in as innocent a tone as I could muster, “I’m just selling these weapons!”