“Please, Quill…please, whatever the problem is, I’m sure Ray is so sorry…please…”
It’s not her words, though, but his father’s, still speaking to Tragen, that have me putting my gun down.
“It’s about some girl, I think. Her name is—”
Fuck!
I whirl around so fast all three of them shut up from sheer surprise. There’s a dead silence as I walk toward Al Campbell, my gun now on him.
“Shut up,” I growl. “Shut up, hang up the phone, no one dies today.”
He hesitates, his eyes glued to the barrel of my gun.
“I’ve never broken a promise before,” I insist. “Put the phone down, and no one dies.”
Something in my eyes must reassure him, because he slowly takes the phone from his ear. I hear Tragen’s confused voice on the other end before Campbell presses the button to hang up.
“Okay,” he says, a bead of sweat trickling down the side of his face. “Okay, Quill. Now, go. You said no one would get hurt.”
I train my gun toward his left thigh.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t say that.”
“Quill.” Campbell’s voice comes out strangled. “You did. Youpromised.”
“I said no one would die. And I always keep my word.”
As I speak, I pull the trigger, and a window-shattering detonation has him careening backward, clutching his thigh.
“Fuck! Fuck! What the fuck, Quill? What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
His wife is back to screaming, and his son looks more dead than alive as he sees the bullet lodged in his dad’s thigh that moments before seemed destined to find its way to him.
“Forget that girl,” I warn. “Forget she was there on Wednesday. Forget every single fucking thing about her. If I ever hear her name in your mouth—if you ever so much as fuckingthinkabout her, I’m coming back to shoot you again. And this time, I won’t aim so fucking low.”
I sling the gun back in my belt and walk out, feeling absolutely giddy with adrenaline.
Goddamnit. If this is how it feels like to shoot a real, live person… well, fucking sign me up.
_
By the time evening rolls around, I’m not feeling quite so happy.
Not that I regret shooting Campbell, but I wonder if somehow I’ve made the situation worse. Would things have blown over for Piper had I not inserted myself into the situation? Did I just make the target on her back even bigger?
I decide not to head to school after my morning visit at the Campbells’. Fridays feel a little pointless anyway, since they’re the one day of the week I’m not in any of Piper’s classes. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t fix it so we shared classes on Friday.
So I spend the day lounging around my room, trying not to wonder about just how badly I might have fucked things up. I only get up when I hear Dad pull into the driveway. There’s no way I should be able to tell just from the sound of his car engine how pissed off he is, but somehow, I can.
Well, I shot one guy today. Guess I might as well shoot another one.
I grab my gun and hurry down the stairs, reaching it just as he bangs it open.
“Quill!Quill.”
The first time, he thunders my name; the second sounds like a polite greeting, as his eyes land on my weapon.
“Yeah?” I growl.