Fear Itself

What Avery put in my hands was colder than the winter air we stood in. It was cold. It was frightening. It was something never wanted to touch in my entire life. Every time I had ever seen a gun in my life, things tended to not go so well, but Avery said, “You need to learn, Princess.” He had placed the thing in my hands, and all I could do was stare at it, and I couldn’t form words, I couldn’t even think, all I could do was throw the thing. It flew a few feet away, and a loud bang sounded when it hit the ground. I shrieked and ran up against a nearby tree. “No,” I protested, back pressed tight against the bark. I shook my head vigorously. Avery stood, unamused, a few feet away from me, dirty boots surrounded by the lush green grass in the garden. This was the only place open and safe enough for me to learn, he had explained on the walk over. He was right. There was nobody around, and I was already firing bullets by accident.

Avery’s eyes looked at me, then drifted over to the gun, and then back at me. A toothpick was sticking out from between his lips, and he raised his eyebrows. “Princess,” he said slowly. “Pick up the gun.” I shook my head again, blonde hair whirling around in a flurry. “C’mon now,” he continued. “This ain’t a game.”

“No, you’re right, it’s not!” I exclaimed, frenzied. “It’s not a game! This is my life, Mumbles. I’m only eighteen, I don’t want to know how to use that thing!”

“You’re eighteen?” Avery murmured, looking at me with furrowed brows. “Hm.” He chuckled under his breath. “This whole time, I thought you were twelve.”

I huffed, narrowing my eyes at him. “I’m offended, Mumbles,” I miffed. “I’m not picking up that vile device, even if we have to sit here all night.”

There was a long pause, a very long and uncomfortable one before Avery just sat down in the grass, just plopped down right there and started smoking a cigarette. “I’ve got all the time in the world, Princess.”

“What? Well, I—“ I cut myself off, too flustered to speak in full sentences. I couldn’t believe that this was actually happening. I looked at him, shocked and shaken that he was actually willing to sit there. He couldn’t be serious, I thought to myself, until I noticed that he wasn’t even looking in my direction. He was looking around, rather peaceful (for once), just smoking his cigarette. He literally had no where to be today, I could see it in his tranquil gaze. He could really sit there all night if he wanted to, but I couldn’t. I had to get home. I had to get back before my father knew I was gone, and I only had a few hours.

“Princess, just pick up the damn gun.” He looked up at me, and I huffed again.

“No,” I retorted. “No, I can’t. I refuse.”

“Alright,” he murmured. “Well, I refuse to get up, then.”

I started whining, bouncing on my heels a little bit. I felt my sweater scrape up against the tree bark. “Mumbles!” I cried. “This isn’t fair. This simply is not fair!”

“Life’s not fair. Get used to it.”

I whined again as I simply couldn’t think of anything else to say. He was rendering almost every excuse and retort useless. In my frenzy, I did the only thing I could think of: throw myself face first on the ground. I landed in the soft grass with a thud, not really minding the remainder of dew in the grass or the dirt getting awfully close to my skin. “Avery, I just want to go home!” I agonized, face down into the grass, so I imagined that it was probably hard to decipher what I had just said.

Avery confirmed the thought when he asked, “What was that?” So I repeated, but he still didn’t understand, so I laid there still, hoping that eventually he would get sick of having to watch me lay there in the grass and take me back home where I could forget about this little gun issue. I heard shuffling, walking. He must have stood up. I wanted desperately to peek, but if I looked, it would ruin this dramatic gesture, so I just stayed until I felt the toe of his boot softly hit my side. “Princess,” he muttered. “I’ve got something for you.”

“Ooh!” I exclaimed. “Is it a surprise!? I just love surprises!” But as a rolled over, he dropped the gun on my stomach, leaving me to shriek and flail until it was no longer touching me. I scrambled to my feet, leaving the wretched thing among the grass, and I looked at Avery with a look of sheer insult. “You are a monster.”

He was grinning like he thought this was funny. It wasn’t funny. I was distraught; how could he be laughing? Then I remembered, this was the man who laughed after we had to escape from a fight I had caused in the middle of a store. His laughter faded, and he cleared his throat. For just a moment, he removed the toothpick from his mouth and used it to point to the gun. “Pick up the gun,” he told me.

“No,” I contended immediately, folding my arms over my chest in defiance.

“Princess,” he said slowly, looking at me with raised eyebrows. “The sooner you just pick up the gun, the sooner you get to go home. Okay?”

Well… if I got to go home… My eyes drifted toward the gun, still laying in the grass near my feet. I really didn’t want to touch it. I was horrified. Even staring at the thing made my heart race and my brain go crazy, but he was saying that I would get to go home if I picked it up and did what he told me. I knew that Avery wasn’t going to hurt me. I knew him well enough to know that he would punch out people who tried, and he had done so in the past. With hesitance, I reached down and picked the thing up in my hands, struggling to keep myself from shaking. I tried desperately to tell myself nothing bad was going to happen, but I couldn’t keep myself from remembering the gun pointed at me in Alex’s hands. It was like looking down the barrel all over again, and I could feel the prodding of cold steel on my spine like it had happened just a few minutes ago.

“Good job,” Avery muttered, snapping me back to reality. “That’s step one. Step two would be to stop fucking shaking.”

“I’m not shaking,” I stammered, teeth chattering. I was shaking. I knew that. I just thought that if I told myself I wasn’t that I would stop. I was wrong.

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

Avery sighed and stepped behind me. “Whatever you say,” he murmured. His arms came around me, and his hands rested on mine, repositioning my fingers. He held my grip steady. “Two hands, Princess,” he told me, head close to mine as he attempted to steady the weapon. “You don’t have grip yet.” I don’t know if I answered him. He just kept instructing me anyway. “You can shoot one-handed once—actually, no. Never shoot one-handed.” I nodded and watched as he moved my thumbs to clear away from the hammer, and he tightened my grip until I could feel the metal pressing tight against the skin of my palms. “Now the feet,” he added. I felt his right foot tap at my ankle. “Shoulder-width apart, Princess.” Once my feet were spread, he kicked my right foot forward just half a step. “There we go,” he commented quietly. “Balance yourself. That’s key.”

“Harley said the same thing when we trained,” I told him quietly.

“Did she?” he murmured. “Well, at least she’s doing something right.” I laughed under my breath, and the trembling was starting to subside. “Whatever you do, don’t lock your knees,” Avery added quietly. “You never know when you’re gonna need to run. Keep ‘em bent, just a little.”

“Got it,” I affirmed quietly.

“What’s your better eye?” he asked me.

It took me a moment. I had to close and open them both, trying to see which was blurry and which wasn’t. “Um… um… left.”

“Close your right,” he instructed quietly, speaking to me and only me. I shut my right eye closed as he told me. “Aim with your left.” He lifted the gun evenly centered in my sight. “See that tree over there? We’re gonna shoot it.” I took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “Point the front sight just below—yep, there,” he told me as I kept readjusting the gun until it was correct. “Always aim a little lower.” There was a quiet moment as I tried to keep everything in line. “Everything look centered to you, Princess?”

“Mhm,” I hummed, afraid that if I spoke, I would mess up. I didn’t want to mess up, not when we had already gotten so far without any mistakes.

“Alright,” Avery mumbled. He shifted my hand again, moving my index finger into the trigger guard now. “Slow, Princess. Pull it, but do it slow,” he told me. “Never jerk the trigger.” I took a deep breath, trying to keep myself calm. “Go on,” he told me softly. With a vote of confidence, I pulled back on the trigger slowly, and when it released, it made an awful loud sound, and it startled me so badly that I jumped a little, falling back against Avery. I regained myself quickly enough to see the bullet fly straight through the center of the tree. “Look,” Avery said, nodding toward the trunk. “You did it.”

“I did it!” I exclaimed, overjoyed. I jumped around, waving my arms, forgetting I had the gun in my hand until it fired. Avery actually ducked out of alarm.

“Watch yourself,” he warned, climbing back to his feet. “You know what, actually, just… we’ll do one more,” he told me. “And then you’re gonna give that back to me.”

“Okay,” I said, assuming the position again, waiting a few moments for Avery to rejoin me, but when I looked back, he was leaning against a tree. “Aren’t you going to help?”

“On your own this time,” he said, nodding his head toward the tree. “Same target, Princess.”

I nodded hesitantly, still not really sure about this, but I guess I was going to have to learn. This was the point of our little lesson, after all. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and went through the motions, doing exactly as he had told me before. I went back over the steps again, each down to the exact detail. I didn’t want to mess up. I wanted to shoot the tree and give him back the gun, so I could get it out of my hands. I aimed, steadied myself, and fired again. I still stumbled backward a few steps this time, but I didn’t fall over, which was a start.

I turned around, looking to Avery with a grin, and he just give me an amused smirk. “Good work, Princess,” Avery praised me.

“Can we go home now?” I asked hopefully, still holding the gun tightly in both hands until Avery stood up and took it from me. Toothpick stuck back in his teeth, he chuckled.

“Suppose we can,” he murmured with a breathy laugh. “We’ll get your things from the base and head home.”

Even though I didn’t see it in that moment, that lesson was going to save my life.