Alexandra wasn’t afraid of guns. She’d been around them since she was little. Her father had shown her how to clean them, how to put the safety on and take it off. He had pistols and rifles and shotguns around the house and he said it was important that she knew how to handle them responsibly.
Alexandra listened to her father pushing the lawn mower through the brittle September weeds. She felt dizzy and far away. She had been forced out of her body by Darnel Flint and she doubted she would ever be able to return. She would have to live in exile for the rest of her days, forever homesick, forever banished from her own flesh.
The Flints’ front door was unlocked, as it always was. When Alexandra pushed it open and stepped into the house, she heard one of Darnel’s heavy-metal albums playing from his bedroom stereo.
She shut the front door and stepped into the Flints’ living room. Mr Flint’s Old Testament verses crowded the walls and shelves and mantel. Women’s magazines littered the floor; ashtrays overflowed. There was the smell of stale cigarettes tinged with Mr Flint’s English Leather cologne.
She walked down the hallway to Darnel’s room and pushed open the door.
He was propped against his pillows, still in his pajamas. J.D.’s twin bed was neatly made beside his. It took Darnel a few seconds to look up from his Penthouse magazine. When he saw her, he grinned. His cheeks were puffy and white, and as always they seemed to be printed with circles of rouge.
‘Well, well, well, look who came for a visit. My little fiancée. Couldn’t stay away, could you?’
He set the magazine aside and started to get up. Then he saw the pistol and his grin crumpled.
‘You killed Pugsy,’ she said.
She watched herself from above, a girl in pink shorts and a yellow top, white Keds, holding a .38 Smith & Wesson down by her side. She felt giddy and breathless from being so far outside her body.
‘Jesus Christ! What do you think you’re doing with that gun?’
He was kneeling in the center of the unmade bed.
‘You killed my dog, Darnel. Admit what you did.’ She lifted the gun a few inches but didn’t point it at him.
‘Okay, okay, I killed the damn dog. He was getting old anyway. He was a pest.’
She took a deep breath and blew it out.
‘You shoot me, they’ll send you to the electric chair. You’ll get fried.’
‘You’re going to stop bothering me, Darnel.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Sure. Whatever you say.’
‘You’re going to stop coming to my window and you aren’t ever going to touch me again, either.’
‘All right, all right,’ he said, staring at the gun. ‘I won’t ever bother you again. Okay? Now get out of here.’
‘You’ve got to swear on a Bible.’
She kept the pistol at her side.
He looked wildly around the room.
‘This will do.’ He leaned over to his bedside table and picked up one of his schoolbooks – twelfth-grade civics.
‘And swear you’ll never tell anyone what you did to me, either.’
‘Okay, yeah. I swear. I swear. All of it. Every single word you just said.’ He pressed the civics text against his heart.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Goddamn it, I swore, didn’t I? You and me, it’s finished. I got another girlfriend anyway. I’m not interested in you anymore, you little shrimp.’
‘You’ll never stand outside my window again. Say it.’
‘Okay, okay, never in a million years will I stand outside your window.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Now when your parents get home, you’re going to tell them what you did to Pugsy.’
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘I can’t do that. My dad’ll kill me.’
She raised the pistol, supported it with her left hand, cocked the hammer with her thumb, and aimed at the wall a couple of feet beside him.
She heard her father’s lawn mower sputter and die out. She heard him trying to start it. Pulling the cord, pulling it again.
She was very calm, floating high, watching herself, that little girl.
‘All right, all right, goddamn it.’ He put his hands up beside his shoulders. ‘I’ll tell my dad about your stupid dog. Okay? Now get the hell out of my room.’
Alexandra took a deep breath and let it go. She was lowering the pistol when behind her she heard the surge and flutter of water – a toilet flushing.
She swung around and peered down the hall toward the Flints’ single bathroom. As she waited for the bathroom door to open, she heard Darnel fling his civics book aside, then heard the screech of the bedsprings.
She spun back and glimpsed his snarling face, his hands clawing the air as he leapt at her. Jerking away, she slammed against the door, stumbled, and fell to the floor. On her way down, the pistol fired.
Darnel was flung backward against the edge of the bed. After hanging there a moment, he spilled to the floor and came to rest in a sitting position, his legs stretched across the rattan rug, his back propped against the side of the mattress. He was motionless except for his right arm, which twitched.
The bullet had struck him in the jaw and had torn away his right cheek. His bedspread was covered with blood and the spatter of his skull. She watched Darnel’s arm quiver for a few moments. It was as if he was trying to shake loose something stuck to his fingers. Gradually, the arm went dead. And at the same time, the buzzing beneath her skin eased.
She got back on her feet. She felt nauseated and empty and even farther away from her body than she’d been before – up above the ceiling, beyond the roof, way up in the air and the high, streaming clouds. But she couldn’t stop staring at Darnel, at the open place where his jaw had been. In her hand, the pistol hung heavy, tilting her sideways. She saw the blood running down his hairless chest, the angle of his neck as it hung to the side. Her eyes burned from staring, but she could not pull away.
Then she was crying, dragging in gulps of air between sobs, but at the same time she floated high up in the air like a peaceful mist, looking down at the girl who sobbed and was frozen in place, a gun in her hand.
In the Flints’ hallway, there were heavy steps. She stopped crying, but Alexandra didn’t move, didn’t turn from the faceless thing before her. Her eyes ached, but she continued to stare at the dead boy.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’ Her father, Lawton, was behind her, breathing hard. He smelled of cut grass and sweat. ‘Christ Almighty.’
He stood unmoving for a few moments; then his hands were gentle but commanding as he drew Alexandra into the hallway and pried the pistol from her hand and ordered her to stay put, not to move. He sprinted down the hallway and out the back door of the Flints’ house.
Alexandra wiped her nose and stared at a rectangle of copper that sat on the hallway bookshelf. Etched into it was a quote from Ecclesiastes: ‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.’
She looked at the words from the Bible, read them over and over to herself for whatever comfort they might provide, but she had no idea what they meant. She was cold and vacant and the buzzing had completely ceased.
When her father returned, he was carrying a plastic sandwich