They took his truck out to Swakane Canyon, which he said was his favorite place to go shooting. He spent the drive telling Britt about the guns he’d brought with him that day—a Steyr AUG rifle and a 1911 handgun.
“The AUG is a real special one,” he said. “Stands for Army Universal Gewehr.Gewehr’s the German word for ‘rifle.’ Came out in the seventies, but looks futuristic. You seenDie Hard?”
“The movie?”
“With Bruce Willis.”
“No,” Britt said.
“Well, that’s another thing we gotta do. But anyway, the Steyr AUG’s in that movie. That’s why I wanted one. Stupid reason, I guess.”
Britt shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t seem that stupid.”
“The price tag was stupid, that’s for sure,” he said with a laugh.
“Who taught you to shoot?”
“My granddad. When I was about your age, in fact.”
Britt hadn’t thought much about Steve’s family, about the fact that there were people in his life besides Britt and her mother.
“Your dad didn’t shoot?” Britt asked him.
“Never met him,” Steve said. “Was just me and my mom.”
He took his eyes off the road for a moment to wink at her, acknowledging that they had this in common.
Nobody else was at the shooting range when they arrived. There was nothing fancy about the place—a concrete slab with a wooden roof structure over it, five designated lanes for shooters, targets off in the distance.
“Which one you want to try first?” Steve asked.
Britt assessed what was in front of her—the large, intimidating rifle and the small pistol. She surprised herself by saying, “The big one.”
Steve gave her a lesson on the different parts of a gun—stock, barrel, receiver, muzzle, action, sight. He showed her how to load the magazine, how to hold the rifle so that the butt of it was pressed into the meat of her shoulder. He warned her that she might have a bruise there later.
He put up papers with black silhouettes of human torsos as the targets, then handed her a pair of earmuffs, warning her that it would be loud. He put on a pair for himself too.
“You ready to take your first shot?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’m right here,” he said. “You’re safe.”
She nodded, believing him.
He kept one hand on the rifle, one hand on her to steady her.
“Now, look through your sight there. You see the red dot?”
She could hear her blood pulsing through her ears as she said, “Yes.”
“Okay then, on three.”
He counted to three, and she pulled the trigger with her shaky hand. The sound of it, the bang, was louder than she expected, even with the earmuffs.
“Nice!” he said.
She had no idea if the bullet had even hit the target. She was too busy assessing her own well-being. Had she somehow hurt herself? After a moment, she realized she was fine—still shaky, but fine.
