The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope

39

When I get to five, I slow my count, leaving the space of one breath in between the numbers, because a life can change in just one breath, because I’m going to take a breath and change their lives.

I’m not sure I’m ready for this. I’ve fired a gun before. My father once took me to a shooting range. It was a present for my fourteenth birthday. He didn’t tell me where we were going. He wanted it to be a surprise. It was a rifle range and I found the gun unwieldy to hold. I wasn’t very good but my father was. He hit the target every time. ‘I’ve always had a good eye,’ he told me. I think it was one of the last good days he had. I wonder if you can miss if you shoot with a handgun in a small room. I wonder what the kickback will feel like, if there will be a smell in the air.

There is no way back and nothing else to do. I feel that; my broken heart knows that. And when I’m done with her, with them, I’ll make sure that I don’t have to feel anything anymore or ever again. I believe that was the plan all along. I never meant to make it out of this alive. Maybe there was something else I was going to do today but not anymore. It is easier to leave pain behind, easier to not have to feel. I tried it one way, I really did, but I failed the same way my father failed. I am my father’s son, but I am going to do one thing differently to the way he did it. I am going to take those who hurt me with me.