Violent Ends

by Neal Shusterman

  He grabbed flowers and put them back, pulled a can of soup off the shelf and put it back, and then ice cream, and then a magazine, and then finally he put all of it in a basket and rushed through the checkout.

  At Katelyn’s house, he rang the doorbell and shifted from foot to foot anxiously.

  In his pocket, his phone dinged, and he ignored it. Probably Jason.

  No one came to the door, which seemed odd. Her parents were probably at work, but Katelyn’s car was sitting in the driveway, complete with the dent in the fender where she’d backed into the corner of her house.

  Mark rang the doorbell again, and his phone dinged once more. This time, he pulled it out of his pocket, juggling the grocery bags and schoolbooks to get to it.

  Two texts from Katelyn.

  Come in.

  No really, COME IN. (This one had a smiley face after it.)

  Mark opened the door and stepped into the house.

  “Katelyn?” he called quietly.

  “In here,” she croaked.

  He walked into the living room and saw her lying on the couch. She had on yoga pants and a hot-pink sweatshirt, but her face was pale and there were circles under her eyes. Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun.

  She was still the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

  “Hey,” he said. He opened his mouth to tell her all the pretty things he’d been storing up to say—that she looked beautiful, that he’d be sick in a second if it meant she’d be well, did she want a Diet Coke?—but none of the words would come out. Instead he just stood there, dumbstruck, with his mouth hanging open.

  She smiled at him. “Hi.”

  The rough sound of her voice propelled him into motion and he held out the flowers. “These are for you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “They’re gorgeous.”

  “You’re gorgeous,” he blurted out.

  Her smile deepened, and though her cheeks were still porcelain pale, there was a fresh sparkle in her eye that gave him hope.

  “I brought soup and ice cream? I didn’t know if they might sound good. And I have your homework!”

  “Maybe some ice cream,” she said.

  “I’ll get you a spoon,” he said, starting toward the kitchen.

  At the same moment, she stood, saying, “No, it’s fine, I’ve—”

  And then, without meaning to be, they were face-to-face with only a couple of inches between them. She smelled like sleep and shampoo and he closed his eyes and breathed her in.

  “Mark,” she said.

  His eyes flew open. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, it’s okay,” she said, breathless. “I just—I don’t want to get you sick.”

  He laughed the smallest possible laugh, not wanting to break the spell of the moment. “I don’t care,” he said.

  He leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. Her mouth was hot with fever, but fresh with something minty and sweet, and he thought he could eat her up right there.

  She wobbled on her feet and he caught her by the elbows and lowered her to the couch. “Easy,” he said.

  She smiled up at him. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he said. “Not one little bit. I’m going to get you a spoon.”

  He left her on the couch and walked into the kitchen. He grabbed a spoon out of the drawer and everything about being in her house felt new and familiar at the same time, which was maybe the best feeling he’d ever had in his life.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch. He fed her ice cream and helped her with her trig problems. She put her feet in his lap and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  The next afternoon, they did the same thing.

  * * *

  It has been heaven, and Mark has been thrilled and relieved. He’s thought that the worst was behind them. He wants to see her every second. To spend every minute with her. He’d been so irritated when he couldn’t find her before the pep rally today. So irritated that she’d been late, so that they might not be able to sit together.

  He lies between the bench seats of the bleachers with his eyes squeezed shut and hopes and hopes and hopes that she isn’t here. He hopes she’s sick. That her car has quit. He even hopes that he’s pissed her off somehow—anything that would mean that she isn’t in this gym, in this moment, listening to the sound of this terror.

  When he closes his eyes, he can hear his heart beating. It sounds like her name. Like a prayer.

  Katelyn . . . Katelyn . . . Katelyn.

  PRESUMED DESTROYED

  I am not defective.

  I am not malformed.

  My imperfections are entirely cosmetic. A discoloration in the steel along my handle. A vein slightly lighter, mildly less tempered than the rest of me. But my barrel, my chamber, my trigger and hammer are unmarred. My action is every bit as precise as any other.

  And yet I was separated from my siblings, sorted into a pile of discards.

  You cannot know the misery of being deemed unworthy of one’s purpose, even before knowing what that purpose might be.

  I was tossed into a holding crate, doomed to be melted down—re-smelted into that angry bright liquid from which I was forged. Destined to lose my identity in the fiery melting pot. This was to be my fate—but it didn’t happen that way.

  Instead I was saved.

  It was not out of compassion. No, nothing so selfless. I was saved out of greed. A worker in the factory, whom I did not know, and did not care to know, stole away with my crate. All of us relegated for the furnace were instead offered for sale in a dark room to a shadowy man.

  “See what I’ve brought you? There are more than two dozen here.”

  “Yes, two dozen substandard pistols.”

  “Minor flaws, that’s all.”

  “I have a reputation.”

  “So only take the best of them.”

  “Fine. I’ll give you forty a piece.”

  “Seventy-five.”

  “Fifty. My final offer.”

  “Take ten of them, and you have a deal.”

  “Agreed.”

  The shadowy man was the first to hold me in his poorly manicured hand, but he never pulled my trigger. I was nothing but a commodity to him, and he was merely a middleman to my destiny.

  I was smuggled on a long journey in darkness, to a place far different from where I was forged. Plenty of time to wonder what I’d be used for. I knew the possibilities were endless. I come from a family of both fame and infamy. Distant cousins fought wars, bringing both devastation and freedom. Some kept the peace in the streets of cities but were also abused by those sworn to protect. I tried to imagine the sort of hand I would fall into and what purpose that hand would have for me.

  In the end, I was sold in a filthy alley—a quick, quiet cash deal—but at least I now belonged to someone.

  My first owner was a man of brutal camaraderie. I never knew the name of his gang, only that he belonged to one. From the moment he held me, I knew what I was to him. A symbol. An icon of his manhood, of his pride, of his ascension from impoverished mediocrity. To him I was a ticket to greatness. He would test the speed of his draw to an empty room. He would show me to his friends, bragging. And he would keep me loaded. There was always a bullet in the gullet of my chamber, lodged there, choking and heavy, in that penultimate position, awaiting the act. My act. My one true function.

  I understood him all too well. He had passion, but it left me cold, for it was a careless passion. He believed my power to be his own and he took it for granted. On the rare times he fired me it was a pointless act—such as the time he aimed me upward on New Year’s Eve in a vain attempt to pierce the sky. He pulled the trigger with such random, reckless abandon, I felt only shame.

  Do not misunderstand; I didn’t hate him. I pitied him, though. He thought my presence in his life would bring him respect, but how could it when his own actions engendered such disrespect?

  Then, in a moment of weakness, he resorted to cr
ime. A store of convenience in the predawn hours of a violent summer storm.

  The clerk seemed defiant, rather than compliant, when he saw me.

  “Calm down, kid, put that gun away. No one’s gotta get hurt.”

  “Shut the hell up, old man. Just gimme everything you got in there.”

  “You don’t want to do this. Just—”

  “I said shut it. Do I look like I’m playin’ around? Give me all the money.”

  I felt hot in his hand. His sweat conducted his nervousness like electricity, and it empowered me. I felt alive, born anew, and yet disgusted by the feeling. Was this my purpose? Was this it? So compelling, yet so ignoble. I could feel his adrenaline as if it were my own. I could feel the fear on the other side of the barrel too, but I could feel something else. Something like experience. And it was not the experience of my owner.

  “Hold on a moment. . . . Just let me open the register.”

  “What are you doing? Stand up straight, old man!”

  And just like that, the tables turned. A standoff. I could see the gun the man was holding. A Desert Eagle .50 caliber. It was a beautiful weapon that made me feel inadequate, inferior. It was as if that gun was mocking me, laughing at me. The shame of being used for a lowly heist was replaced by the embarrassment of being bested.

  “Whoa, man . . . Take it easy . . .”

  I could feel my owner’s cowardice. It had always been there. His bravado was just a thin veneer slathered across it like cheap paint on an old revolver. He was having second thoughts about this whole thing. Was I failing him, or was he failing me? I could not provide him what he wanted. I could not bring him true respect, and he could not give me a purpose. In a moment he faltered, lowering me just a bit, and my rival, the Desert Eagle, took its cue to shame me once more, for a weapon like that is all muscle and no remorse.

  The shot rang out like cannon fire and it burst into my owner’s arm. He swore and cursed as he bled, but still he held me, cradled me. He ran, bursting through the door, setting off the convenience store’s disturbingly cheery electronic doorbell. The clerk didn’t even bother to yell at us.

  We ran through the rainy streets. Cars whizzed by, people ignored the wounded man. I was shrouded in darkness as he had stuffed me in his pocket, but I could feel his broken manhood, his lost dreams. When we got home, he closed me in a toolbox like a coffin, and I sat there for months. Time faded with no way to measure the days in the darkness.

  Such was my existence. And in time, I came to believe I had no purpose. No reason to be. The prospect filled me with lethargic despair.

  Then, after many months—perhaps years—he opened my steel sarcophagus, reached in, and pulled me out. His wound had healed, but I sensed in him a scar of firm resolve. He had a new intention for me, but it confused me, because I also sensed that he would never fire me again.

  He slipped me into a pocket filled with crumpled dollars and stray coins. Small bills and spare change speak of such shallow, trivial things: what they have been spent on, or the wallets and purses they have known. Their chatter annoyed me, and it made me wish he would spend them frivolously so I could be rid of them. As it turned out, he was far more interested in finding them companions than he was in me.

  He took me out in an alley, perhaps the same one in which he purchased me, and, as he held me up to show me off, I realized the truth. I was about to change hands! The bullet that pierced my first owner’s arm, in a way, tore open a new future for me—for now I would pass into another’s possession. Who shall own me? I wondered. And for what purpose? Would I be used for a family’s protection? Would I fire upon coyotes or other scavengers? Or would I be put on a pedestal in a collection, to be revered as a work of art?

  “Okay. I got the money you asked for right here.”

  “Good. You came alone?”

  “Yeah, of course. Just like you said.”

  “Good. Then take it, kid. I hope it brings you more luck than it did me.”

  And now, in the faint light of the familiar alley, I am thrust into the hands of my new owner, and I am reborn!

  Into the life of an angry, frightened boy.

  As the boy holds me in his cold, shaking hand, I know that he’s different. I feel an unnamable pain in him—the kind that ricochets so quickly through one’s soul, it cannot be caught, only pursued with increasing desperation. In him, I feel deeper emotions than I ever knew existed. A blinding spectrum of feelings my previous owner only scraped the surface of.

  He stuffs me into his coat pocket. I couldn’t be more snug if I were in a holster. The coat is snug on him as well, as if it’s several years old and he has outgrown it, but no one has bothered to get him a new one. Or perhaps he’s the one holding on to this thread of an earlier time—a time before he felt the need to have me in his pocket. I feel safe here, and yet not. I hear my first owner run off, and I never see him again. The boy runs in the opposite direction.

  I long to comfort him—to soothe the rawness of his wounds. They are not like bullet wounds. Those are easy to see and define. Gun wounds are not subtle or deceptive, for more than anything, my kind is honest, even in dishonest hands. We speak in plain and simple terms. There is nothing ambiguous about a gun.

  But the boy’s wounds are of a different kind. Intangible. Hidden—even from himself. And they are deep. I’m not privy to the experiences of his life that brought him to this moment. We weapons are not blessed with a historical perspective on the lives we enter. We exist in the moment. We sense deeply the searing “now.” And this boy’s now is filled with mines and monsters.

  I ride home in his car nestled in the glove compartment. I come to know him even more as I lie among the detritus of his life. A forgotten theme park pass. A parking violation he’s afraid to show to his parents. A cherry ChapStick that melts by day and solidifies by night. A folded envelope of school pictures that he doesn’t want to keep but can’t bring himself to throw away. They all lie silently, for these things have nothing left to say to anyone. Here begins my deep desire to truly understand him, for only then can I hope to quell the demons that so torment him.

  When the boy gets home, he takes me out again. He holds me tightly in those first few hours, extending me outward, his arm stiff, squinting one eye and pointing me at the wall. He says nothing. I hear nothing but a television from the other room. But the boy’s hand feels so comforting, I relax and let him hold me. And I know in that moment that I will not be used today, but that I will be used.

  He moves me from location to location, hiding place to hiding place, within his car. I am kept beneath the driver’s seat. Then in a shoe box in the trunk. Then wedged in the gap beneath the spare tire.

  When he does take me out, it’s not to wave me in a show of bravado. It is merely to regard me. To take me in from every angle. To study me with eyes so intense, it would make me blush were I able. He shows me to no one. I am his secret.

  Finally he brings me closer, deeper into his life. He moves me from the car into his sock drawer. A soft, warm place. It becomes my home. When he transfers me this time, there is something different about him. It excites me. I know that the day I will be used is near. My days pass easily now, filled with muted anticipation. Surely I am more to him than an object in a drawer.

  But weeks pass. Since the day he put me in the sock drawer, I have never been out of his house. I have become a domesticated thing. A pet waiting in silence for the return of my master. Some days he ignores me, others, he feeds me with his attention. I grow warm and grateful in his grasp. Once—only once—he sleeps with me beneath his pillow, and I am proud to be a protector of his dreams.

  While my first owner once practiced the speed of his draw in the mirror, the boy draws me, but in a very different way. With pencil and paper. With his door locked he leaves me perched on his desk, unloaded, always unloaded, and proceeds to sketch me. I am his model—and he captures me in that drawing—if not my weight and density, at least my personality. My striking profile. Then, to my
absolute surprise, he hangs the picture on the refrigerator, like a child.

  I want his mother to look deeper when she sees it—to question it. Instead, she is just annoyed.

  “I don’t like it, Kirby.”

  “It’s just a drawing.”

  “Why would you draw such a thing?”

  “I don’t know, I just felt like it.”

  She doesn’t see me there, the edge of my grip sticking out of the pocket of his hoodie, like a dare. I’m still unloaded, but dangerous all the same.

  “Could you maybe draw something a little less bleak?”

  “How about a fighter jet?”

  “Sure.”

  “Much more deadly than a pistol, but hey, if it makes you happy.”

  And if she were to see me in the moment, what then? Surely I’d be removed from the boy’s presence. And although the thought brings me great sadness, and even greater anxiety, if my removal can ease his sorrow, perhaps it will be for the best. I grow guilty in these moments. I feed off of his own guilt and her worry. I feel worthless, unneeded, alone. I feel what Kirby feels.

  But she doesn’t see me. She doesn’t even know to look. To her, a drawing is a drawing, and kids draw guns and battles and other violent things. They play games of graphic carnage and go on to lead productive, normal lives. She does not see that today a gun really is a gun.

  He leaves the kitchen, returning to the disheveled sanctuary of his room, where he tears the picture to shreds and commences to draw a fighter jet blowing apart a defenseless town.

  * * *

  A day comes when I am once more freed from the sock drawer. Kirby handles me carefully and aims me like he did the first day he bought me. Then he stuffs me in his snug pocket, and before long we are running through the streets, just the two of us moving to the cadence of his drumming heart. I hear him racing up stairs. The cold wind brushes by, and I feel as if I am on top of a mountain. He pulls me out, and I see that in a way, it is a mountain. A corporate mountain. The mountain of the human machine. We stand on top of an office building, and he stands near the edge.