“Not this again,” I groaned. “I’m fine. Really. I like my time at home. I can design and sew and create. It helps me. Honestly.”
“What about that boy you have a picture of by your bedside? Josh, is it? You obviously like him.”
So embarrassing.
It wasn’t as if I hid the picture I stole, but for some reason, having Grams talk about it out loud made me feel like the stalking freak that I was. But my need for advice after today’s debacle outweighed my humiliation at the moment. “I get so nervous when I’m around him. I fumble all my words. He probably thinks something’s wrong with me.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t think that. You need more practice talking to people. We need to get you out there,” Grandma insisted.
And I wished she’d stop. “What’s wrong with me?”
Grandma sat back on the couch and sighed. “Liking someone makes everyone an idiot. Some people are better at hiding their nerves than others is all. I’m pretty terrible at dating too, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“But you don’t want to date.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I had no idea if it was true or not. I just didn’t think of Grams as someone who dated. I figured she was too old to date.
“Who said I didn’t want to date? I never did,” she answered as if hearing my thoughts. Then she continued, “I’m too damn scared. It’s not because I don’t want to. And I have a feeling it’s the same for you.”
I was about to respond when Grandma stood up and went to the counter, grabbing a small cardboard box and bringing it over to me.
It wasn’t my birthday or any other holiday or anniversary I could remember. More cookies maybe? But that wouldn’t explain the seriousness on Grandma’s face.
“I know this might upset you at first, but hear me out,” she began.
Uh-oh.
I didn’t like the sound of that.
What in the heck was in that brown box?
Grandma sat back down on the couch but close enough to me that our knees touched. She placed the box on my lap. “Open it up.”
I was officially freaked.
Slowly, I opened the lid on the box, fully expecting something to jump out and bite me. When the lid opened, I froze.
There had to be some kind of mistake. There was no way in any lifetime that Grandma was giving me a . . .
Gun.
And not just a gun: a very large revolver that looked like it came out of a cartoon western.
Finally, words formed in the back of my throat. “Grandma. What is this?” I said it so quietly I wasn’t sure if Grams heard me.
She did.
“I know it’s a bit of a shock, but Jeraline, listen to me . . .”
I cut her off and shoved the box back on her lap. “I don’t want this! You know what happened to Mom and Dad! They were gunned down! By a . . . gun!”
Grandma reached over the box and held my hands in hers. “Which is why I want you to have one yourself. It’s registered under your name, but we can return it if you decide not to keep it.” She paused, considering the expression on my face, then continued, “Maybe if you felt safe, you’d start living again.”
“I am living,” I retorted defensively.
Squeezing my hands tighter, she answered, “No. You aren’t. You’re so scared of life that you’re hiding in this apartment.”
“I have a job!” Anger seethed through me.
But Grandma stayed calm, her hands tightly grasping mine. “The only reason you keep that job despite that horrible woman is because you’re surrounded by books. They’ve always been your security blankets. You’re terrified of losing that job because you’d lose your only other escape.” Taking her hands away gently, Grandma placed the open box back on my lap. “We can get you lessons so you know how to use it, so that you feel comfortable with it. Maybe if Hannah and Paul had had a gun that day, things might have turned out differently.”
That was it. I didn’t want to hear anymore. “Being gunned down with ten other people in a grocery store wouldn’t have changed if they had a gun, except maybe more people might have died!”
“You don’t know that,” Grandma argued.
“You don’t know either because it didn’t happen. They died. No one else had a gun.” I didn’t know what I was saying anymore. My insides began to shake having the hand cannon on my lap.
“Will you at least think about it? For me? I’d feel safer if you carried this with you,” Grandma pleaded, and there were tears in her eyes. She truly meant it.
I had lost my mother that day, but Grandma had lost her daughter too, and now she seemed convinced that if Mom had carried a gun on her, maybe she wouldn’t have died. I understood it, but I didn’t know if I could ever agree with it. The weight of the gun inside the box on my lap was enough to make my blood curdle. This was a weapon. A weapon that could kill another human being. A weapon that killed my parents. How could Grandma ever expect me to be okay with using it?
She begged one more time. “You need to protect yourself.”
I repeated the words out loud, “Protect myself.”
Protect myself.
Protect myself.
No matter how many times I said it in my head, I couldn’t come to terms with the gun staring at me from the box. Guns scared me. Guns terrified me. Guns ruined my life.
But the little voice inside me kept gnawing at me, screaming that I needed to level the battlefield. The bad guys had guns, and unless I planned on making an entire wardrobe made of Kevlar, I’d always be in danger.
I didn’t want to live that way though, in constant fear.
But was Grandma right? Was I already living that way? Even without the gun? Would the gun
