“Not bad,” he said, one eye looking down the barrel as though aiming at something. “A Ruger forty-five caliber, Centerfire.” He pulled a bullet from the clip. “The clip holds eight rounds. These bullets are hollow-point.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they’ll expand once hitting their target, thus damaging more tissue the deeper they penetrate, which is to say, they’ll do some serious damage.”

“Cool,” I said. “You want to come with us?”

“Nah, you boys have fun. Be careful out there.”

Jason snagged a black revolver from the gun cabinet while I grabbed a plastic bag full of pop cans from the kitchen. We walked out across the field and into the woods. Jason carried the guns in a duffel bag. His father insisted that we always carry them in a bag, unloaded with the safety on, until we got to where we were going, which was a circular pond forty yards wide that sat in the middle of the woods a ten-minute walk from the house. But when we entered the woods and knew we couldn’t be seen, we always removed the guns, loaded them, and tucked them into the waistband of our shorts like bandits of the Old West.

“You work out at all this week?” I asked.

“I haven’t done shit since we last ran.”

“Lazy bastard, that was a month ago.”

“Eat it,” he said and grabbed his crotch. “How about you?”

“Been running,” I said. “Lifted a few times with the football team.”

I had been the starting 103-pounder my freshman year of high school. Jason wrestled 103 as well, but I had beaten him at every one of our wrestle-offs. He had gotten much better since the seventh grade, when he’d won only a single match all year. This past year, wrestling JV, he had had a fifteen and seven record and had won his first tournament ever. Wrestling varsity, I had enjoyed a good year as well, finishing the season at twenty-four and nine. I had placed third at the sectional tournament and qualified for districts. If I had placed in the top four there, I would have made it to state. Since then, I had worked even harder, going to open mats twice a week at neighboring schools and wrestling in every open tournament I could find. I started lifting weights for the first time and ran four or five miles every two or three days. I could feel myself getting stronger; my endurance, which had always been good, was improving, too.