That’s when the next shot came, and it sounded way closer than the others. Something darted by, close to the ground, going so fast I couldn’t even tell what it was. It went right behind King.

King jumped so high he was like a kangaroo instead of a horse. He knocked me down with his chest, and all at once I remembered how big he was, how wild. Then he went up on his back legs, front legs pawing, right over top of me and then like in a bad dream, he fell over backward. His body made a heavy thud that shook the ground.

At first I was afraid to get off the ground. But he didn’t move, so I started kind of crawling toward him. He lay a few feet away, on his side, his legs out straight, like a dead cartoon horse.

“King?” I said. He didn’t move.

“Are you…?” I asked in a whisper.

I realized with a sickening feeling in my stomach that one of the bullets must have hit him. Ben or Fisherman must have tried to shoot some animal and accidentally shot King instead. They shot him.

I knew we shouldn’t have played with guns. A scream started in my throat, but it got stuck there, burning a hole in my chest until it blasted me straight up.

It took me a second to hear Fisherman yelling at me.

“What did you do to him?” He was yelling while he scrambled through the fence.

“What?” I said. “Nothing.”

“You can’t go in there,” he yelled. “I told you to stay out of the pasture.”

He ran over and dropped to his knees.

Ben spoke from behind the fence. “Oh man,” he said. I looked back to see him standing there, long gun hanging at his side.

“Come on, buddy,” said Fisherman, putting a hand out toward King’s head, like he was scared to touch him. “Get up or my uncle’s going to kill me,” he said.

I couldn’t breathe but I was also about to cry, which meant I was probably going to die because you need to be able to breathe to cry. I walked to the fence, slipped out, and Ben stood back and watched me, and he didn’t say anything and neither did I. Maybe he was the one who shot King. Or maybe I killed King by putting him in the line of fire.

Why did I come here? Why was no place safe?

I ran to my bike. It lay with the other ones in the dirt at the side of the driveway. I dragged it upright, and when the pedal got tangled up with the spokes on one of the other bikes, I started to yank on it and yank on it.