Give a Boy a Gun

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Authors: Todd Strasser
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at least. If you want to know the truth, I thought he was nuts. A hundred yards is the length of a football field. It’s pretty obvious by now that he’s got some kind of homemade bomb. But it’s kind of fun and goofy to run off into the woods, so I do it.
    We go running, and before long we’re all bent over with our hands on our knees, gasping for breath. It’s the smoking. And a little while later Gary comes crashing through the trees, and we yell to him that we’re over here.
    The thing goes off before he can get to us. There’s this really sharp, loud thunk! sound, and I swear a hundred yards away I can actually feel the ground shake and the leaves in the trees rustle. Now Gary and Brendan take off back toward the “blast zone.”
    So I get there, and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. First of all, every single piece of paper is blown away. Totally shredded. It’s like a big circle of multicolored paper shreds on the ground around the blast site. Leaves are blown off the trees, so the leaves andpaper are mixed together. The whole place reeks of burned gunpowder. Twigs are snapped and some of the smaller branches are broken. You can see that this thing was a lot bigger than it sounded from so far away. Maybe the sound was muffled by the trees and whatnot.
    Now Gary says we have to pick up every shred of paper, and he’s got rolls of Scotch tape so we can paste them back together. And that’s when I figure out what’s going on: We’re re-creating the scene. Like what they did with that 747 that blew up and they couldn’t figure out why.
    So now we have to gather up all these little colored shreds of paper and try to tape them together. The thing is maybe you can do it with some of the larger pieces, but the smaller pieces are impossible, and it’s not like we haven’t been drinking screwdrivers from a plastic half-gallon milk container we brought along.
    Finally Brendan says the hell with it. Gary’s the only one who doesn’t want to stop.If it were up to him, he’d stay out there for a week until every single shred was taped back together. He wants to see the blast pattern, he wants to make sure they built the bomb right. Brendan says, “Look, if we didn’t build it right, you think there’d be all this shredded paper and leaves and branches everywhere?”
    And Gary’s like, “Yeah, but I still want to see.” Brendan and I quit and just sit and drink and smoke and watch Allison and Gary pick and tape and pick and tape until even Allison’s tired of it. You can see it’s hopeless, but Gary is like a fanatic. He just has to see the blast pattern.
    Brendan, Allison, and I go back to the cabin, and the door’s locked, so Brendan gets the tire iron out of Allison’s car and uses it to pry the door open. He pretty much destroys the lock, but we’re too trashed to care. We go in and hang around and eat some of the food in the fridge and watch TV. After a while Gary shows up and he’s like, okay, he’s seen enough. He declares it a success.
    He says we should go, and I say, “Well,shouldn’t we at least fix the door so your uncle won’t have a total fit?” And Gary’s like, “Uncle? I don’t have any uncle.” Can you believe it?
    Anyway, we get in the car and start driving back, and all the way they’re talking about who they’re gonna blow up with these bombs. And it’s a pretty good-size list. The only thing is they really meant it.
    â€”Ryan Clancy
    TerminX : Pretty awesome 2day, huh? A couple of those suckas in school would put a lot of jerks out of their misery .
    Blkchokr : Plus a few non-jerks .
    Dayzd : Civilian casualties .
    TerminX : Collateral damage .
    Rebooto : U guys need 2 make a smart bomb .
    Dayzd : Smart bomb 4 dumb jocks .
    TerminX : B cool if U could convert that semiautomatic into fully automatic .
    Dayzd : Need a hellfire

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