Give Gun To Emma

" 'I'll give you my gun if you want...' I said hoping I wasn't being too zealous.

'You- you will?' she asked in her quiet, stuttering voice.

'Yes. Like I said, though, I don't think it's loaded.' I called to her quietly, 'I'll take it out of my pocket now.' I said and unzipped the pocket that contained the gun.

I placed it flat on the floor and slid it down the alley so it was about twenty meters away from me down the alley.

In the darkness I just made out a shape, a hand, emerge from behind some fallen wooden crates and slide the gun back into the darkness.

'You really gave me your gun?...' is sounded like she was asking herself more than me.

'Like I said, I don't want to hurt you.' I said in what I hoped was a friendly tone.

'But- the other man hurt me...' she sounded confused.

'I'm not him. I just want to be friends. Okay?'

'Friends?...' she was silent for a while then, after about a minute, she stood up from behind the crate. 'Because friends don't hurt each other, do they?'

'No, no they don't.' I agreed trying make out her face whilst she stood in a pool of shadows.

'Okay,' she said as if finally coming to a very difficult decision, 'friends...' she said to herself and began to walk toward me.

After a few dozen shuffled steps she had reached me and I saw her in what remained of the light.

She seemed to be about twenty, maybe a year or two younger than me. She had dirty-blonde hair with more than a few twigs and leafs tangled in it.
Her skin was pale white in the places that weren't covered with dirt and her face was bruised.

She wore a once-white cotton jumper and a red and black plaid skirt just above her knees which were also scraped and dirty.

Held in both of her hands, just below her waist, was the gun, pointed toward the ground.

I held out my free hand slowly but she still stoped a few meters away from me.

'Hello Emma.'

She stepped forward again and then walked even closer to me and looked at my face critically for a moment.

Then she smiled a relieved smile and said, 'You're not him.'

Then, quite unexpectedly, she placed her arms around me(still holding the gun in one hand), placed her head on my chest, and began to cry.