In the Bag by Jim Carrington

other, awkward.
    ‘So how do we do this?’ I say.
    ‘We should try and wash our prints off the gun first,’ Rabbit says.
    ‘Can you get rid of fingerprints?’
    Rabbit shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never had to clean my prints off a gun before,’ he says. He starts off sounding sarcastic, but halfway through his voice changes and he sounds serious, scared. ‘I saw it on some detective show once. It worked when they did it.’
    ‘What do we need?’
    ‘Bleach,’ Rabbit says. ‘Cloths and rubber gloves or something so we don’t have to touch the gun with our skin.’
    I nod. ‘Right.’ I head straight to the kitchen, to the cupboard under the sink, where Mum keeps all the cleaning things. I grab a bottle of bleach, a brand new cloth and two pairs of rubber gloves, and we head straight back out of the kitchen, up the stairs to my room.
    I drop the cleaning stuff on my bed, chuck a pair of rubber gloves to Rabbit, put a pair on myself and then take the gun from the bag.
    ‘We should do this in the bathroom,’ Rabbit says. He picks up the bleach and cloth and we go into the bathroom.
    I pull the door closed behind us and lock it, then put the gun down on the edge of the basin with a metallic clunk .
    Rabbit shrugs. ‘I dunno how to do this exactly,’ he says. ‘We need to make sure that we get rid of any trace of us on the gun, though. No prints, no clothes fibres.’
    I nod.
    ‘We’ll have to get rid of all the cleaning stuff afterwards too,’ Rabbit says. ‘ All we need to do is dump it in a bin somewhere. No one’ll find it.’
    ‘OK.’ I take a deep breath. My heart’s racing faster than ever. This is making me feel like we’ve done something bad, like we used the gun to kill someone, even though all we did was find it. I have to remind myself that what we’re doing is the right thing to do now. It’s the only thing we can do without having to go to the police. So we don’t get in shit up to our necks. We have to do this. There’s no other choice. And I need to focus.
    I squeeze some bleach on to the cloth. I take the gun off the basin and start cleaning it, scrubbing at the handle first, then the barrel. I turn it over and do the other side. We’re both silent, staring intently at it. I’m even holding my bloody breath. We exchange a serious glance, but that’s it. After a bit, I stop scrubbing. I turn the gun round and round in my gloved hands, inspecting every inch of it. But I can’t tell whether our prints are off it or not. So I squirt some more bleach on to the cloth and start scrubbing again.
    ‘We can’t afford any mistakes,’ Rabbit says. ‘We have to do this right.’
    I nod. I feel panicked. How can we ever be sure that the gun is clean?
    Downstairs I hear a key in the front door. The door opens and then closes.
    We both freeze.
    ‘What’s that?’ Rabbit whispers.
    ‘Mum,’ I say. ‘She must be back from work.’
    Rabbit doesn’t say anything for a second. I can see him taking deep breaths, trying to compose himself. ‘Shit.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘The bathroom door’s locked.’
    I go back to cleaning again. And then when I’m done, I look at Rabbit and say, ‘Do you want to have a go, make sure it’s clean?’
    Rabbit shakes his head. ‘No. Let’s just get rid of it.’
    ‘Yeah. Right.’
    ‘We need a plastic bag or something,’ Rabbit says, ‘to put all this stuff in.’
    ‘Wait here,’ I say. ‘I’ll go and get one.’
    Rabbit takes the gun from me. He holds it awkwardly, like it’s gonna go off or something. I take off the rubber gloves and leave them on the floor with the bleach and unlock the bathroom door. As soon as I’m outside I look up and see Mum’s just about to go into her bedroom. She turns and looks at me. Behind me, the lock clicks shut on the bathroom door. Mum’s brow kind of furrows, like she’s confused.
    I roll my eyes. ‘Rabbit,’ I say. I’m about to come up with some excuse, about why we were in the