Excerpt From Hush

Sarah had been sitting quietly behind her dad, watching the adults and a few teens shoot. Her dad called her forward to show her how the trigger mechanism on a shotgun worked.
“See here? There are two triggers. This one fires just one barrel. This one fires both. If you fire one, then you have the other still loaded. Fire both, and you put more lead in the air, but have to reload before you can fire again. So you have to think about what you’re doing and why. Remember how we talked about thinking before acting?”
She nodded. It was a talk they had pretty often.
“Can I try it?”
Harrison hesitated. He didn’t know why he felt so squeamish about handing his daughter a gun. Most other seven year olds had their own, practicing regularly for the day when they’d carry it all the time, with and without supervision. It wasn’t just his reluctance to hand over a weapon to a child whose head was so often in the clouds. He guessed it was a desire to keep her innocent, impractical as that might be.
“Tell you what. I’m gonna let you fire one barrel. Its time you started learning anyway.”
Sarah gave a little jump. “Yay!”
“Hold on, now! This isn’t a game. Listen carefully, now.”
He’d set her up on the block, and showed her how to sock the butt of the gun into her shoulder, and explained the trigger mechanism again. He pointed her at the target and stepped to one side.
Sarah looked down the site, closed her eyes, and squeezed. Both triggers.
She was launched backward into the air, flying high before landing hard, seated just as neat as if she’d been called to supper and was ready at her mom's table. Her teeth clicked together hard and her butt felt numb.
The next thing she knew, Harrison was pulling the gun from her hands, laughing in that deep, strong voice. Sarah's cheeks puffed in and out as she looked around to find out who else might have witnessed her mistake, only to see a Caulfield, the one she knew as Miss Misha, laughing. Her puffing slowed, and the tears she'd been bout to cry retreated. Misha’s laughter was fascinating, and contagious. Despite her numb butt and hurt pride, it just didn’t seem worthwhile to cry about something that could make a Caulfield laugh.
Sarah had gone to the firing range many times since then, and even learned to fire the shotgun without falling on her butt. But that day was still the best day because she’d seen Miss Misha laugh.