My gut twists. What if this parade wasn’t new? What if Mom was leaving and the stream of women was the reason why? Breaking at the seams, I burst and throw a fist into the wall.
A picture frame crashes to the floor and shatters. The woman jumps and there’s an indentation in the drywall that’s going to piss Dad off. The thought brings a grim sense of satisfaction.
“You’re not the first. Cooking bacon isn’t going to make you last any longer than the others.” It’s an asshole thing to say, but it’s also the most humane. This woman’s trying too hard and those are the ones who show here weeks later in tears trying to understand why it didn’t work between them.
“It’s not like that,” she pleads. “Your dad and I—we aren’t like that.”
That’s what he convinces the women he sweet-talks into sleeping with him. I should tell her, but this is Dad’s mess to clean up. Not mine. I walk past her, flick the switch to the light in my bedroom and grab a bag off the floor. They want to play house, I’ll let them. She can stay as many nights as she desires or until Dad decides to trade her in for a new model.
The door to the house squeaks and my drawer makes a whooshing sound as I pull it out. I toss in some boxers and socks. Slam that one shut and I dump as many shirts as I can out of the middle drawer.
Low voices. A feminine sob. My dad’s deep tone.
“He didn’t mean it,” she says. “Please, don’t. Not over me.”
I don’t need her fighting my battles. A hard yank and my bottom drawer drops to the ground. The corner cracks and little splinters of wood pepper the carpet. I jam every pair of jeans I own into the bag. The clothes are overflowing and I punch them down so I can zip it up.
“Razor!” Dad’s in my doorway, red-hot as a five-alarm fire. “What the fuck are you doing making Jill cry?”
A menacing laugh rips from my throat. He’s the one who broke the promise. He’s the one who won’t answer me regarding my mother and he’s pissed I hurt the sweet-butt-of-the-week’s feelings? I turn toward him and his eyes flicker to the bag in my hands.
He steps back. “Where are you going?”
Chevy’s, Oz’s. The clubhouse. Any of those are options. “Did you sleep around on Mom?”
Dad curls his fingers into the door frame. “Eli said he talked to you about trusting the club.”
“This isn’t about the club. This is about you, me and Mom. Did you sleep around on her?”
“That’s where you’re wrong. What happened between me and your mother was between me and her. You may be our son, but you have no right to ask that question.”
“I remember the fights. I remember how the two of you went at it, but I could never hear what you were fighting over. She was miserable. I know this. You know this and then you get pissed when I ask the obvious questions. This is between you and me. Did you sleep around on her? Did she kill herself because you couldn’t make her happy?”
“Dammit, Razor! You’re playing into that cop’s hands. He wants to isolate you. He’s been doing this shit to all of us over the past year.”
“What difference does it make if I’m being played?” I pound my open hand to my chest. “We’re legit. Our club is just that—a group of guys who ride bikes. And the security business, that’s legit, too. I ride along semitrucks full of bourbon. Babysitting it until it gets from point A to point B. If I call the cop and meet with him in thirty minutes, it doesn’t matter. There is nothing for him to get from me. I’m not playing into his hands, I’m asking questions I deserve the answers to.”
A muscle in Dad’s jaw ticks and he takes several seconds before he responds. “Is that what you’re going to do? Are you going to meet with the cop?”
I haven’t ruled it out. If I do, I’m going against the club in a way that won’t be forgiven.
“This—” he overemphasizes the word “—this is what the board’s been talking about. Why you had the longest prospect period out of anyone. Why you aren’t trusted with answers now. None of us know where your loyalties lie. Not even me.”
“Mom had nothing to do with the club,” I say.
“She was a Terror Gypsy.” The women’s support group. They are wives or serious girlfriends of members of the club and they work together to support the Terror.
“Not the same. I’m asking as your son that you answer me. I’m tired, Dad. I’m so fucking tired of not knowing. I’m exhausted thinking she killed herself. That she chose to leave me!”
There’s a strange wetness in my eyes and a loss of strength in my hands. The bag plunges to the floor and a rush of air from the impact hits my legs.
“Thomas...” Dad says in defeat.
I rub both of my hands over my face in an attempt to drive the emotions away. My arms drop to my sides, and when I glance up, Dad’s entered my room. He stands before me, hands in his pockets, looking at me with the same pity look everyone in town wears when they spot me. “Your mother’s death... I can’t talk about it.”
“You can.” I need him to. “I know it’s hard. It hurts to remember her, but if we sit and—”
“You misunderstand,” he cuts me off. “I’ve been ordered not to.”
My vision tunnels. I must have misunderstood what he said. If he’s been ordered not to discuss Mom’s death, then... “Mom’s death is club business?”
He holds up his hand. “I didn’t say that.”
Yeah, he did. “Then why else would the board silence you?”
“For the same reason you’ve been kept in the dark. We can’t trust you.”
“The club patched me in. The board voted—”
“Because if we didn’t, by our bylaws, you would have never become a member. You’d reached the maximum time anyone’s allowed to be a prospect. None of us were willing to let you go, but you weren’t ready. You still aren’t ready. That patch on your back—it’s borrowed.”
I stumble back as his words strike me like a wrecking ball.
“You have to learn to trust us,” Dad continues. “This club is your family. Let us in, Thomas. Let me in.”
“How?” My arms are stretched wide, begging for him to give me an answer, any answer that will end this torment. “Tell me how, because I thought I was trusting you. I thought I was trusting the club.”
“Let your mother’s death go.”
The world tilts and nausea sets up in my stomach. He’s asking for the impossible. He’s asking me to bleed out on the street. “I can’t.”
“Then we can’t trust you. Not until you trust us.”
Fuck this. I swipe the bag off the floor, but Dad doesn’t move. “This is your home.”
“It was,” I answer. “But then Mom died. This ain’t a home. It’s walls with a roof.”
Pain flashes in Dad’s eyes and he stiffens like he’s paralyzed. I use the opportunity to stalk past. The new woman of the week hugs herself in the kitchen and opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but thinks better of it when I won’t meet her gaze.
I’m out the door, down the steps, and I leave with no intention of coming back.
Breanna
KEEPING IN MIND the most frequently used letters in the alphabet, I’m toiling my way through the Caesar encryption method. It’s a simple method. One I don’t expect to work because that would be too easy, but it’s what my English teacher used on Friday.
The library’s busy; at least it is toward the front. Because of that, I selected a table in the back. Joshua had practice before school, so I’ve been here for the past hour jotting down possible solutions and crossing them out just as quickly. It’s frustrating and exhilarating, and if this is what being employed with the CIA is like, I want in.
There’s a low buzz of conversation. Occasionally some girl laughs too loudly for too long, but a shush from the librarian silences her. T
here are footsteps on the carpet and a pause behind me. A flutter in my stomach wishes it’s Razor, but then the overpowering smell of too much aftershave squashes that hope.
The chair across from me is drawn back and Kyle drops into it. I’ve been going to school with Kyle since kindergarten. He ate worms. I strung clover together to craft necklaces. We belonged to two different worlds then and nothing since then has changed, yet here he is talking to me again.
“I’m not writing your papers. I will help you, but I’m not writing them.”
He scratches behind his ear and the action reminds me of a dog. Strands of his black hair now stick out. He rests his elbows on the table, then rests back in his seat, then forward again. A strange unsettling forms in my bloodstream. Whatever is about to happen will be bad.
Time to bolt. I turn off my phone, put it in my purse and scoot out of my chair as I sweep up my notes.
“You’re going to write my papers,” he says.
I stand and shove my wrong answers into my backpack. Mimicking my younger siblings, I ignore his existence.
“Did you know I have over six hundred Bragger followers? Thanks to football camp, I’m hitting close to seven hundred and I like to post stuff. Stuff some people may not want seen.”
“So?” I empathize with those antelopes on the National Geographic specials that glance up from the watering hole and come face-to-face with a tiger. Like them, I’m terrified into immobilization.
Kyle rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and I shift my weight from one foot to the other. If I run, maybe whatever it is he’s planning will fizzle, but something warns me that no matter how fast I sprint, he’ll be able to catch up.
“You’re wanting to go to college, right? Knowing you, you’re going to some Ivy League school, am I wrong?”
He’s not. Not at all. I hunger to go far from here. To go where there will be other people like me. Someplace where I won’t be the one who is odd, but the one who belongs.
“Coach had a meeting with us a few months back on how we have to watch what we do online. How guys who have great track records on the field lose chances at scholarships because of their behavior off the field and online.”
The entire left side of my body goes numb, and I randomly wonder if I’m experiencing a stroke. Kyle’s right. Universities do research people online. They do care about our personal lives when it pertains to coveted spots or scholarships—especially with the schools I’m interested in attending.
The wooden chair cracks under his weight and he yanks his cell out of his pocket. “Have you seen this site before?”
Snowflake Sluts. Every girl I know hates that site. The first few times it sprang up on Bragger, someone told the school’s administration and it was taken down, but like a bad pimple, it pops back up. No one reports it anymore, since the next picture in line is of the girl who snitched.
“I know the guys who run it.”
My eyes dart to his. Guys? There’s more than one sick, twisted pig at this school?
Kyle moves his fingers across the screen, then slides his cell over the table to me.
Bile claws up my throat and a sweat breaks out along my hairline. I collapse into the seat. It’s a horror show. One I crave desperately to flee, but can’t.
It’s a Bragger message on Kyle’s account and I don’t miss how it hasn’t yet been sent into the universe. The picture is of me and Razor and beyond us is a sign for Shamrock’s. I’m on the bed of the truck and Razor is leaning into me, settled between my legs. His head and lips extremely close to mine. My skirt is pulled dangerously up my thigh, exposing areas that no one should ever see, and Razor’s hands appear to be touching my skin.
The picture is damning enough, but it’s the words above it that causes my head to throb: #snowflakesluts #bikerwhore
“I won’t send the picture from my account. It’ll be sent from Snowflake Sluts’. I’m sure you noticed it has a nice following.”
It does. Too many people. Way more than the population of our school, or town, or even county. This has a reach that could devastate futures. Specifically, my future.
“I’ve got more,” Kyle says. “Of you drinking, but I figure this one would get more attention.”
More...of me drinking. I’m sure the college scholarship and admission committees would love to see one of their prospective students participating in underage drinking at a bar and then appear to be about to have sex in a parking lot in a bed of a truck with a member of a notorious biker gang.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle says. “But failing isn’t an option. It doesn’t have to be like this. I can still give you whatever you want. You can forget you saw this picture, and when the year is done, I’ll delete it and the others I took. This can be a great year for the two of us. I pass and get a scholarship out of Snowflake. You can become the most popular girl at school.”
I fight the compulsion to dry heave. “But nothing happened between me and Razor. We didn’t even...” I choke on the word kiss.
“Doesn’t matter what the truth is. Only matters what people think.”
He’s right. Kyle is so right I’m dizzy. “That’s Razor from the Reign of Terror. If you hurt me by putting that picture up, you’re hurting him.”
“The guys put up a picture of Violet and the Terror didn’t do a thing.” It’s the crazy in his eyes that scares me. “What makes you think he’ll do anything for a one-night stand?”
“I didn’t do anything with him.” I grit my teeth. “He’s my friend.”
“Razor doesn’t have friends. His own club is terrified of him. Even his mother drove over a bridge to get away. If the Terror didn’t save Violet, Razor sure as hell isn’t going to help you.”
“What if I still say no? What if I tell you to go to hell?”
He looks me point-blank in the eye as if he’s a firing squad. “Then I walk away from here and tell the people who run the Snowflake Sluts account to push send.”
RAZOR
Cyrus: I have something for you. Something Olivia wanted you to have.
ACROSS THE YARD, the clubhouse is shut up and the yard is empty. It’s Monday around noon. Most of the guys from the club who are employees for the security company are out on runs. The other half of the club, the guys who work normal jobs, are out doing their thing. It’s quiet—lonely—and the only sound is the rustle of leaves moving with the breeze.
In front of Cyrus’s log cabin house, my hand’s poised on the railing ready to go up. If it weren’t for Cyrus’s text, I wouldn’t be here. Dad said the patch on my back is borrowed—that no one believes I’ve earned it. It’s an open-palmed slap in the face and being anywhere near the club wounds my pride enough that my skin crawls.
But Cyrus brought up Olivia. I lower my head. She was the one person in the world who didn’t think I was fucked-up beyond belief.
“Are you coming in or not?” Cyrus appears on the other side of the screen door.
I climb two steps at a time and Cyrus holds the door open. The place looks the same as when Olivia was alive. She passed a month ago, but even if ten years had gone by, I can’t imagine the house changing. We loved her too much for this to be anything less than a living tomb.
Eli bought the flat-screen television and sectional couch for Olivia, his mother, after his stint in prison. There’s a throw rug on the wooden floor and picture frames are everywhere. Olivia insisted on having visual reminders of the people she loved.
There’s a ton of pictures of people in the club: Olivia and Cyrus; Eli and his brother, James; Olivia’s granddaughter, Emily; and then plenty of the brat pack: Oz, Chevy, Violet and me. We weren’t born to her, but we were her children. She loved us when we were unlovable.
Cyrus enters the kitchen and I hesitate near a framed three-by-five of me and Olivia. Olivia’s beside me and I have my arm
lobbed around her shoulders. I’m smiling because she was laughing. Olivia had a contagious laugh and the world is too silent without it.
“Where did you stay last night?” Cyrus calls out.
Figures Dad would notify the club I left. Leaving: another thing I’ve done to add to the list of how unpredictable and untrustworthy I am. “I drove around.”
“All night?” Cyrus pops his head around the door frame. He strokes his long gray beard as he watches me for the lie.
I did drive around, but then I went to the one place no one knows. A place that can soothe my soul. “I haven’t slept yet.”
It’s an answer in a nonanswer and he accepts it. “Second day of school was today.”
The combo of the fight with Dad and no sleep would have made me a lit fuse. Olivia said a smart man knew which battles to fight and which ones to abandon. I waved the white flag on the war otherwise known as school.
Cyrus reenters the living room with a cardboard box in hand. “Your dad reached out to the club to find you. You should call him. Let him know you’re okay. Oz and Chevy went looking for you. You should reach out to them, too. They didn’t like you being MIA.”
Funny how Dad didn’t call or text me, but Oz and Chevy did. I messaged them this morning that I was good, but they were pissed I wouldn’t confess where I was holed up. They didn’t tell anyone we had contact because the three of us are still tight.
“None of us liked you being AWOL.” Eli strolls into the house and pats my shoulder as he walks past. “Why didn’t you come to me or Cyrus last night? You know we’re safe havens.”
They wait for an answer. I’ve admired Cyrus my entire life and then worshipped Eli the moment he rolled into town when I was ten. Before today, before I was patched in, I relied on Eli and Cyrus like a second skin, but after Dad’s admission that the club considers my membership the equivalent of a handout, I’m not sure what my relationship with them is anymore. In fact, I feel like a poser still wearing the cut, but I can’t bring myself to remove it from my back.