Walk the Edge

  Kyle’s right. It isn’t his fault I became socially withdrawn. That blame falls solely on me. It’s a decision I made in seventh grade when I was publicly crucified.

  Blending into paint for the past couple of years has kept me safe, but it creates the sensation of suffocation. Everyone says the same thing: Breanna’s smart, she’s quiet. On the inside, I’m not at all quiet. Most of the time, I’m screaming. “I’m not writing your papers.”

  Kyle’s smile that had suggested he had a done deal morphs into a frown and acid sloshes in my stomach. Denying Kyle isn’t what bothers me as much as it worries me what he’ll mention to his friends. They’re the reason why I went voluntarily mute in seventh grade.

  Heat races up my neck as the repercussions of refusing sets in, but I don’t even consider agreeing. Cheating is not my style.

  Kyle surveys the hallway, and if it’s privacy he’s searching for, he’ll be sorely disappointed. He slides closer and a strange edginess causes me to step back, but Kyle follows. “Fine. One hundred dollars per paper.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t understand. My grades have to improve.” Easygoing Kyle disappears and desperation is hardly attractive.

  I steal a peek into the school’s main office, hoping my guidance counselor will beckon me in. Half of me hopes she’ll have life-altering news for me, the other half hopes to end this insane conversation. “What you’re asking for is crazy.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  In an answer to the one million prayers being chanted in my head, my guidance counselor opens her door. “Breanna.”

  Kyle leans into me. “This conversation isn’t over.”

  “Yes, it is.” But he ignores my reply as he jogs up the nearest stairwell. Great. So far my senior year is starting out as the antithesis of my wishes—back at this tiny, strangling school with a group of people who think I’m beneficial for only one thing: as a homework hotline.

  My attention returns to the main office and my guidance counselor has already settled behind her desk. Mom and Dad sit in two worn particleboard chairs across from her and neither of them acknowledge me as I enter and take a seat.

  Dad stares at his loafers and Mom has become fascinated with something beyond the windows as she fiddles with the office ID badge for the hospital where she works. Only my guidance counselor, Mrs. Reed, meets my gaze, and when she subtly shakes her head, my heart sinks.

  I bite my lower lip to prevent it from trembling. This was a long shot. I knew it when I pleaded with my counselor to discuss this opportunity with my parents, but I was stupid enough to have a shred of hope.

  No point in acting as if I’m not aware of the resolution of their conversation. “High Grove offered me a partial scholarship. It pays for seventy-five percent of the tuition and I called around. I can make money in their work-study program and then I found this coffee shop that said they would hire me and would be flexible with my schedule and I could even study while things were slow and—”

  “And you’ll be over two hours away from us,” Mom cuts me off, then smooths her short black hair in a way that shows she’s upset. “This is your senior year. Your last year home with us. I’m not okay sending you to a private school. It’s not right.”

  “But did Mrs. Reed explain my schedule for this year?”

  I’ve already mastered every class Snowflake, Kentucky’s lone high school has to offer. Because of how my brain is wired differently, there won’t be a challenge, and if I intend to preserve my sanity, I require a challenge.

  I briefly shut my eyes and attempt to control the chaos in my mind. My brain...it never rests. It’s always searching for a puzzle to solve, for a code to crack, for a test to grapple with, and not having one, it’s like someone is chiseling at my bones from below my skin.

  “Yes,” Mom answers. “But Mrs. Reed also assured us they’ll give you extra work and you’ll participate in some independent studies. Some of them for college credit.”

  My foot taps the floor as hot anger leaks into my veins. What Mom’s suggesting, it’s everything that makes me stick out, everything that makes me the school freak again. “I need this. I need something more. I need a challenge.”

  “And I need you home.” Mom’s voice cracks and she grimaces as if she’s on the verge of tears. My eyes fill along with hers. We’ve had this argument, this discussion, this tearfest several times as I was applying.

  “You’re my baby,” Mom whispers. “I already have four of you out of the house and next year you’ll be gone.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. Next year, I plan to be hundreds and hundreds of miles north of here. Hopefully at an Ivy League school.

  “Don’t cost me my last year with you.” The hurt in her voice cuts me deep.

  “I’ll come home on the weekends.” I risk glancing at her. “I’ll call daily. I’ll still be around, just not as much.”

  “But we need you here.” Mom scoots to the edge of her seat as if being nearer to me will alter my view, but what she doesn’t understand is I’m seconds away from dropping to my knees to beg her to change her mind.

  “Joshua is more than capable of helping out around the house.” My younger brother by just over a year. I’m cushioned in the middle between four older-than-me and four younger-than-me siblings. Each older sibling has served their sentence as being the one in charge. Heading to private school would be the equivalent to handing in my two weeks’ notice.

  “Joshua isn’t you,” Mom says. “He can’t handle the responsibility.”

  “So you’re saying I should screw up and then you’d let me go to private school? Because that’s the logic of your argument. I meet your expectations and I have to stay home.”

  “Mrs. Miller.” Sensing a full-on argument, my guidance counselor interrupts. “This is a fantastic opportunity for Breanna. With her photographic memory—”

  “Just a good memory,” I correct softly. There’s no such thing as a photographic memory. At least it has never been proved, though there are people like me who can remember random information very well, but, in other areas, can struggle.

  “Of course.” Mrs. Reed smiles at me, probably remembering the conversations we’ve shared where she insists on calling my memory photographic and I insist my memory isn’t quite that impressive. Since my freshman year, she’s performed an array of tests on me like I’m a cracked-out guinea pig.

  “Regardless, Breanna has a fantastic memory and a high IQ. We can supplement her education, but High Grove Academy can offer her opportunities we are not prepared or equipped to give her.”

  Exactly. I sit taller with Mrs. Reed’s well-thought-out, adult-validated argument, but Mom leans into her hand propped up by her elbow on the armrest and hides her eyes, while Dad...he remains quiet.

  Gray streaks I’ve never noticed have marred his dark hair and he rubs at the black circles under his eyes. His typically fit frame seems smaller in his business suit. Dad’s been under extreme stress at his job and guilt drips through me that I’m adding to his burdens.

  I open my mouth, close it, then try again. “Dad, I will do everything in my power to pay for this myself.”

  “It’s not the money, Bre.” Dad raises his head and it’s like he’s aged ten years from when I saw him this morning. “It’s the timing. The company lost a huge contract, and if I don’t win over this next client, the whole town’s in trouble.”

  Because over half the town works for the factory. They make paint. It’s a lot of chemical reactions going on in a small, contained space, but it’s a process that requires a ton of people.

  “Your mom just received a promotion at the hospital and her hours are more than we thought they’d be. Give us a few months to get our feet underneath us and then, your mom and I, we’ll do everything we can to help you with the college of your choice, but for right n
ow, we need you at home. We need you here. This family would be impossible to run without you.”

  He offers a weak upward lift of his lips and Mom’s beaming as if she thinks Dad’s monologue will persuade me. As if his words will cause me to forget how each day that passes in this town makes me feel like I’m drowning under a million gallons of water.

  This should be one of those proud moments—the ones I’ve seen on television—where I hug my father and tell him how I’m overjoyed by his faith in me, but on the inside I’m a rose wilting in fast-forward on the vine.

  How do I refuse my parents? How do I explain that of our family of nine, I’m the one who’s never fit in?

  “I understand.” I hate it, but there’s nothing else to say. “I understand.”

  RAZOR

  THE WORLD ZONES out as if I’m in a long tunnel encircled by darkness. The green of the trees and sunlight surrounding me becomes too far away to reach. In a mindless movement, I shut off the engine and the stillness becomes a weight.

  “I have a file,” the detective says. “In my car. I’d like you to take a look at it.”

  I slip off my bike and wait for him a few inches from the bumper of his car. There’s a voice in the back of my head. One I’m familiar with. One I understand. It’s tossing out warnings—tell him to talk to Dad, tell him to speak with the club’s board, tell him to go through the hundreds of different protocols that have been shoved down my throat on how any of us should deal with someone who’s not a member of the Terror.

  But as he offers me the file, the sight of my mother’s name muzzles the voice. There’s silence in my head. A crazy, fucked-up silence. The type that can drive a guy insane.

  “Open it,” he says. Mom said the same thing to me once. It was Christmas. The box was bigger than the other ones and it moved. Doubt I’ll find in this file, like I did with the box Mom gave me, a puppy inside.

  I do open the file, and I trudge in slow motion for the porch as my eyes take in the typed words and the handwritten notes. With a flip of a page, I slump until my ass hits the top stair. It’s a picture of my mom. A hand over my face, then I focus once again on the picture—of her, of my mother.

  “Where’d you get this?” I ask. It’s of Mom smiling. A real smile. The type where her eyes crinkled. I loved it when she smiled like that. It meant her mood wasn’t fake.

  “Your dad gave it to the local police force...when she went missing.”

  Went missing...

  That night, Dad and the club had been out for hours searching, scouring for a trace. Dad left me with my surrogate grandmother, Olivia. My three best friends stayed with me at her place. I was ten and they watched me pet my puppy over and over again.

  I crack my neck to the side to bring me back to the present—back to her picture. I resemble Mom. I’m more like Dad in build and height, but I have her blond hair and blue eyes. Problem is when I peer into the mirror, I don’t see the deep warming blue of her eyes. I see ice.

  “Does the club ever discuss what happened that night?” From where the detective stands, he blocks the sun, so I can look up without squinting. “About what they saw?”

  An uneasiness tenses my shoulder blades. “Why would they?”

  He doesn’t answer. It’s apparent pages and photos are missing from the file. There’s a picture of Mom’s smashed-up car, but not one photo of her inside. A report that is mostly blacked out and a slew of papers that appear like they should go together, but pages two, five and seven through nine are absent.

  “What’s this?” I show him a page full of gibberish. Numbers and letters in odd combinations spread like a crossword puzzle.

  “I’m hoping that’s where you can help me. Several of those have come into our possession, and we have reason to believe it’s messages from within your club.”

  The edge in his voice slices through my skin. Your club. There’s an insinuation there. One that causes a dark demon within me to stir. Your club.

  “The Reign of Terror looked for your mother the night she went missing,” he says. “They reported a problem with her way before normal people would have known there was an issue. She left work, and a half hour later they were on full alert. Sound normal to you?”

  “Sounds like they were concerned.”

  A growling, disgruntled noise leaves his throat. “Sounds like they knew exactly what was going on. Especially since they were the ones who found her.”

  The second part of his statement trips me up and causes me to pause on the word died in the middle of the page. They were the ones who found her. The club had kept me in the dark on that piece of information.

  “I’ve been investigating the Reign of Terror for the past year. Longer than you’ve been a member. The club claims to be legit, but they protest too much. There are secrets in this club. You know this, and so do I.”

  I’ve been a patched-in member for only a few months, but I’m a child of one of the club’s leading men. Dad’s the sergeant at arms. It’s his job to protect the club, to protect the president. You have to be a crazy MFer for that job. He’s insane enough to love the position.

  I was born and raised in the Terror clubhouse. This bastard thinks he knows the club because he’s been “investigating” us. He knows nothing. He’s one more asshole attempting to destroy what he doesn’t understand.

  “Aren’t you curious how your mother died?” he asks.

  “It was an accident,” I snap.

  “You believe it was an accident because you were told it was an accident.”

  It’s better than the alternative—that Mom took her own life. I meet his stare, and we become statues as we carry on the eye showdown.

  “I didn’t come here to get into a pissing contest with you. I’m here to help you,” he says like he’s my priest ready to grant absolution. “Maybe give you some peace.”

  “Who says I’m torn up?”

  “This involves your mother.” He allows a moment for his words to sink in and for my stomach to twist. “A boy never gets over losing his mother. Some things are universal. Black, white, poor, rich, college-educated to thug.”

  I raise an eyebrow. I’m guessing I’m the thug.

  “You’ve thought about your mother’s death. Maybe you’ve even been tormented. I’ve been on this case for a while, so I don’t come here lightly. I know what people say—that your mom killed herself—”

  A storm of anger flares within me. “It was an accident.”

  “It was no accident. I believe there’s one of two ways that night went down. There were no skid marks. Nothing to prove she tried to stop. Your mother either went off that bridge on purpose or she went off thinking going over was her better chance at survival.”

  My throat tightens. She died. My mother died.

  “I’ve talked to people. They say your mother was unhappy. That she had been unhappy for months. They say she was preparing to leave your father and she was going to take you with her.”

  A strong wave of dread rushes through my blood, practically shaking my frame. “You’re full of shit.”

  “Am I?” he asks. “People say your father worshipped you. That he wasn’t going to allow her to leave with you. Don’t you want to know how she died? Don’t you want to know if the people you claim as family were involved? If you work with me, we’ll find the answers you’ve been searching for.”

  My cell buzzes in my pocket and the distraction breaks the tension between me and the cop. I pull it out and find a text from Chevy. I’m late meeting him and evidently he was worried: Pigpen and Man O’ War coming in strong.

  “Do you hear that sound?” I say.

  He’s got that lost expression going on. “What sound?”

  The phone in the house rings and the welcome rumble of angry engines echoes in the distance. He turns toward the road a
nd I beeline it into the house. Two seconds in, the file is open and I snap as many pictures as I can.

  “Razor!” the guy shouts from the other side of the screen door. My back’s to him and he sure as shit won’t walk in without a warrant or probable cause. “Bring that file back out here.”

  “Phone’s ringing,” I yell, knowing full well he can’t see what I’m doing. I close the file, then wave it over my shoulder to prove he and I are good. The house phone goes silent, but then my cell’s ringtone begins.

  I answer and it’s Oz on the other end. He and Chevy—they’ve been my best friends since birth. “You got trouble?”

  “Could say that. How’d you know?”

  “You’re late to orientation, and Pigpen saw someone with Jefferson County plates headed down your drive. He gave you a few minutes to show on the main road, and when you didn’t...”

  Oz drops off. He doesn’t have to explain. The club, as always, has my back. Especially Pigpen. The brother adopted me as his protégé.

  The detective bangs on the door. “Come out here or tell me I can come in, but if you leave my sight with that file in hand, I will bust down this door.”

  “I gotta go.” I hang up and stride out onto the porch. The cop snatches the folder from my fingers and his hand edges to his holstered gun as Pigpen and Man O’ War burst off their bikes and stalk in our direction.

  Pigpen earned his name as a joke because the girls fall over themselves to gain his attention. Blond hair, blue eyes...a late twentysomething version of what I hope to be. Man O’ War acquired his road name because when he’s in a fight, he’s famous for causing pain.

  “Got a warrant for something?” Pigpen asks in a low voice that’s more threat than question. Less than a year and a half ago, the guy was crawling around in the muck in some foreign country as an Army Ranger. Even though he was recruited by the Army because of his mad computer skills, it was a bullet in the shoulder and chest he took saving someone in his squad that brought him home for good. The brother is damn lethal.

  “Just having a conversation,” the cop answers in a slow drawl, “and I was leaving.”