Eli’s gaze flickers from Cyrus to the box Cyrus holds in his hand. “This is the moment? Did Olivia choose this specific day or was it an event?”
“Event,” Cyrus answers in a gruff tone. “Makes you scared, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does.” Eli cracks his neck to the side. “Let’s do this.”
Eli motions for me to sit on the couch. I do and Cyrus settles into his recliner as Eli pulls a wooden chair out of the kitchen and straddles it across from me. Eli rubs the stars tattooed on his forearm. The guy is hardcore, but ask him what his tattoos mean and most women will weep.
Cyrus gives Eli the box. This package is like a coiled and pissed-off cobra. If you’re careful, you can escape unscathed, but if you move wrong, the result will mess up your day.
Eli strokes his thumb over the box. “Do you know what’s in here?”
“Some of it.” Odds are it’s Olivia’s ashes. Chevy, Oz and I have theorized this was Olivia’s grand plan. According to her final wishes, Olivia’s ashes were separated several ways, but how many ways and who the ashes were for was kept a secret.
“Do you know what’s in it?” I return the question.
“Some of it.” Eli steals my answer. “The unknown scares me. Cyrus, why now?”
Cyrus steeples his fingers as he leans forward. “Olivia’s instructions were to give it to Razor when he walked out on his dad or when he no longer trusted the club.”
Knife straight to the gut as those are both viable options.
“Fuck,” mumbles Eli. He adjusts the box as if he’s weighing it, then offers it to me. I accept and the room shrinks with the two of them studying me like I’m under a microscope.
I run a hand over my head. I can do this. I can open a box. I can deal with what’s inside.
This summer, I said goodbye to Olivia and I made my peace with her death. This box contains a piece of her, not the part that’s important—not her soul.
Peeling the tape off the box, I remove the same wooden box I’ve seen in Oz’s possession. I flip the lid and inside is a plastic bag and I divert my eyes away from Olivia’s ashes to the white envelope with my name written in Olivia’s script.
My heart stalls. This is the last thing I’ll receive from her. After this, it’s all memories. I release a long breath, then slide my finger under the edge of the envelope.
There’s a packet of stapled papers inside, and the front page is a simple handwritten note:
Thomas, I wrote Oz a long letter, but you and I know how you prefer brief.
I chuckle and an ache forms along with the slight smile on my face.
Won’t lie, you’re a ticking time bomb, but you’re the type that implodes instead of explodes. As a child, you were a talker, and as each year passed your silence felt like a slow, silent death. If you’re reading this, it’s because either someone cleaned out the closet and found this box or you’re physically pulling away like you have emotionally.
I love you too much to allow that to happen.
Read the attached. Read it often. Carry it with you. Memorize it. This is the life preserver you have been searching for. I apologize that it took my death to throw it out to you.
After you’ve found your peace, you’ll know what to do with my remains.
I love you. I’m not letting you go and I ask that you please reconsider. Walking away from them is like walking away from me.
~Olivia
I turn the page and my eyebrows furrow together.
“What is it?” Eli asks.
I raise the packet of papers and Eli’s dark eyes harden into death. Eli’s reaction confirms I’m holding the answers to my questions, but I’m clueless as to what those answers are, especially when it’s something I’ve seen my whole life. Something I had to memorize to patch in. It’s the bylaws for the Reign of Terror.
A low rumble of a chuckle comes from Cyrus’s direction.
“It’s not funny,” Eli snaps.
“No.” Cyrus sobers up. “It’s not, which is what makes it sadly hilarious.”
“Someone want to fill me in?” I ask.
Eli abruptly stands. His chair rocks, then hits the floor. “It means Mom’s mental stability was more fragile than we thought in those last few months.”
His hand hammers the screen door as he leaves and the door comes back and slams into the wood. I glance at the bylaws. Olivia was a lot of things toward the end and one of them was lucid. Eli’s hiding something, and when I peer over at Cyrus, the pensive stare in my direction confirms he’s hiding something, too.
Breanna
THE WORLD HAS an unusual fuzziness to it. A haze I can’t escape. The bell rings, I get up, go to class. My teachers talk. My friends talk. People around me talk. I stare at the desk. The bell rings again. It’s an endless cycle until the day ends.
I’m grasping for some sense of normal. Anything that happened before eight this morning. Before Kyle sat in the seat across from me in the library. Before he slid his phone in my direction. Before I saw my entire life crumbling.
Whore.
Slut.
My privacy is being completely and utterly violated. That picture—it violates me. It’s taking a private moment and exposing it to the world. It’s painting pictures that people will gossip and laugh about forever.
A Reign of Terror biker between my legs and my skirt riding up. I was smiling. He was smiling. Nothing happened, but that photo suggests something entirely different.
It’s my fault. I threw out into the universe that I wanted to be seen. That I wanted to be more than the quiet friend of Reagan and Addison. That I wanted to be known as more than the freakishly smart girl in seventh grade. I wanted to be seen and the entire world is going to see me in a way that causes me to slowly wither and die.
“You okay?” Liam comes to a rolling stop at the intersection near our house.
“Yeah.” But I’m not. “Why did Mom send you to pick me up?”
“She said you needed a ride. I’m guessing what she really needs is for me to drive someone someplace.” There’s an edge to his voice. He’s been angry since he saw me climbing into Reagan’s car. The stink part of this is that he’s mad at me and I’m not the one who dragged him out of bed after he worked third shift at the distribution warehouse.
Mom calls Liam when she requires extra help. One day, he’s going to snap or leave.
“I should have never let them talk me into community college,” he mumbles. Community college is still an hour’s hike from here. Yep, he’s definitely going to move away and never return. Like our oldest sister and brother have done.
“You’re quiet,” he says. “Not that you aren’t normally quiet, but this time you’re quiet and heavy. Plus with the way you’re gripping it, you’re going to poke a hole in that backpack.”
I stretch my fingers. “I need to talk to Mom and Dad.”
“Leave Dad alone,” says Liam. “Work is killing him.”
He’s right. Either Dad wins over this new client or the company falls into bankruptcy. Half the town works for Dad’s employer. There’s no pressure there.
All day I’ve run through the countless possible ways I can make what has happened okay. So, Mom, I lied and I’m sorry and I need you to be okay with what I’ve done because there’s this boy and he’s blackmailing me. He’s going to show everyone a picture if I don’t write his papers and I need help because I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to fix any of this...and please don’t tell anyone. Not Reagan’s parents and definitely not Addison’s.
Addison. My breath catches in my throat and my hand settles at the hollow of my neck in an effort to halt the choking sensation. If I beg my parents for help, will they tell Addison’s parents what we did? And if they do, what new bruises will appear because I’m weak?
My chest hurts as I try to inhale. This situation isn’t fixable. None of it is. I’ll miss any chance to attend college. To win a scholarship. Mom and Dad will be disappointed. They’ll be angry. Addison and Reagan will pay for my sins.
But I don’t know what to do. This problem...this picture...Kyle...this is bigger than me.
“Is it true that once something’s on the internet, it remains on the internet?” I ask. Liam likes computers. He’s the one who prevents our household from plummeting into the dark ages.
“Once it’s out there, it never goes away,” he says.
“But what if you delete it?”
Liam pulls into our drive. “The moment it’s on the net, it’s cached someplace. Doesn’t take anyone with half a brain to find it.”
“Even pictures?”
“It’s worse if it’s a picture. People copy stuff all the time. It’s like ants at a picnic. You can kill one, but fifty of them are right behind.”
He shifts the car into Park, then his face wrinkles as if he realized he was strolling in a thunderstorm without an umbrella. “Why?”
If I speak, I’ll cry, and if I cry, I’ll lose my courage. Mom. I need Mom.
I’m out of the car, leaving my backpack in the seat and the passenger door gaping. I burst into the kitchen and my heart stalls. The floor is littered with luggage and cardboard boxes of Clara’s stuff. What bothers me is that Mom’s suitcase is in the mix.
The swinging door from the living room opens and Mom rushes in like she’s fleeing out-of-control flames. Her arms are filled with various items on the verge of spilling onto the floor.
“Oh, good.” Mom’s expression relaxes as if my arrival meant the end to world hunger. “I was scared Clara and I would be gone before you showed. Liam must have found you. I know sometimes you visit with Addison and Reagan after school. Help me unzip the middle suitcase. The purple one. I wonder if I forgot something. Bre, start listing things I could have forgotten.”
Me? You’ve forgotten about me. “Where are you going?”
“Where are you going?” Liam ambles in and drops my backpack on my feet, permitting it to hit my toes. “Leave something?”
“Liam.” Mom glances at the clock on the microwave. “Unzip that middle suitcase. The purple one, then go tell Clara goodbye. We should have left five minutes ago if we’re going to make this work.”
“Good. This is good.” Liam’s shoulders loosen and then he mock swats the back of my head. “You heard Mom, start listing things, Encyclopedia-freak.”
“Don’t hit your sister and don’t call her that.” Mom reprimands him with all the passion of an answering machine recording as she drops the contents in her hands into the already overstuffed suitcase.
Mom straightens, places three fingers over her lips as she focuses on the mound of stuff, then mumbles a list of items—socks, pants, toothbrush...
I’m frozen to the ground, my entire body becoming solid. “What’s going on?”
Her head jerks up like she forgot I was here, which means she did. “Oh, yes. Bre. You are very much needed to make this work.”
She plucks an elastic band off her wrist and wrestles her short black hair into a ponytail. Mom rarely does this except when she’s flustered. It’s a vanity issue as the gray shows near the base of her neck. “I need you to take care of your younger siblings while I’m gone.”
There’s that word again—gone. Panic sets in as a trembling in my hands. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s Clara,” she says. “You know how upset she was that she didn’t graduate this spring and that your father and I are having her pay her tuition this year. Well, your father talked to the college. The administration worked with us and they agreed to let Clara into the fall courses she thought were closed. I’m driving her into Nashville tonight and we’re going to be staying with Nora.”
We’re? As in Mom and Clara are staying overnight with my oldest sister? “When will you be back?”
Mom’s face pinches like either I won’t like the answer or she won’t. The way my sugar level plummets, I’m thinking it’ll be me.
“Two weeks,” she says.
The world tilts. “Two weeks? I thought Dad was going to be working crazy hours and you were going to be taking time off from your job so you could handle his responsibilities and isn’t he supposed to be traveling for part of it and why are you leaving with Clara?”
Mom waves her hand to ward off my verbal meltdown as if she’s air patting me like a dog. “Calm down. Yes, your dad is busy. Yes, he will be out of town for part of it. Yes, I did take time off from work, but no, I won’t be here. I’ll be spending the two weeks with Clara. Your dad and I discussed it this morning. We have complete faith you can keep this house going. I’m sure Liam and Joshua will help, but, Bre, if anyone can run this house, it’s you. We know you can do this. Out of all of my children, you are the responsible one. My thinker.”
Mom grins at me like I should be happy. When my response is my wide-open mouth, she continues, “I need you to understand. Clara needs me.”
She needs her? Is Clara being blackmailed? Will Clara’s future be destroyed with a click of a button and one post on the internet? “Are you kidding me?”
“You’ll be fine,” she coos like I’m Elsie and she’s trying to convince me to bathe. “You’re the one that is always fine. You have practically raised yourself since birth. You run this household better than I do. Dad’s okay with you ordering takeout and everyone will have to understand you can’t get them to every practice.”
My head is shaking or it’s me shaking or it’s the entire kitchen shaking. “But you don’t understand. I need to talk to you.”
Liam and Clara walk into the kitchen. They’re both smiles until they see me. Actually, Liam still is, but Clara’s lips fall into a sneer.
“Liam, Clara, carry this stuff to the car,” Mom says. “The bursar’s office is giving us until six tonight so we can get you into those classes.”
My brother and sister hoist multiple boxes and luggage and Mom’s giving me a verbal list of things I already know, like what time to start baths and who is on what round of antibiotics and lots and lots of stuff that means she’s not listening to me.
Nausea roils in my stomach and her words become muffled and Clara and Liam laugh and my world is crashing around me. The pressure is mounting and my skin feels too tight.
“I need to talk to you,” I say, but Mom’s lecturing over me about how she’s concerned Zac isn’t coming straight home from school and that I need to stay vigilant with his time.
“There’s this thing that happened at school.” My voice is becoming higher in pitch and Mom’s progressed to describing Elsie’s problems now, and then Clara asks Mom where the keys are for the car, and when Mom pauses to answer my sister, I explode.
“They’re there, Clara! By the door. On the hook. Where the keys always are. Where everyone in this freaking room can see, but that’s not what it’s about, is it? You have to be the center of everything and right now the entire world does not revolve around you!”
“Breanna!” Mom roars. “That is uncalled-for!”
“Selfish much?” murmurs Liam. Shame heats my face, but what causes the tears to burn my eyes is the sadistic lift of Clara’s mouth. Mom never yells at me. The perfect, responsible daughter is plunging from the pedestal Clara created for me and Clara gloats in her victory.
“Go outside,” Mom says to Liam and Clara, but it’s me she pins with her ticked-off gaze. “Get the car ready. We’re leaving in minutes.”
The moment the door closes, I suck in a breath. “I’m sorry, but you don’t understand—”
Mom cuts me off. “I know I’m asking a lot from you and I know Clara has not been very good to you over the past two years.”
Try since birt
h. In fact, for years she’s done nothing but dump the burden of her unhappiness onto me.
“But your sister needs me.”
I attempt to rush out the truth. To tell her about the weekend, to tell her about Kyle, to tell her I’m scared and terrified and that I crave nothing more than to be six and climb onto her lap and let her chase the monsters away, but my mother steps forward and places her hands on my cheeks, hampering any hope I had of confessing.
Mom’s hazel eyes soften as they bore into mine. “Clara isn’t like you. None of us are like the two of you, but Clara struggles with this gift. This past year almost broke her, and when she didn’t graduate, I thought your sister was going to enter a depression I couldn’t dig her out of.
“Your dad called in a favor and we transferred her to a school near Nora. We’re hoping that staying with Nora will help ground Clara. Classes started last week, so she’s already behind. If she focuses, then she can graduate this December. I’m staying for two weeks to help her get organized, to help her catch up on work she’s missed, to help her with her confidence. Honey, these are things I don’t expect you to understand because you’re the one who has it together.”
Her words are like small razor blade slices to my soul, and even though it’s just a trickle of blood at a time from each wound, I’m slowly bleeding out. A bead of something warm escapes my eye and Mom catches it with her thumb.
“But there’s this boy at school...” I start, but Mom talks over me.
“And I want you to tell me, but not now. I’m late and I need to focus on Clara.”
My throat tightens. “But I need you.”
Mom tilts my head so I have no choice but to spot her sincerity. “When I return, I am a hundred percent yours. I promise you. Right now, your sister needs me more. I’m depending on you, and your dad is depending on you. This project is a make-or-break moment for him. He needs to focus on that. I need you to focus on this family. I am begging you not to let me down.”
But I already have. I’ve let her down in so many ways that she’ll be sickened to look at me. I need my mother so desperately. I need help, but there’s no hope to be had. Before I can respond with a yes or a no or before I could throw myself to my knees and beg for mercy, my mother collects her suitcase and leaves me utterly and completely alone.
Walk the Edge Page 13