On Edge

by Gin Price

  Faster than I thought humanly possible, Haze threw a jab into Warp’s right eye and followed through with a hard kick to the chest.

  Warp flew backwards, falling across my bed. I might’ve been embarrassed by the amount of stuffed bears that went flying in every direction if I wasn’t so sure chaos was about to descend.

  Using the momentum of his landing to somersault backwards off my mattress, Warp landed on his feet. He gripped the corner post of my bed and swung himself around until his foot slammed into Haze’s gut.

  Haze tried to keep his footing, but lost the battle.

  In an effort to find something to grab onto, he reached but found nothing between himself and the closet. He tumbled inside, grabbing at my clothes, bringing the suction-cupped bar down on his head.

  Yoga padding kept him from meeting hard wood floor with his ass, but from the look on his face, that was the least of his problems. The closet rod, and all its contents, landed in his lap.

  “You two leave that parkour crap outside! Not in my house at one a.m.!” Pops bellowed from down the hall. We all froze in place.

  Haze’s eyes widened as if he suddenly realized where he was…in his girlfriend’s house, on the floor of her closet, with all of her clothes piled on top of him and his leg awkwardly propped up by an exercise ball.

  I would’ve laughed if the situation hadn’t been so precarious.

  Glancing over at Warp, I held out my hand for him to stop his advance on Haze, though I raised my voice to respond to my father. “Sorry, Pops! I’ll go to bed.”

  “See that you do, Emanuella!”

  “Warp,” I said, stepping in front of him with my palms flat against his chest. “Get the hell out of my room.”

  “No. How about I call Pops down here and he and I can beat the shit outta your boyfriend?”

  Haze made an angry sound behind me but I didn’t hear him move.

  “Go ahead and call Pops in here. I’m sure he’d love to know exactly what you’re up to. I’m sure he’d love hearing your gang war aspirations. How likely is it that he’ll send you off to military school in lieu of death or juvie?”

  Warp’s eyes narrowed at me before he pointed in Haze’s direction. “I catch the two of you together again, I won’t care about consequences. You got it? It ends now, in this room, Emanuella.”

  “Fine. Leave,” I said, jerking my head toward the door. Let him think whatever he wanted, I wasn’t about to make any promises.

  Warp didn’t move. “I’m not leaving this room, until he’s gone. And if I have to, I’ll sleep outside your door all night.”

  “Jesus, John. Stop being so dramatic. You act like you caught us eloping or something and not sneaking kisses.” I walked to the closet all casual-like. As if sneaking guys in my room to make out was something I did often enough to not be concerned about it. Looking down at Haze, decorated with my wardrobe, I wondered what my next deceitful move would be. What lie could I possibly hand my brother that he would buy and that would still give me the freedom I wanted? What could I say that would sound believable without turning Haze against me?

  “Can we all just slow down the death threats and the beatings until the sun comes up?” I said. “I’m tired. Haze came by to try to get me back after I broke things off, Warp. We had one last kiss, that you interrupted—thanks a bunch—and that would’ve been the end of it. A small fling that you’re making so much shit over. You should be embarrassed.”

  “You should be, LL. Letting this guy use you like some skeezy whore off the block. I thought you were better than that.”

  Haze made a move to get up and defend my honor, but I turned my head and gave him a look that I hoped begged him to trust me. He sighed and a plaid skirt tumbled down the tilted curtain rod and covered his face.

  I smiled despite the dire situation, trying to maintain an air of confidence I didn’t at all feel. “Well, I guess you’ve been thinking of me all wrong.” I turned to face Haze fully, putting my hands on my hips like I had no patience left. “You planning on getting out of there anytime soon?”

  “I’m very afraid to move right now,” he said and lifted the pleated skirt off his head.

  “Here.” I stooped to pick up the curtain rod full of clothes. “I should make you and Warp iron everything.”

  “Hey…I’ll make your bed if you want, because I put your brother over it, but the closet bit is his fault.” He helped me get the pole back into place.

  “Not my fault you crumple like paper, bitch,” Warp whispered angrily from across the room.

  Haze’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t rise to the bait, choosing, instead, to hand me the clothes that fell off the rod.

  “Ignore him. You gave him a good punch to the face first, so your man card is safe in your back pocket.” I finished hanging all the clothes on the secured rod and turned to face my boyfriend. I willed him to read the lie into what I said next. “But you have to go, and Brennen, this time you have to stay gone. Warp knows what we both know, too. This just isn’t going to work.”

  I moved with Haze to the window, avoiding his look of confusion mixed with hurt.

  “Wait…”

  I shook my head and wrapped my arms around him, squeezing as if bidding a final farewell. I couldn’t be sure Warp was buying any of it, but I was in it—so it was time to own it. “Meet me in an hour at the park,” I whispered, before nodding to the window.

  ***

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I kissed all over Haze’s face, and he likewise kissed all over mine until our lips met in desperation. The whole night had gone horribly wrong, and things between us were so unsure that we clung to each other as if an asteroid were about to destroy the planet and we had seconds to fit in a lifetime.

  “Brennen…what are we going to do?” I panted against his neck, tasting my own tears of panic on his skin.

  “Shh, Manu.” He held me for several long minutes, as if he were waiting for the severity of the situation to settle around us long enough to examine it. “This is all my fault. I was so impatient. I couldn’t sleep not knowing if you were still mine. I wanted so bad to fix things and now I’ve made it all worse.”

  “Don’t apologize for coming to me. I was drowning in nightmares of you and Cathy and I’m glad you cared enough to come. And here you are again. I thought…I didn’t know if you’d be here. My brother…”

  “Doesn’t scare me,” he interrupted, pulling back just enough to wipe the last of my tears away. “I’m not going to let him threaten me away from you. I was more worried you would let him push you away.”

  “No. I don’t want things to be over, Bren. But we have to be more careful than ever now. I don’t know if Warp believed what he just saw or if he was serious about stirring up trouble with your crew.”

  He sighed. “I hope he just spoke in anger.”

  The long silence between us as we stood in the park was filled with the tension of the unknown. Too much of the future rested on Warp’s reaction to seeing Haze and me together. And my brother was about as stable as the gangs after the merger.

  “So, you were able to get away okay? Or should I be preparing for an ambush any second?”

  “Warp stayed outside my door for a half hour, then went down to his room. I could hear him snoring when I checked the hall before coming here. We’re good.”

  He dropped his arms from me and took a step back, clearly stressed. “I wouldn’t call us good. Dammit!” The woodchips went flying as Brennen kicked them hard in frustration. “I should’ve respected that he’s your brother and let him kick the crap out of me for being in your room. It’s what I deserved. Instead I let him get to me, and I start a fight in your house.”

  “Please.” I reached out and squeezed his hand. “There’s no excuse for what he said to you. Accusing you of murdering your sister? I’d have hit him, too.”

  Brennen w
alked to a bench and sat down, motioning for me to follow him over and sit beside him. I didn’t need to be asked twice. I sat and pulled one leg up to my chest to hug while the other dangled, digging into the wood and dirt beneath the bench. I could tell he wanted to tell me something, so I just waited for him to talk.

  “When Heather died…” he started slowly, and looked at me, as if checking to see if I was aware of how important the conversation was. I nodded for him to continue. “…I was a suspect. Did you know that? Because I’m a writer and because the cops said I fit the profile of someone who could snap. A hotheaded, overprotective brother. Sound familiar?”

  I didn’t need to answer but I nodded anyway.

  “Because I was with a buddy the night Heather died, I was cleared, but I had a lot of guilt back then because whoever killed her was a writer. And that’s my territory, yanno?”

  “How do you know it was a writer?”

  “She’d been partnering a piece with someone, I’m sure of it—a present for me, I think, since it was a scene I’d tried to paint on my own but my work kept getting erased before I could finish. The only way Heather could’ve succeeded where I failed…”

  “Is if she had someone with her.” I nodded as I spoke. “Makes sense.”

  “Since Heather had no enemies—”

  “Do you think it was someone who was after you?”

  He nodded and then sighed. “Some overprotective brother I turned out to be. I squeezed so hard trying to keep her from making mistakes, I probably brought on her death.”

  “Come on. That seems a bit harsh.” I reached over and squeezed his hand. “Seriously, Brennen, you can’t think like that.”

  “I can’t? She was supposed to be home that night!” He must’ve realized he was raising his voice, because he took a deep breath and started again, a little more calm. “She loved sketching animals and was good at anything musical—piano, violin, you name it she could play it. She gave all that up. Years of work! I had no idea what she was into anymore, and it scared me. She died because I told on her for lying about being out with Liv the night before and she got grounded. I thought it was good because her behavior had been changing so much in that last month. I don’t know…maybe she was just growing but, I hated it.”

  “You didn’t like who she she’d become?” I asked. A part of me could relate hard to the confusion I felt coming off Haze. I disliked who Warp was becoming, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to try to change him back.

  Haze continued, “Back then, I told myself that I didn’t like who she was forcing herself to be. That’s how I saw it. Someone, or something was bringing about these changes in her. She was sneaking out almost every night. She did her hair differently. She listened to different music. Looking back, I have to admit she seemed happier, but I didn’t think of it as her maturing. I thought she was smoking dope or something. I truly felt like I knew nothing about her anymore. Hell, I didn’t even know she was attempting graffiti until after she died. She was always the same, always. But then, toward the end, she was adventurous, daring. Wild-hair and all.”

  “She sounds a little like, me.”

  “The difference is that I hated rebellion on her. On you, I find it cute because your crazy adventurous nature is who you are. My sister was being something she wasn’t.” He shook his head, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “At least, something I thought she wasn’t.”

  “I think I remember reading somewhere that she’d snuck out the night she died and your parents said it was unlike her.”

  “It was unlike her before she hit puberty. Honestly, my parents don’t know just how often she used to sneak out, and I’ll never tell them. They’d only blame themselves.”

  I felt so sad for him. He had so much guilt on his shoulders. “Like you blame yourself. Bren, I think you should talk to them.”

  He shook his head in answer to my suggestion. “It was me who noticed she was gone the night she died. I came home late because I was out with one of my buddies. I could hear music coming from her room. Not classical like she used to play when she was upset and needed to think. But alternative rock. I figured she was mad at me for getting her grounded, so I went to apologize and see if I could get her to talk to me. When she didn’t answer my knock, I went in. She wasn’t there, so I rode my bike to Liv’s, and she was as mystified and worried as I was.

  “I called my crew and we all spent all night looking for Heather and didn’t find her. When the sun started to come up, I went home, hoping she would be there and we had just missed each other. But instead, there was a cop car in my driveway. It could’ve caught her out at night and brought her home—but I just knew that wasn’t why they were there.”

  I watched his neck tighten with emotion and reached out to clasp his hand with both of mine this time. “She would’ve snuck out grounded or not. You said yourself she’d done it many times.”

  “Yes, but she snuck out, to create a piece…for my birthday. When they found her, they found the piece and it was exactly what I’d envisioned. It was…she should’ve been mad at me for getting her grounded…she should’ve…”

  When he turned his head up to the sky I could see the liquid pain streaming down his face. He didn’t sob, or sniffle, just faced the pain and let it flow. I cried, too, for him. For Heather. For several minutes, neither one of us said anything.

  Drawing a deep breath, he leaned over and kissed my forehead. “You and Warp remind me of my relationship with my sister. Maybe in his eyes, you’re changing, and he’s freaking out thinking I’m painting pictures of you everywhere. He thinks I’m trying to threaten you and he’s bringing the might of his entire crew into the fight with the threat of war. I don’t blame him, Manu. When I called my crew to help find my sister, I intended to set fire to the city if that’s what it took. And I’ll do it in a second…for you.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should consider citywide arson a romantic gesture, but I did. “Look, I guess I can understand why Warp wants to keep me safe. And why you jumped up and erased my portrait immediately from the walls. But both you and Warp have to realize that I’m not Heather. I am careful, I’m knowledgeable. I didn’t just start cruising the streets a month ago. I’ve been here for years. You both need to trust me.”

  He grinned sadly at me, and I saw the gaping hole his sister’s death had left in him.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You just did.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I nudged him, appreciating his need to lighten the mood with humor.

  “Ask away,” he said more seriously.

  Hesitant, I toyed with my fingers, picking at my nails. “Are you…worried about…I mean…do you think…?”

  He pursed his lips together like he knew what I was going to ask and didn’t want to hear it. “…Manu, don’t.”

  “Well, there are certain similarities I can’t help but notice, Bren! Do you think someone is going to…hurt me?” I couldn’t even utter the word murder. It seemed too crazy, but so did the whole situation. If another piece of me was up on a wall, and if Haze claimed it wasn’t him—I had a hater or a stalker, and either could be dangerous, especially considering all the territory disputes lately.

  “No. I’m not ever going to let that happen.”

  “But if she was killed by a writer…and someone is painting me all over the place…”

  “The piece of you is probably unrelated.” I noticed he didn’t look me in the eye when he said that, but I didn’t say anything. I just listened to him reassure me. “It might be someone trying to rile your brother, start a territory war…who knows? It’s only been one. This other piece your brother talked about, we don’t even know if it exists or if he was trying to frighten you away from me.”

  I wanted to believe him. I’d rather someone try to use me to tick off my brother than target me. “I guess that’s true, but…”

  “Hea
ther was killed by someone she knew. Probably not for a long time, but for about a month or so. She was partnering with someone, and that partner never came forward, so they must’ve been responsible for her death. It was someone who has something personal to say. The cops called it a crime of passion.”

  “So you know it’s a guy who practices graffiti. That’s a place to start.”

  “The cops thought so, too. It was a weird year for me. I didn’t trust anyone except Decay. And I only trusted him because he was away with his family for the summer and couldn’t have been dating my sister. One by one, as my crew was interviewed by the cops and cleared, we came together again. But the other writer crews out there, anyone I come across that looks at me funny, I wonder, ‘Is this the guy who killed my sister?’ It’s why I’ve stayed in the game instead of bowing out. If I lose all my connections, I lose my chance of stumbling on a clue. Maybe one day I’ll get lucky and find the person who killed her. Maybe one day they’ll slip up and say something over a beer at a party or something.”

  “It must be hard carrying that wish with you every day. The pressure you put on yourself to make it come true. Is that the reason for this?” I asked, and pressed a finger to the patch of white hair on the side of his head.

  “If by reason you mean I started acting out, doing crazy stuff, and managed to get some stitches in my head being an ass, yeah. Not the sexiest battle scar.”

  “I dunno. I like it,” I said. I tugged on my own colored lock of hair. “And I’ll keep your wish with me, too. You won’t be the only one waiting and listening for someone to slip up.”

  He stared at me for a second and then pulled me into his lap to kiss the breath from me. A simple press of lips, and I was putty, molding against his mouth and kissing him back with all the emotions of the last twenty minutes.

  Opening to the gentle insistence of his tongue, I gave him the taste of me, and he eagerly drank me in. God, I knew I shouldn’t think such things, but I wondered if he would mind if I straddled his lap right there in the middle of the park.