Thunder Road: Walk The Edge Part 12

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 d.a.m.ning enough, but it's the words above it that causes my head to throb: #snowflakes.l.u.ts #bikerwh.o.r.e "I won't send the picture from my account. It'll be sent from Snowflake s.l.u.ts'. 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 partic.i.p.ating in underage drinking at a bar and then appear to be about to have s.e.x 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 pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.l isn't going to help you."

"What if I still say no? What if I tell you to go to h.e.l.l?"

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 s.l.u.ts 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 f.u.c.ked-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 pa.s.sed 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 p.i.s.sed 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.

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 p.i.s.sed-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.

"f.u.c.k," 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s. 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.

Wh.o.r.e.

s.l.u.t.

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 pa.s.senger 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?"