Walk The Edge

“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 now, 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 and 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.”

Pigpen climbs the porch and Man O’ War lags behind on the grass. I lean against the house and stay the hell out of the way. Most people say my wires are crossed, but even I know to grant a wide berth when these two are pushed into irritable.

Pigpen slides into the man’s space and goes nose to nose. To the cop’s credit, he doesn’t flinch.

“He’s still in high school.”

“Razor’s eighteen,” the cop bites out. “Legal age.”

“Leave and don’t come back. You have questions, you bring them to the board. I hear you’re slinking around him again, you’re dealing with me.”

“Is that a threat?” The cop cocks his head to the side like he doesn’t give a damn Pigpen’s in his face. What I find more interesting is that the two are talking like they’ve met before, or are at least familiar with each other.

Pigpen grins like a crazy man. “Yeah, it is.”

The cop slips a white card out of the file and holds it out to me, but I keep my arms crossed over my chest. With his eyes locked with mine, he drops the card and it floats like a feather to the porch.

He walks down the stairs, across the yard, and within less than a minute his Chevy Caprice is crackling rocks under rolling tires.

Pigpen releases a long breath and glances over his shoulder at me. “Am I going to want to know what that was about?”

I shake my head.

“Will the board?”

The club’s board—the group of men who oversee the members. They tackle the day-to-day operations of the club and they tackle any problems that arise. The detective suggested the club killed my mom, so, yeah, guess they will want to hear about this. I incline my head in affirmation.

“Shit.”

Sums it up.

“Get to orientation. I’ll set up a meeting with the board soon.”

Pigpen swipes up the card, but I catch a peek as I head past him to my bike. The cop’s name is Jake Barlow, and not only is he a detective, but he’s part of a gang task force.

We’re a legit club. We don’t dabble in illegal nonsense. We aren’t the clichéd MC that sells guns, drugs, or deals in prostitution. We’re just a group of guys who love motorcycles and believe that family can mean more than the blood running through your veins. This guy, he was fucking with me. Just fucking with me.

“Razor,” Pigpen calls as I straddle my bike.

When I meet his eyes, he continues, “Are you tight?”

I’m not a talker. Speak only when I have something worth saying. Everyone knows this, but this silence is beyond my normal. My mind replays the image of Mom’s car. It was crushed almost beyond recognition. The cop said there were no skid marks, no signs she tried to stop. My lungs ache as if someone crushed me beyond recognition.

Am I tight? Hell, no. I look away and Pigpen says, “Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out.”

I nod, then start my bike. Not sure about the we’ll part, but I plan on getting some answers and getting them soon.

Breanna

I KNOW THAT the capital of Bolivia is Sucre. I know that the average distance from the earth to the moon is 238,900 miles. I also know that blue whales can go six months without eating. Random, bizarre stuff. That’s what my head is full of. Nothing that will boost my math scores on the ACT or secure me a date to prom. Nothing that will save me and my best friend from this being our last day on the planet.

While my brain is obviously wired differently, there are certain commonsense rules all girls in town comprehend. It’s not knowledge that has to be taught, like when I was six and my oldest brother spent weeks teaching me to tie my shoes or how at four my older sister spared a few minutes from her overly important life to show me how to spell my name.

In fact, sitting here on the top step to the entrance of Snowflake High watching this potential disaster unfold, I search my memory for the first person who warned me to steer clear of the Reign of Terror Motorcycle Club.

There was no pamphlet handed out during health class. No sex conversation like the one my mom had with me in kindergarten because I referred to a certain male body part by the same name as a round toy. Stupid brothers teaching me their stupid slang.

But when it pertains to the threat that is the Reign of Terror MC, it’s not learned, it’s known. Like how an infant understands how to suck in a breath at the moment of birth or how a newborn foal wobbles to his legs. It’s instinctual. It’s ingrained. It’s fact.

“Do you think his motorcycle will work this time?” Addison asks.

“Hope so,” I breathe out, too terrified to speak at a normal level in fear of drawing the scrutiny of the men wearing black leather vests who circle the broke-down bike. Reign of Terror arches over the top of the black vest, in the middle is a half skull with fire blazing out of the eye sockets and drops of fire rain around it. It’s ominous and I shiver.

Addison and I sit huddled close. Legs touching. Shoulders bumped into the other. We’d probably hold hands if we didn’t have our welcome-back-to-school information folders gripped tightly to our chests. Because we can’t spawn eyes in the back of our heads, we lean against the large pillar of the overhang so no one can sneak up on us from behind.

It’s edging toward nine in the evening, but the August sun hasn’t completely set. Darkness, though, has claimed most of the sky. Temperatures during the afternoon hit over a hundred and I swear the concrete stairs and pillar absorbed every ounce of today’s sunshine and is now transferring the heat into my body.

Sweat rolls down my back and I shift to peel my thighs off the step. Why I thought it was a fantastic idea to wear the jean skirt, I have no idea.

I take that back. I do have a clue for my clothing choice. Tonight was the first time my entire grade was together in one room since the end of last year. My goal for the year may seem simple to some, but to me, it sometimes feels impossible. I’d like to be seen, to be known as something more than freakishly smart Breanna Miller at least once before I leave this town. I’d like to somehow find the courage to be on the outside who I am on the inside.

An annoying sixth sense informs me that I’m about to make a huge impression—on the evening news: two friends on the verge of starting their senior year vanish without a trace. Because that’s how motorcycle clubs would handle this—they’ll kidnap us and then hide our bodies after they’re finished with whatever ritual act they’ll use us to perform.

My knee begins to bounce. Mom and Dad left after my failed attempt to convince them to let me attend High Grove Academy and they promised to return in time for pickup.

The senior welcome session ended at eight and the parking lot cleared out by eight twenty. The straggling parents arrived by eight thirty and that left Addison and me alone with blond-haired biker boy and his dilapidated machine.

He called his buddies around the same time I tried the various members of my family for the fiftieth time. His gang showed in a chrome procession in less than ten minutes. I’m still waiting to hear from anyone I’m related to.

“What’s going on with your family?” Addison asks.

Besides I’m child number five of nine? “Who knows.”

Maybe Elsie needed medicine for her ears again and the pharmacy was behind schedule. Maybe Clara and Joshua split with the cars, thinking everyone was home. Maybe someone’s game went into triple overtime. Maybe my parents counted someone’s head twice and assumed it was me. It’s not the first time I’ve been forgotten in the car pool rotation. Won’t be the last.

I don’t feel nearly as awful about being forgotten by my parents as I do about Addison having to call her father to tell him she was going to miss curfew. My left knee joins the other in a constant rhythm as I imagine what’s waiting for her at home.

“I can have my parents call your dad,” I offer. “Make them take the blame.” Because this horrible situation is their stinking fault.

Addison’s mouth slants into a sad smile as she yanks on a lock of my black hair. “Stop it, brat. Don’t make me regret telling you.”

Addison and I have been friends since elementary school and we met the last of our trio, Reagan, in sixth grade. While Addison and Reagan are more alike, both natural blondes and have a take-no-prisoners attitude, it’s me they entrust with the secrets. Like how Addison’s bruises are hardly ever from catching the fliers on her cheerleading squad.

One of the gang members stands from his crouched position at the motorcycle and the guy we attend school with inserts a key, holds on to the handlebar of the bike, and when he twists it, I pray the motor purrs to life.

My heart leaps, then plummets past my toes and into the ground when the motorcycle cuts off with a sound similar to a gunshot. Addison’s head falls forward, and I bite my lip to prevent the internal screaming from becoming external chaos.

Addison pulls her phone out of her purse and taps the screen. “I’m texting Reagan. If we go missing, I’m telling her to point the finger at Thomas Turner and his band of merry men.”

Thomas Turner. He’s the guy who swore loudly the moment his motorcycle’s engine died again. Thomas is the name called on the first day of school by our teachers, but it’s not the name he responds to. He goes by his “road name,” Razor.

He glances over his shoulder straight at me and my mouth dries out. Holy hell, it’s like he’s aware I’m thinking of him.

“Oh my God,” Addison reprimands. “Don’t make eye contact. Do you want them to come over?”

I immediately focus on my sandals. As much as every girl is aware to keep a safe distance from Thomas and his crew, we’ve all sneaked a glimpse. Thomas makes it easy to cave to temptation with his golden-blond hair, muscles from head to toe and sexy brooding expression a few girls have written about in poems.

My cheeks burn and there’s this heaviness as if Thomas is still looking. Through lowered lashes, I peek at him and my heart trips when our eyes meet. His eyes are blue. An ice blue. His stare simultaneously causes me to be curious and terrified. And I obviously have a death wish, because I can’t tear my gaze away.

He raises his eyebrows and I lose the ability to breathe. What is happening?

Addison’s phone vibrates. “Reagan said she heard you have to kill someone in order to be part of their club.”

A guy in the circle clamps a hand on Thomas’s shoulder and tilts his head to the bike as he says something. Thomas returns his attention to his motorcycle and I draw in air for the first time in what seems like hours.

“Killing someone sounds dramatic,” I answer. “There’s a ton of guys in the club, and with the low population of Snowflake the police would notice if that many people went missing.”

“Phssh.” Addison squishes her lips together as she texts Reagan. “They wouldn’t do it in their hometown. They’re smarter than that. They’d go into a city. Their top guy was shot by another motorcycle gang in Louisville last month. And sometimes they do horrible stuff here. Everyone knows the Terror had something to do with the disappearance of Mia Ziggler.”

Every small town has this story. The one girls tell late at night during a sleepover. The one mothers use to convince their daughters to be home by nine at night. Five years ago, Mia Ziggler graduated from high school, hopped on the back of a Reign of Terror motorcycle, and she was never seen again. Ever.

“Anyhow,” Addison continues. “Have you noticed the patches on their vests? I overheard Dad tell Mom that the diamond one on the lower left means they’re carrying a gun.”

My head inclines in disbelief. “Seriously?”

Because that patch is stitched onto Thomas’s vest and he’s still a teenager...in high school. Everyone was shocked when Thomas started wearing his leather vest with the skull on it to school last year. It turns out the only requirements for membership in the club are to be eighteen and own a motorcycle. Oh, and commit murder.

Addison looks up from her phone. “Seriously. I’m surprised you didn’t know that already. That’s not a random enough fact for you to remember?”

Truth? I never heard what any of the patches on the Reign of Terror’s vest meant before, but because that was so random, I doubt I’ll ever forget. Instead of confirming or denying my freak of nature ability to remember weird stuff, I send a massive text to everyone in my family: I AM STILL WAITING ON A RIDE!!!