Walk The Edge

Because that’s what Clara calls me? I’m five foot six and right now I’m feeling two feet tall. I watch the water falling out the faucet and hold a plate in my hand. Addison’s heard them call me the name. She knows bits and pieces of how my mind works and she’s also aware of how it makes me feel so...different.

“What’s the capital of Russia?” he says.

Moscow. Population of Russia: 143,025,000. Area: 6,592,850 square miles.

“Look at the freak go,” Paul sings. “Her eyes dart when she’s listing facts in her messed-up head, but she acts like she ain’t weird.”

A lump forms in my throat. Paul gives everyone a hard time, but with Clara home for the summer, it’s middle school on repeat.

I slam the plate into the bottom rack. “Go take a shower or I’ll tell Mom you didn’t come straight home from school today.”

He mumbles something not twelve-year-old appropriate, but he leaves. I hold on to the counter with both hands. This is the reason why I keep my little Jedi mind tricks to myself.

“Don’t let him get to you,” Addison offers. “He’s an evil troll that will never get a date when he hits high school.”

“He makes me feel like I’m reliving bad stuff.”

“We aren’t in middle school anymore,” Addison says in a soft tone.

“I know.”

“Sometimes I don’t think you do.” But she moves on before I can answer. “Jesse is following me again.”

This is the reason we’re friends—she doesn’t dwell. Like when I told her Mom and Dad nixed my plans to leave. She shrugged an “I’m sorry” and then she painted my nails.

I continue with the dishes and run the spaghetti-sauce-stained bowl through the warm water. “I’m lost. Are we happy or sad or annoyed over this?”

It’s Thursday and tomorrow is the first day of school. It’s weird to start on a Friday, but the district thought that we, the high school students, would be better readjusted into the school year with this schedule. Because of this, Addison and I are completing our night-before-school-begins ritual of freaking out. This year, our worries about how the year will go are complicated by Addison’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jesse, and their social media drama.

He unfollows her. She unfollows him back. He posts a picture of him and another girl and tags Addison. She cries. He follows her again, then tags her in some heartfelt message of how he’s sorry. I was over it from the moment he unfollowed her.

Addison wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to get back together.”

“Then don’t.”

She sighs, and her pain is so palpable there’s an ache within me. I’m not sure she liked being with Jesse as much as she liked that Jesse whisked her away from her house. Whenever, to wherever, with no questions asked.

There’s a fresh bruise on her forearm that I’d bet is retaliation for my family forgetting us. I focus on how the water washes the crumbs from a plate. “Did your dad do that?”

“How is it possible that every time I visit there are a million dishes stacked up and you’re forever doing them? It’s like we’re living in some strange sci-fi movie and your life is on an endless loop.”

She switches subjects and I let her. Addison’s mom won’t leave her father or throw him out and Addison won’t call the police because she’s terrified they’ll put her and her sister in foster care. Doesn’t help that none of her relatives are willing to help. In other words, Addison’s stuck.

“Look at me,” Addison says.

I do and she snaps a photo from less than a foot away.

Her lips tilt up in a mischievous way. “Perfect.”

“For what?”

“Your profile picture.” She flips my cell to me and the blood drains out of my face when I spot my name, my age, my info and my picture.

Addison and I have had several intense conversations involving opening an account for me on Bragger. I agreed to it when she explained how people use social media to impress colleges and universities. She showed me articles on how colleges were dazzled when prospective students worked what the colleges shared on social media into their essays and when the students could make intelligent conversation online. And emotionally, I agreed that maybe this could help in my quest to break out of my shell. But now that it’s here and I’m deciphering the hundreds of ways this could go wrong...

I lunge for the phone and she’s off the counter and on the other side of the breakfast island before I can reach her. We stand on either side and each time I inch one way, she edges in the opposite direction.

“You’re the one that said you wanted to be noticed,” she says. “Bragger’s a community of people. You can post pictures or something short, something long, something funny, something insightful, and then people like and comment. Whatever your little heart desires. The main point being, you will be interacting with other humans. If you want out of the box you hide in, then you need to crack open the flaps and bask in some sunlight.”

“Remember when we decided my wardrobe change was going to help?” I counter. “The result of that experiment was Kyle Hewitt trying to con me into writing his papers. Change is overrated and my box is comfy.”

“You told me all summer that you feel cramped in the box.” She’s right. I did say that. “You’re suffocating and I’m tired of watching you turn blue. This isn’t middle school anymore. People have matured. If you be yourself around everyone else, they’ll love you like I do.”

My heart pounds hard, but I pause because what she’s saying is what I want. For once in my life, I’d love to be myself around everyone else and be accepted for who I am instead of staying silent for fear of people mocking me.

Maintaining eye contact with me, Addison raises my phone and pushes Save.

The door to the living room swings open and my younger brother Joshua enters. He wanders over to us and his eyes flicker between us as Addison and I continue to stare at each other in recognition of how huge this moment is for me.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“Congratulate your sister,” says Addison. “She’s on Bragger.”

RAZOR (#ulink_bdf3f059-4506-50cb-87c6-b5e0c5bda086)

IT’S A HUMID NIGHT. The day was so hot the air smells of melting blacktop. Bugs fly near the town’s light posts and the promise of violence is so thick I can taste it. Chevy swings off his bike and straightens to his full six feet. His pissed-off glare could shatter the diner’s window.

Since I arrived home last night to Dad’s broken promise, I’ve been itching for a release. A scan of the diner and I catch up on why Chevy nine-one-one’d me and Oz. Never thought I’d be happy to see Chevy’s ex-girl, Violet, locked in a kiss in the corner booth with the town’s biggest asshole, but God does work in mysterious ways.

Oz’s big black Harley rumbles up next to me. He kills the engine and his head is that of an owl as he swings his gaze between us and Violet’s public display. A crowd of guys from school are hanging in the diner. They eat and shoot the breeze as the guy shoving his tongue down Violet’s throat begins to move his hand near the hem of her shirt.

“Shit.” Oz verbalizes how deep we are in this minefield. People are automatically scared of Oz, with that unruly black hair and don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. Now that he officially has the three-piece patch of the Terror on his back, people fall over themselves to get out of his way.

He flips me the bird and I flip it back. Not ready for Dad’s father-son talk, I went fishing at the Pond with Oz. Chevy texted a few minutes ago he needed backup, and Oz and I raced to town. I cut Oz off near the railroad tracks and he’s pissed I beat him on my pieced-together bike.

“We doing this?” Oz asks Chevy as he sidles up to the two of us.

Chevy’s dark eyes harden into an answer. He’s one hundred percent a McKinley. Chestnut hair, brown eyes, tall as hell and a mean bastard when he chooses to be. Even at seventeen, his personality mirrors that of his grandfather and uncle—the two most powerful guys in the Terror. Each of them are laid-back, easy to talk to, but if you push their button wrong, they’ll hurl you through a concrete wall.

“There’s six of them,” I state. And three of us. I thrive off those odds. “Two of those guys in there were some of the ones that stood back and watched when that asshole beat up Stone last year. I still believe a lesson should have been taught to them all.” Not just to the bastard who we made cry when he picked on a kid four years younger.

Stone is the fourteen-year-old and awkward-as-hell kid brother of the girl currently giving us heartburn. Stone and Violet’s dad belonged to the club and died in an accident a little over a year ago. Club takes care of their family now, but Violet’s gone rogue, alienating anyone from the Terror, even us—the guys who have grown up with her since birth.

“Should I mention hanging with them is Violet’s choice?” Oz asks. I level my glare on him. I want this action and logic could kill my one possibility of throwing a punch.

“Was that picture put on Bragger Violet’s choice?” Chevy spits.

There’s a damn account set up on that nonsense Bragger site called Snowflake Sluts. A couple weeks ago someone posted a compromising picture of Violet. Oz and Chevy confronted her on it and she laughed it off, claiming it didn’t bother her. But then she showed at my house later that night trashed and crying to the point I couldn’t understand her.