Part 11 (2/2)
”What difference does it make if I'm being played?” I pound my open hand to my chest. ”We're legit. Our club is just that-a group of guys who ride bikes. And the security business, that's legit, too. I ride along semitrucks full of bourbon. Babysitting it until it gets from point A to point B. If I call the cop and meet with him in thirty minutes, it doesn't matter. There is nothing for him to get from me. I'm not playing into his hands, I'm asking questions I deserve the answers to.”
A muscle in Dad's jaw ticks and he takes several seconds before he responds. ”Is that what you're going to do? Are you going to meet with the cop?”
I haven't ruled it out. If I do, I'm going against the club in a way that won't be forgiven.
”This-” he overemphasizes the word ”-this is what the board's been talking about. Why you had the longest prospect period out of anyone. Why you aren't trusted with answers now. None of us know where your loyalties lie. Not even me.”
”Mom had nothing to do with the club,” I say.
”She was a Terror Gypsy.” The women's support group. They are wives or serious girlfriends of members of the club and they work together to support the Terror.
”Not the same. I'm asking as your son that you answer me. I'm tired, Dad. I'm so f.u.c.king tired of not knowing. I'm exhausted thinking she killed herself. That she chose to leave me!”
There's a strange wetness in my eyes and a loss of strength in my hands. The bag plunges to the floor and a rush of air from the impact hits my legs.
”Thomas...” Dad says in defeat.
I rub both of my hands over my face in an attempt to drive the emotions away. My arms drop to my sides, and when I glance up, Dad's entered my room. He stands before me, hands in his pockets, looking at me with the same pity look everyone in town wears when they spot me. ”Your mother's death... I can't talk about it.”
”You can.” I need him to. ”I know it's hard. It hurts to remember her, but if we sit and-”
”You misunderstand,” he cuts me off. ”I've been ordered not to.”
My vision tunnels. I must have misunderstood what he said. If he's been ordered not to discuss Mom's death, then... ”Mom's death is club business?”
He holds up his hand. ”I didn't say that.”
Yeah, he did. ”Then why else would the board silence you?”
”For the same reason you've been kept in the dark. We can't trust you.”
”The club patched me in. The board voted-”
”Because if we didn't, by our bylaws, you would have never become a member. You'd reached the maximum time anyone's allowed to be a prospect. None of us were willing to let you go, but you weren't ready. You still aren't ready. That patch on your back-it's borrowed.”
I stumble back as his words strike me like a wrecking ball.
”You have to learn to trust us,” Dad continues. ”This club is your family. Let us in, Thomas. Let me in.”
”How?” My arms are stretched wide, begging for him to give me an answer, any answer that will end this torment. ”Tell me how, because I thought I was trusting you. I thought I was trusting the club.”
”Let your mother's death go.”
The world tilts and nausea sets up in my stomach. He's asking for the impossible. He's asking me to bleed out on the street. ”I can't.”
”Then we can't trust you. Not until you trust us.”
f.u.c.k this. I swipe the bag off the floor, but Dad doesn't move. ”This is your home.”
”It was,” I answer. ”But then Mom died. This ain't a home. It's walls with a roof.”
Pain flashes in Dad's eyes and he stiffens like he's paralyzed. I use the opportunity to stalk past. The new woman of the week hugs herself in the kitchen and opens her mouth like she's going to say something, but thinks better of it when I won't meet her gaze.
I'm out the door, down the steps, and I leave with no intention of coming back.
Breanna KEEPING IN MIND the most frequently used letters in the alphabet, I'm toiling my way through the Caesar encryption method. It's a simple method. One I don't expect to work because that would be too easy, but it's what my English teacher used on Friday.
The library's busy; at least it is toward the front. Because of that, I selected a table in the back. Joshua had practice before school, so I've been here for the past hour jotting down possible solutions and crossing them out just as quickly. It's frustrating and exhilarating, and if this is what being employed with the CIA is like, I want in.
There's a low buzz of conversation. Occasionally some girl laughs too loudly for too long, but a shush from the librarian silences her. There are footsteps on the carpet and a pause behind me. A flutter in my stomach wishes it's Razor, but then the overpowering smell of too much aftershave squashes that hope.
The chair across from me is drawn back and Kyle drops into it. I've been going to school with Kyle since kindergarten. He ate worms. I strung clover together to craft necklaces. We belonged to two different worlds then and nothing since then has changed, yet here he is talking to me again.
”I'm not writing your papers. I will help you, but I'm not writing them.”
He scratches behind his ear and the action reminds me of a dog. Strands of his black hair now stick out. He rests his elbows on the table, then rests back in his seat, then forward again. A strange unsettling forms in my bloodstream. Whatever is about to happen will be bad.
Time to bolt. I turn off my phone, put it in my purse and scoot out of my chair as I sweep up my notes.
”You're going to write my papers,” he says.
I stand and shove my wrong answers into my backpack. Mimicking my younger siblings, I ignore his existence.
”Did you know I have over six hundred Bragger followers? Thanks to football camp, I'm hitting close to seven hundred and I like to post stuff. Stuff some people may not want seen.”
”So?” I empathize with those antelopes on the National Geographic specials that glance up from the watering hole and come face-to-face with a tiger. Like them, I'm terrified into immobilization.
Kyle rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and I s.h.i.+ft my weight from one foot to the other. If I run, maybe whatever it is he's planning will fizzle, but something warns me that no matter how fast I sprint, he'll be able to catch up.
”You're wanting to go to college, right? Knowing you, you're going to some Ivy League school, am I wrong?”
He's not. Not at all. I hunger to go far from here. To go where there will be other people like me. Someplace where I won't be the one who is odd, but the one who belongs.
”Coach had a meeting with us a few months back on how we have to watch what we do online. How guys who have great track records on the field lose chances at scholars.h.i.+ps because of their behavior off the field and online.”
The entire left side of my body goes numb, and I randomly wonder if I'm experiencing a stroke. Kyle's right. Universities do research people online. They do care about our personal lives when it pertains to coveted spots or scholars.h.i.+ps-especially with the schools I'm interested in attending.
The wooden chair cracks under his weight and he yanks his cell out of his pocket. ”Have you seen this site before?”
Snowflake s.l.u.ts. Every girl I know hates that site. The first few times it sprang up on Bragger, someone told the school's administration and it was taken down, but like a bad pimple, it pops back up. No one reports it anymore, since the next picture in line is of the girl who snitched.
”I know the guys who run it.”
My eyes dart to his. Guys? There's more than one sick, twisted pig at this school?
Kyle moves his fingers across the screen, then slides his cell over the table to me.
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