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 pissed-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.
“Fuck,” 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 passed 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 class. 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.
Whore.
Slut.
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.