On Edge (17 page)

I heard a bellow, or another crack of thunder maybe. It sounded like the reaper calling my name, but I wasn't ready to go just yet! All the nights of training came down to the moment of instinct where I had just enough brain juice to tell myself to push out. I didn't get much power behind it, but I arched and extended my arms. There might've been a quick prayer involved as well, wrapped in curse words.

The ground came closer, my fingers barely grazed the balcony on floor four. Floor three slapped the center of my hand but my grip couldn't hold the wet metal. The second floor was all mine, and I held on as my torso jerked downward putting my upper-body strength to the test.

If I hadn't used the Cat Leap technique by tucking my legs up, the jolt would have pulled my arms out of my sockets. Though saved from permanent damage, I couldn't hold on for long, and I dropped to the alley.

Any trained parkour athlete knows how to absorb a decent fall with proper leg-bendage, but my foot slipped on a bit of garbage saturated by rain, and I landed hard on my back. The instinct to keep my head up kept the contact with the concrete down to a tap, but I had to lie still to collect myself.

I'd…almost died. Was I alive or only thinking I was?

The small of my back throbbed a bit. Yeah, I was still alive, but my head felt a bit light.

Five seconds ago, I'd been cursing the rain, but now I welcomed it. The cold drops splattered across my face, keeping me alert.

I felt nauseous and I wanted to keep my eyes closed for a little while longer, except the survival part of my brain wouldn't stop screaming.
Get up
.

Get up.

I heard someone screaming my name, or maybe it was the lady who came out onto her balcony to let me know she called the cops and was glad I fell. I lifted a hand to shield my eyes from the rain to look up at her. I caught a glimpse of Haze leaning over the rooftop looking down for a brief second before he disappeared.

Shit. Had he seen me move?

An image of him readying his cans of paint to spray my face until I choked to death got me to my feet faster than was probably good for me. The woman above me continued to berate me, telling me she got a good look at me, and proceeded to call me “young man” over and over. Yeah, she got a real good look.

I stumbled a bit and grabbed the side of the wall for support.

No time to stop. Haze would be down any second and the sirens in the distance were growing louder.

“See? They coming for you, young man,” the woman reminded me.

I was a big believer in respecting one's elders, but this woman was dying for a bird, so I gave her one, right before I turned the corner and did my best to jog-stumble home.

Twenty-one

Call the police.

My inner voice screamed at me to preserve my life status by calling in the troops, yet I stood in my dark, empty house staring at the phone, poised to do something but unsure of what. The living room felt larger, less homey than I remembered. Probably because no one was in it. No one except me, dripping on the carpet.

Call the police.

And tell them what exactly? My boyfriend is putting up horribly graphic cartoonish pictures of me on walls all over the city? That he tried to kill me by pushing me off a building?

I remembered the article I read about Heather and how her killer had scuffled a bit with her on the ground. Then it was speculated that he followed her up the fire escape, dragged her to the edge, and threw her over.

Was Haze trying to reenact what had happened with his sister?

The thought of him—my Brennen—viciously attacking his sister, and me, was beyond my comprehension, and yet, my sore ass and head made a valid argument for his guilt.

I sighed, going over every second since picking myself up off the unsanitary ground. Haze encouraged me to run. I heard him grunting behind me, and then I felt a push. Maybe he hadn't meant to push me so hard. He'd nudged me several times before the pivotal shove, convinced someone was on our heels. Perhaps he got carried away.

Or perhaps I was deeply in love with a killer and needed saving from myself. I needed to call the police.

I reached for the house phone and jumped when it rang. I took a calming breath, trying to staunch the fear of who was on the other line. Was it Haze calling to talk me into listening to his excuses? Was it one of my brothers looking for an explanation or worse…was it my father?

No one was home, which meant Warp was probably out on the streets looking for me, buried in panic with no way of knowing my phone died.

I picked up the house phone on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

“Hey, Warp,” I said, trying to pretend nothing was amiss.

“Don't ‘hey Warp' me, Emanuella! I've been trying to call you!”

“My phone died. Sorry. I didn't mean to worry you.”

“Just get to the hospital.”

“The hospital? Why?” I felt my rapid heartbeat in my earlobes and held my breath. “What happened? Is it Pops?”

I never understood why people took forever to tell you bad news. Finding the right words could possibly explain their pause, but in their fumbling, they gave off a ‘something awful happened' vibe that's like…torturous to people waiting on the other end of the conversation. “Jesus! Tell me,” I snapped.

“Someone ran Surge down.”

I fought to define every word in that one simple sentence, and what I came up with was absurd.

“No.” Nothing was allowed to happen to Surge.

“No? Dammit, Emanuella, get your head off your boyfriend troubles for five seconds and hear what I'm saying to you! Someone ran down…”

“No! No. He's fine. You're lying.”

Warp got quiet on the other end of the line, probably realizing by the sound of my voice I was on the verge of hysterics. The razor's edge of his tone dulled. “Just come down here.”

“I don't understand. When? What happened? Is he going to be all right?”

He said nothing.

“Johnny,” I yelled into the phone, wishing I could reach through and pummel the answers out of him. “Is he going to be all right?” Of course he was. Surge was in my intimate circle and things like that weren't possible.

“I don't know,” he said gently. “Come down here.”

The phone receiver hung from my hand and all I could see was those fucking red paper hearts.

***

“Ellie, get in!” Liv saw me jogging through the rain a couple of blocks away from my house toward the hospital and pulled up near the curb.

I climbed into the passenger seat, barely noticing I soaked the upholstery. “Thanks.”

“I heard about what happened. I guess it was only a matter of time before the war.”

I blinked out of thoughts about Surge dying on some hospital bed and pushed them back long enough to grill for details. “What did you hear?”

Liv shrugged. “So far, only that Decay and Surge were supposed to continue their fight at Tucker Park an hour after school. Decay didn't show on time, but he came screaming up with his car, driving through the fence and running down Surge. Haze was in the passenger seat—laughing.”

She snorted and shook her head, believing the rumor true without facts. I knew better.

“What? No. That's impossible.”

“God, Ellie! When are you going to stop sticking up for that bastard and realize that he's the villain here?”

Liv's fingers were white-knuckled as they gripped the steering wheel, and her entire body shook with emotion. She thought I was being irrational, but in reality, I had proof in the form of a bruise on my butt that Haze hadn't been in the car. I didn't see how it was possible for him to run down Surge at Tucker Park with Decay and then paint a new sadistic mural of me downtown all before pushing me off a rooftop. He'd be one hell of a multitasker.

“Liv, you said Decay and Surge were going to continue their fight after school? What fight?”

She seemed pissed at me and for a moment, I wasn't sure she'd answer. “Yeah. After you left, Decay tried to pick a fight with your brother. Surge walked up and challenged him with a punch to the face before a teacher broke them up and suspended them for a few days. The two agreed to meet to finish it.”

I didn't have to ask why Decay would be after my brother. All the graffiti crew would be since I opened my big mouth. “This is all my fault for telling Haze about Warp's relationship with Heather.”

From the corner of my eye I watched Liv wring her hands around the wheel as she drove. I knew she hated that Warp didn't come forward when Heather died. She even suspected him of killing her best friend. “I told you before, Liv. Warp didn't kill Heather. I know it.”

“Yeah, maybe. The evidence is piling up against Haze. Warp seems the victim of circumstance.”

I should have agreed with her. After all, I knew the truth about what Haze had done to me, but I couldn't help but compare notes by playing devil's advocate. “There's nothing that points at Haze if you believe someone's been ripping off his style.”

“You're a fool, Ellie. Not only is the graffiti style hard to duplicate, there's no one around these parts with the talent to do it. And he is trying to distract away from his guilt by running down Surge to start a war between the traceurs and writers.”

I pounced. “See, that's where you're wrong. I ran into another masterpiece, and I saw Haze. There's no way he could be downtown throwing up a piece while running down Surge at Tucker Park.”

The light overhead of us turned yellow and Liv uncharacteristically stopped for it, having to slam on her brakes to do so.

She turned to face me, her eyes narrowing. “You were with Haze?”

“Well, not with him. But I saw him standing next to the new piece on the roof of an apartment complex.” I decided not to mention he held a can of spray paint in his hand.

“That's great.” Liv's eyes turned on the high beams. “You witnessed him painting your face, which could link him to…”

“I didn't actually see him paint it.”

“Come on, Ellie. You're grasping at straws here. I told you he was the villain.”

Yeah—the villain. Then why couldn't I stop thinking of him as a victim?

“He couldn't have been with Decay.”

“Maybe he was. Maybe he painted it earlier, hooked up with Decay to run down Surge and then had Decay drop him back off downtown to finish his morbid artwork.”

That seemed pretty unlikely.

“Or maybe,” she continued, “he wasn't with Decay at all. Maybe he orchestrated it.”

The one thing that bothered me about Liv was her ability to jump on the picket line against whoever looked the guiltiest at that particular moment. It didn't say much for her sense of loyalty. Of course, the rational part of me realized I was probably angrier at her for first accusing my brother, and then my boyfriend, of a hideous crime. But after what Haze had done that evening, I couldn't exactly say she was wrong.

We pulled into the emergency entrance of the hospital, and I had the car door open before Liv could come to a complete stop.

“I'll just park,” she yelled behind me. I gave her the classic “Whatever” wave.

I knew she was only concerned for me and was trying to find out who wanted to hurt me, but I couldn't help but be annoyed by her air of superiority, like she was Sherlock what's-his-face and I was—that other guy.

“Surg—” I started, and then corrected myself. “Lawrence Whitney?” I asked at the admittance desk, only to feel a hand at my shoulder.

Warp stood there, frowning as always, but this time not at me. He opened his arms and I rushed into them, sobbing openly as he patted my back.

“I don't understand what's going on.”

“I've heard a lot of different things.” He ran a hand over my wet hair. “All kinda jumbled, really, but I guess Decay decided to declare war against us. I've called our crew and they're out looking for him now. Retaliation has to be swift.”

Bodies. That's all I could see at the end of this story. “I don't want to know. I don't want to talk about this, Johnny. I want to know how Surge is.”

“They'll let us know when he's out of surgery. Come and sit down. We've got a bit of a party going on in the waiting room, much to this hospital's 'tude. But we're keeping it low so we don't get kicked out.”

When Warp led me around the corner, I was shocked by how many people were there. Our crew was out scouring the streets for Decay, but, unlike me, Surge had a lot of friends outside of our little group.

I saw Bonnie and a couple of other gymnasts in the corner.

“Hey!” Bonnie stood and frantically waved me over, a smile on her face despite the dark tidings. I broke off from Warp, who left to collect Liv, and walked over to Bonnie and friends.

“Hey, LL,” Ramona said, forcing a smile to her face.

I returned it halfheartedly but with equal amounts of plastic. “Hey. How long have you all been here?”

“About an hour. Sorry to hear about Surge. I really like him,” Bonnie said, offering me the seat next to her.

“Who doesn't? I think half the school has a crush on him,” Ramona piped in, looking at me with a weird expression on her face. Hatred? Envy? I resisted the urge to smack it off.

Bonnie giggled and nudged Ramona with the toe of her shoe. “You're practically in love with him. Everyone knows it.”

Wow, that's right. I remembered Liv mentioning something about Ramona's crush. Envy, then. I always thought she didn't like me because of gymnastics. Now I knew she disliked my relationship with Surge.

“You should ask him out, yanno…if—” I started to tear and all the girls in the circle stared at me. I didn't care. Maybe offering dating advice was bad form with Surge on his deathbed, but I needed to pretend everything was normal.

“Dramatic much?” Ramona scoffed.

I couldn't believe how callous she was being. I nearly jumped out of my chair at her but Bonnie grabbed my arm, her eyes bulging like one of those tree frogs I'd seen on Animal Planet. “Excuse me? My friend was run down by a car and is being put together like Humpty Dumpty on some operating table, and you're going to talk to me like that?”

“Um, Emanuella?” Bonnie started cautiously, putting more pressure on my arm to keep me from rising up and performing an old-fashioned ground-stomping. “Ramona and I were there to see Surge's fight. The car came up over the curb, through the fence and toward him.”

“Surge was pretty quick, running his sexy ass left and right, all zigzagging around. Would have been funny if…”

“Yeah, he tried to make it to that big tree by the swings but the car was on him,” Bonnie continued, “so he jumped and did this weird flip thing and landed on the hood of the car, rolling up and over.”

“Then the car took off,” Ramona said. “It was gross as hell! Surge's head was all bloodied up and he was cussing a road to hell.”

“So, he's not like—dying?”

“Nope. He's going to be fine but they have to do something to his shoulder,” Bonnie smiled, obviously glad she could let go of me.

I sagged back in my chair and let the tears flow freely. “Warp made it sound like he was dying!”

“Your brother's kinda mean to do that,” Bonnie said and gave my arm a reassuring pat.

“So you really think I've got a shot with Surge?” Ramona asked, failing miserably at casual.

“Sure,” I said, absently thinking about Surge's sexual uncertainty. I shrugged, thinking she had a fifty-fifty shot.

Warp paced into view, his head bent toward his phone. I rose from my chair and made my way toward him.

“What's—” Warp started. But I didn't let him finish.

I slapped his cheek so hard I put the sting in my teeth. “How could you let me think Surge could die?”

“I don't know his condition.”

“But you probably heard the same as I did. That he was cussing and lucid when the ambulance took him away! How could you puppet me like that?”

“I tried to call you and you weren't answering your phone. You've been blowing everything off to hang out with that idiot boyfriend of yours. I couldn't be sure you'd come down here, and I needed to be sure you were safe.”

“You're such an asshole! Like anything would keep me from Surge's side when he's in the hospital? I have morals and priorities that escape you, but you're going to stand there on some high horse, doing pony-tricks for the audience, pretending you have to keep
me
in line? To make sure that
I
do the right thing? Oh, you're triple thick!”