Page 7

Alex

I need to sharpen my knife. It’s so dull that I can catch my fingertip on the black blade and it won’t so much as leave a scratch. I flip it shut again, catching the reflection of the same black metal clip on Colson’s jeans pocket.

The four of us have the exact same pocket knife, gifted to each of us in this very room by Aiden for Christmas freshman year. We might’ve even been sitting in these same spots, slouched in the black leather sofas around the massive stone fireplace with the black wrought iron chandelier hanging above. Aiden set down three black boxes on the ornate walnut coffee table and told us to open them. You’d think it was a touching gesture, until Aiden pulled the same knife out of his own back pocket and declared that if we wanted to keep them, we had to pledge our allegiance to one another through ritual bloodletting.

Aiden can be dramatic when he wants to be. Colson just likes knives and blood, so he was all in. And Mason’s just down for whatever. And me…

My dad was there when I left for school one day that fall and dead by the time the last bell rang. And when I found out he was gone, it was like I lost my mom all over again, too. Both of them were gone, without warning, and I wasn’t ready. And then it was Christmas, and my dad wasn’t here.

Aiden, Colson, and Mason were the only reason that I didn’t turn into a total basket case.

So, in the midst of my spiraling melancholy, I volunteered to be the first to ditch my shirt and sit in one of the Raffertys’ mahogany dining room chairs while Mason held my arms behind the chairback and Colson stood above him, gripping the ends of a leather belt while I clenched it in my teeth.

Aiden straddled my lap, facing me while he meticulously carved my soccer number—23—into my ribcage just under my left pec.

Beasts of waste…beasts of desolation…

I bit down on the leather and let out a howl that didn’t sound anything like myself. Colson and Mason murmured the chant in my ears like an incantation that’s come to mean more than just a high school cheer.

We die alone, but together…rulers of creation.

That fall, it was a mantra that kept my feet moving one past the other. If I didn’t have practice, the games, and all of them to keep my pieces together, I don’t want to know where I would’ve ended up.

Probably like Luca.

At least Aiden made sure his blade was sharp and the letters looked halfway decent. It was like a nervous break, surrendering to the pain after resisting and trying to keep it together for so long. And when he finished, Aiden clenched my hair in his fist and pressed my forehead to his.

“You’re our brother,” he bites out, “you’re my brother. And that’s all that matters right now.”

I switched places with Aiden and sliced his number—66—into the exact same place with my own knife, listening to his grunts and garbled curses and feeling his blood smear over my fingers while I held him steady. The entire time, Aiden never looked away.

Then, with blood trailing down his stomach, Aiden traded places with Mason. Colson swaggered around to the front of the chair and swung his leg over Mason’s knees, the glint in his eye suggesting that he was going to enjoy this. And he hoped that Mason would return the favor.

Because he’s batshit.

Colson cut deep, digging his fingers into Mason’s chest to hold him steady while he sliced the number 13 into Mason’s otherwise flawless skin. He moved slower than necessary, dragging an agonizing groan out of Mason, buffered only by the leather strap between his teeth. And when it was Colson’s turn, Mason didn’t disappoint, cutting deep while he traced Colson’s number—3.

Where Mason suffers in silence, taking a beating before doling out his retribution with eerie precision, Colson lashes out, snarling and gnashing his teeth like a rabid animal. And maybe that’s why they’re close, the way that Aiden and I are to one another, because they have something the other needs to feel whole.

“So, what’s the story?” Aiden’s voice breaks me out of my trance, reminiscing about the last time we met like this—a council of sorts after a tragic death.

Only now it’s Colson’s turn to experience the rage and despair instead of me, and it’s our turn to make sure all his pieces stay together.

“Bowen killed Evie,” Colson replies with a tone infinitely sharper than the knife inside my pocket.

Mason said as much in the group text, but it was otherwise devoid of detail. And as soon as I read Bowen’s name, all I could think about was that asshole nailing me in the face with his elbow last fall on the soccer field. If Rory hadn’t been standing close enough to grab me, I would’ve knocked his fucking teeth down his throat. It evened out in the end, though. Colson knocked the shit out of him and we won the game, but I would’ve rather been the one to lay him out.

The three of us remain silent as Colson reaches for the bottle of Town Branch sitting open on the side table and gulps down a mouthful without so much as blinking.

“Just him?” Aiden finally asks.

I know what he’s thinking and why he asked, his own mind wandering to dark places.

“Just him,” Colson replies.

“You told them?” I ask, knowing that he and Mason were taken to Canaan’s police department after they found Evie.

Colson nods, his silence all but confirming my assumption that it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. If Bowen is responsible for Evie’s death, there’s no way he’s ever getting arrested as long as his grandfather is the chief and Jay Rhinehardt’s family makes up nearly half of the force.

“So, what are we doing?” I ask with the implication that we will indeed be doing something, legal or not.

“He butchered her,” Colson throws back the whiskey bottle once more, “then he stuffed her in a pipe and left her there. She didn’t even look like herself. Mason knows.” He nods to Mason on the adjacent sofa, arms crossed with the same faraway look he’s had since last fall.

It’s weird, I’m used to Aiden and Colson’s darkness, but seeing something akin to it in Mason’s eyes is surreal.

“Why’d he do it?” Aiden asks through slitted eyes.

That’s the question, isn’t it? Who’s Evie to Bowen? She’s his sister, Hildy’s best friend, and she’s one of the kindest people on the planet. But isn’t that always how it goes?

Everyone loved her…she lit up every room she walked into…beloved by all…

That is, until she disappeared and her barely recognizable, mutilated body was discovered after being secreted away, never meant to be found. Clearly, someone thought otherwise— Bowen thought otherwise.

Colson sets his jaw. “Evie was going to dump him that night. She told me.”

It feels like all the air leaves the room as we let his words sink in and wait for him to elaborate.

“After the race in Hellbranch, he sent me a video,” Colson lets out an exasperated breath, “of him fucking her. They were together…dating…whatever. It was a secret. She told me about it when everything started going to hell.”

After a long silence, I clear my throat. “So,” I reiterate, peering at him from my bowed head, “ what are we doing? ”

When there’s an injustice, there must be carnage. Human ritual dictates that someone has to pay. That’s the way it’s always been. And it’s sure as shit how it’s been for the past few months. Why should it change now?

“I’m going to fucking destroy him,” Colson bites out, his eyes boring into the black maw of the stone fireplace. “He either turns himself in or I put him in the ground, where he belongs.”

The sour taste in my mouth becomes even more bitter as I recall Dallas’s scrunched up face as she tried to hide behind her thick curtain of hair in the cafeteria and her shaking body as she sobbed into my shirt in the stairwell. Except she wasn’t only crying about the gut-wrenching reality of never seeing Evie again, she was crying because she had to listen to other people talk about it so flippantly, because the worst thing in your life doesn’t matter to anyone else.

“Or I just fucking kill him now,” Colson continues, “bleed him out like a stuck pig. I haven’t decided.”

And I believe he’d do it.

Because, like I said, Colson likes knives…and blood.

●●●

“Was Luca here last night?” I ask, slamming the dishwasher after depositing my empty plate.

“I don’t think so,” Adrian replies, zipping his backpack on the kitchen island, “why?”

“My laptop’s gone,” I mutter, “and my Switch.”

Adrian clenches his jaw, “Are you fucking kidding me?” he murmurs in exasperation, then looks away with a shake of his head.

Adrian looks like me, but with longer hair. Or, I should say, I look like him, with the same mouth and eyes. Except he looks exponentially more intense, constantly thinking about what needs to be done at any given moment. You’d think he would’ve calmed down a bit when I turned 18 last year, but he hasn’t. His constant nagging and worrying that the other two of us would end up as drop-outs has turned into curated admonishments directed toward me and Luca—but mostly me because Luca isn’t usually around to hear them.

Adrian nods. He acknowledges it, but doesn’t want to say it, because that would mean there’s a criminal in our family, and that just won’t do. But there already is, whether or not Luca’s been arrested and whether or not Adrian says the words.

I don’t know how he got this way, but it’s how Luca’s been for the better part of two years. He seemed fine, considering the circumstances, in the year following our dad’s death. He graduated that year, much to Adrian’s relief, but after that, he started changing. It happened gradually and, in a bizarre way, all at once. He went from the chill, funny one who I gamed with every night to a shell of his former self; listless, disappearing for days on end, and acting either erratic or like a total zombie when I did see him.

I used to spend a lot of time worrying about him. That is, until my shit started disappearing. That ended when my cleats went missing right before a tournament game Junior year and I had to borrow someone else’s at the last minute. It sounds petty, but soccer is one of the things I’ve always had—it’s always been mine. And Luca reaching in where he didn’t belong and fucking shit up completely wrecked my mojo. The final straw was last summer when shit went off the rails and we almost killed each other in the middle of the living room.

Since then, I haven’t actually seen Luca, only a shadow crossing in front of a window before a car speeds off or my stuff is stolen by a phantom. Now, I don’t care if I ever see him again. I’m sick of him plundering my life.

“You can use mine,” Adrian declares, trying to piece together any shred of a solution.

I shake my head. There’s not an extra laptop just lying around our house for when our brother goes shopping through our belongings. Adrian needs his laptop to keep the business going and keep everyone in this house, whether they want to be here or not.

“Doesn’t matter,” I clip, “soon, I won’t be needing them anyway.”

Come June, none of this will matter and I make sure to let everyone know it as often as I can.

“I still don’t know why you’re doing this,” he mutters, tucking his water bottle in the side pocket of the backpack.

“Doing what?”

“Signing up to go die a world away.”

I wish more than anything that my dad was still here, especially times like these so that he could make everyone else shut the hell up. My dad did two tours of duty and that was when there was a war going on. But in some kind of sick irony, he survived insurgents and IEDs all so he could come back to the U.S. and die in a car accident.

“Because I don’t have a small fortune to spend on school,” I snap.

“I can get you a job,” Adrian says dismissively.

“So I can work 80 hours a week and grind myself into the ground? No, thanks.”

“You’d rather go off and potentially die just for tuition?”

“Better than sticking around here and dying of boredom,” I mutter as I grab my backpack and storm out the side door.

“I’ll change the locks,” Adrian calls after me, signaling the end of the conversation.

I slam the door and step into the garage. I’ve always loved our house; a mid-century ranch at the edge of Hellbranch Creek. My mom found it when Adrian was three, abandoned for years after being occupied by a hoarder. Mateo Barrera gutted and rebuilt the entire thing while Camila Torres made it look like a feature in Interior Design. There’s a small comfort that everything still looks the way it did when they both were alive.

Except the living room…

I take the opportunity to wallow in my own rage and self-pity, hidden behind the hundred-year-old shade trees, until I pull my 1997 Lexus LX 450 up to the end of the driveway at the top of the hill. The stereo kicks on the last song on my playlist— Joy to the World by Three Dog Night. I smile to myself. I used to listen to the same song on my mom’s CD when I was a kid, before someone ripped it to an MP3, and somehow, it’s made it onto my phone when I could’ve just bought the same song off some streaming service with two clicks of my finger.

Nostalgia.

I wouldn’t fight with Adrian so much if he didn’t try to micromanage my future. There’s nothing wrong with what Adrian does; he took over our dad’s contracting firm after he died and kept it going like nothing ever happened. It’s even grown since then. I don’t know that Adrian ever wanted to do anything different, but he clearly wonders why I do.

By lunchtime, I still haven’t shaken this mood. I’ve just finished a slice of that greasy, doughy-ass pizza from Angelo’s when two girls plop down in the empty seats next to Logan, who’s applying more mascara to her already thick black lashes. I glance up and the rage immediately washes over me again. Jordy starts talking to Rory while Jamie sits directly across from me, babbling on about prom and the biology teacher who’s threatening to flunk her. But it doesn’t matter, I’m already in a bad mood and her presence just makes it worse. She’s utterly oblivious, unaware of what Dallas told me yesterday while she was crying in the stairwell.

Jordy taps the tabletop with her palm, getting mine and Aiden’s attention. “Prom is at Hunter’s Landing now.”

Speaking of bad moods…

I don’t even know why Jordy keeps talking to me about prom, much less sits at our table anymore. As if this year hasn’t already turned into a complete shit show, prom was nearly cancelled.

I let out a snicker, recalling the chaos that ensued a couple weeks ago during the last assembly of the year. Principal Copenhaver was busy bestowing some obscure award on a freshman when, all of a sudden, the three sets of double doors at the end of the basketball court flew open and a herd of cattle came thundering into the gym.

Cattle.

Everyone scattered, unsuspecting bystanders screaming as they fled the deafening wave of black angus. Mrs. Wilson flew up the bleacher stairs as fast as her artificial hip would carry her. Charles Matney in the marching band section seized his 10 seconds of fame and trumpeted “Call to the Post” like it was the goddamn Kentucky Derby. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, three riders on horses followed them in, galloping through the cattle to the front of the gym, dressed all in black with boots, gloves, and motorcycle helmets.

It made sense; the stereotypical cowboy hats and bandanas have their drawbacks when you’re trying to remain anonymous. Two of them looked like guys, but the third was definitely a girl, and they clearly knew how to herd livestock. After circling around, they let out a few whoops and the horses took off, driving the cattle back out the gym doors. It really gave a new meaning to horsepower.

But the result was catastrophic for the gymnasium. Dents, cracks, and a dusty mixture of dirt and cow shit covered the floor, sending Coach Wheeler into a tailspin. I’m sure he spent the next few hours crying in his car. The floor was destroyed, and so were any plans to have prom there. Alternate plans were kept quiet, likely because there weren’t any, at least until now.

Jamie turns to us, leaning on the table so her cleavage spills out of her shirt. “You all should meet us at the creek on Saturday—” she flashes her eyes at me, “kayaking.”

Man, this bitch…

“We’ll be pretty busy,” I reply flatly, to which her face falls into an exaggerated frown. So, I elaborate, “Burying Colson’s sister . ”

Suddenly, it seems I’ve jogged her memory. “ Oh yeah, ” she furrows her brow with concern. I’m surprised the dramatic change in expression doesn’t make her face spasm. “I’ll definitely be at the visitation. How’s he doing? Does he need anything?”

“Like his dick sucked before the service?”

The table goes quiet. Jamie blinks, her brain short-circuiting behind her vacant brown eyes. Logan and Jordy exchange glances and their eyes shift back and forth between Jamie and me. Josh lets out an airy, ooh , from the other side of Aiden.

“Did you know Evie?” I ask, ignoring her subsequent lack of response. “I didn’t think so, because if you did, you wouldn’t be talking about whoring yourself out to her brother at her funeral. ”

As my voice crescendos, heads start to turn and a ripple of silence consumes the surrounding area. I don’t want to embarrass Dallas—I don’t even know if she’s here—but I can’t let this shit slide.

“What are you talking about?” Jamie finally finds her voice, scrunching up her face with indignance. “I never said anything about Colson or his sister.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” I ask with a tilt of my head.

Jamie glances at Jordy, who averts her eyes, offering no assistance. She must be desperate because then she looks to Aiden, who only glares back at her, his mouth twitching with amusement. He doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about, but he’s here for it. I can always count on him to make an uncomfortable situation 10 times worse.

“I didn’t even know her,” Jamie snaps defensively, “and why would I—”

“Her name—” I growl, “is Evie! ” Then I draw my knee back and kick the leg of her chair, knocking it away from the table.

Jamie lets out a shriek and grabs onto the edge of the table. Jordy flinches and leans away toward Logan to get out of the line of fire. Once Jamie recovers, she jerks her head up, her eyes blazing as she scowls over the table at me.

“What the hell is your problem, Alex?” she hisses, trying not to draw more attention.

But I’m not trying to hide anything. “My problem is that I don’t like people sitting at my table who talk about my friend’s dead body like it’s garbage and then, in the next breath, plan how to fuck her brother at her funeral.”

A shocked hum ripples through the room. “ What? ” Josh murmurs, shifting his gaze to Jamie.

Rory leans back in his chair. “ That’s fucked up,” he says with a shake of his head.

Jamie’s face twitches with embarrassment and confusion as her eyes dart between the rest of us. “I did not say that about Colson!” But the look in her eyes says she’s lying through her teeth.

“Oh, no?” I let my head fall back, “Anyone else want her?” I call over my shoulder. “Are you into necrophilia, too, or do you just like the cemetery vibes?”

In a flash, Jamie slams her hands down on the table and launches herself out of the chair, glaring at me with that pinched face of hers as she storms toward the back of the cafeteria in an effort to escape the cacophony of shocked murmurs, jeers, and nervous giggles. Right then, the bell rings and the cafeteria returns to its normal state, with chairs scraping across the tile as everyone rises to head back to class.

Summarily excommunicated from the lunch table, my gaze lingers on the door, surmising that I won’t see her for a while. Good thing, because there’s more where that came from. When I finally look away, I suddenly catch sight of two big blue eyes looking straight at me, framed by a wave of long black hair.

Dallas glances at me as she walks past, a smile tugging at her mouth before quickly looking away again to follow her friends to the door. I don’t know how much she heard, but it was clearly enough to acknowledge me. She doesn’t look upset, though, so that’s all that matters. I get up to follow, naively thinking that I’ll be able to catch up to her, much less find her in the hallway that resembles a salmon spawning ground.

By the end of school, I’m ready to get the hell out of here and away from all these people. As usual, the four of us find each other in the math hallway near the stairs, where we continue on to the senior parking lot.

Colson shoots a look over his shoulder to Aiden. “What’d you do to Sydney now?”

“Who said I did anything to her?” Aiden replies, utterly unconcerned.

“So, you’re not the reason she looked like she had a big stick up her ass in English?”

Aiden shrugs. “She always looks like that.”

He’s not wrong, but I cast him a sideways glance anyway, recalling whatever happened in the library yesterday that clearly put Sydney in a foul mood. “She should be used to your sadism by now.”

“How did I get pegged as the sadistic one?” Aiden asks with feigned offense, then nods to Colson in front of me, “That motherfucker’s more heinous than I am.”

“Yeah, but he kisses them beforehand,” I counter, “and after.”

“It keeps them coming back for more,” Colson winks at me over his shoulder.

Aiden rolls his eyes dismissively. “Only because I don’t have the patience for that smoke and mirrors bullshit.”

“Accept it,” Colson says with a shrug, “you’re pegged as sadistic, and Mason just gets pegged.”

Mason doesn’t say a word, keeping pace with Colson. A few months ago, Mason would’ve hauled off and knocked Colson’s jaw loose for a comment like that. That’s probably what Colson was hoping for, something to distract him and get the adrenaline pumping. Mason always gives him a good fight when he wants one, but not anymore. This time, Mason just stares straight ahead with the faintest of smiles.

God, what a simp.

The senior parking lot is abuzz with the usual shouts and whoops as cars squeal out of spaces and sling-shot toward the exit. Our vehicles are scattered across the opposite end of the lot, along the chain link fence. And as we approach the far corner, I see a figure leaning against the hood of Colson’s Civic, and then realize that the same blue eyes from the cafeteria are looking back at me from the edge of a thick curtain of shiny black hair.