Razor's Edge (Underworld Kings)

But it was also my mother who visibly shook whenever she heard them come or go. I didn’t think she’d ever get used to it, the pain had been ground into her DNA and it would never shake loose. No greater pain existed than that of losing a child.

My older brother Adler had died four years ago in a motorcycle accident.

Chapter 16

CALVIN

I was staring out the window towards Ellison’s, which was something I could do forever. She really took my breath away and seemed to have no idea how beautiful she was. Ellison had this inherent goodness about her I’d never really seen in my world until she came along.

In the last eight months, I’d been on more volunteer missions than I had in all my sixteen years. The homeless shelter, the soup kitchen, the Salvation Army run, where I learned that I could make it five K without hacking up a lung. Even better, to watch Ellison jiggle in front of me, face flushed, tight spandex, I’d do whatever charity race the girl asked of me. But I’d do anything for her. I was whipped as Fox so generously reminded me as I flicked on and off my bedroom light to say goodnight to her, as was our tradition.

“Give me a fucking break!” Fox mumbled around a red toothbrush with a mouth full of toothpaste foam.

“It’s our thing,” I said. I bristled defensively as I waved to Ellison across the street, pajama clad in her window.

“You were just making out with her for ten minutes on the fucking porch!”

I turned around and hit Fox with a towel.

“Bone the bitch already. All that built-up tension is turning you into a pussy.”

I hit him harder until a red welt showed up on his side. Fox teased the shit out of me, but he was my one and only confident when it came to Ellison.

“If you don't, someone else will.” He walked away down the hallway toward his room. “Like me,” he said. He barely contained his laugh. I charged after him and body slammed him into the wall. He twisted out of my hold and before I knew it, had me in a headlock. I yelled mercy after two minutes of continuous choking.

“I’m gonna poison you while you’re sleeping,” I said to him as I made my way back to my room.

“Good thing Dad taught me to sleep with a bat!”

I threw my middle finger high in the air over my shoulder and decided to take a shower, get rid of the tension Ellison left streaming through my body.

“If you even so much as put a finger on my girl, Fox, you’re a dead man.”

Every day, we had study hall together in the library.

I watched her study in earnest, like the good student she was, while I blasted music in my headphones, chewed on a toothpick and leaned back in my chair, nearly tipping it over. I was your typical fuck up. Ellison would look up at me and sigh, eyeing my huge pile of books. She’d tuck her hair behind her ears and get back to work. She was so good, it sort of broke my heart how hard she threw herself into everything she tried, me included. But with that goodness came an underlying sadness. I never asked her about those tiny marks all up and down her arms or on her legs. It was something we didn’t talk about, but sure, I noticed that shit on the very first day. The raised white scars were small, almost like she’d run into something with layers of sharp edges. The precision was obvious and made it look like they were done by a machine.

Even more disturbing, I remembered her reaction the first time I noticed the deep gash on her right wrist. She pulled her arm away so abruptly that I knew asking her would make her shut down completely.

So instead of asking her about it, I kissed the scar and told her she was beautiful. Ellison’s past wasn’t my business if she didn’t want it to be. So, I wondered and I treated the scars like innocuous birthmarks. I knew about cutting, but we didn’t talk about it, not how it helped her, or why she hurt herself. If they’d been inflicted by someone else, I’d likely go to jail for blowing his head off. Maybe Ellison sensed it and that’s why she didn’t tell me. I left it up to her. I was never going to push her into doing anything she wasn’t ready for. She was my girl and I trusted her to tell me, eventually, whenever she was ready.

“You want to stop to get something to eat on the way home?” She jabbed my arm with her eraser, and I lifted my headphones to hear her. She smiled at me like I was a pain in her ass.