Page 3 of On The Edge
“Wait, we’re just going to leave her?” Kai asks, his eyes drifting from me to the door and back like he doesn’t know what to do.
“Yes!” I turn and hiss. “Yes, we’re going to leave her. Didn’t you hear what she said? She wasusingus, Kai. She doesn’t care about us.”
His eyes drop, his chest deflating as my words ring true in his ears.
Kai looks devastated, and I know exactly how he feels. I want to cry, I want to rage, I want to… I want to leave.
“Let’s go,” I say again, hoarser as I try to hold my emotions back. “She’s nothing but a liar.”
I watch as Kai takes one more look at the door standing between us and the girl we thought would be a part of our lives forever before turning away and following me.
“Let’s go.”
“Areyou sure you heard it right?” our friend Adam asks, crossing his arms over his chest as he stares at me in disbelief. “I don’t believe Melody would say that about us for no reason.” We had driven to one of the abandoned fields on the outskirts of town; a place we usually go to drink and have bonfires, but it’s still so early in the day that no one is venturing out this far. Right now, though, we’re just talking. Fuming. Trying to make this make sense.
But god, I’d really like something to take the edge off right now.
“Does the reason fucking matter?” I snap, wishing we were in the treehouse behind my place that we had built for Melody. At least there, I have a bottle of stolen whiskey hidden. If Melody is trying to find us for whatever reason, that’s the first place she’ll look. But I want nothing to do with her, which is why we’re here.
“I mean…” Markus, the guy who’s usually quick to joke about things, is completely stoic as he lounges back on the tire ofAdam’s truck, pulling apart some grass and throwing it angrily. “What else is there to know, Adam? She’s… been playing us and laughing at us this whole fucking time. We were fighting each other, beating each other up because we wanted her so much, and she was just sitting back. Laughing.”
Adam stands up straighter, running a hand through his blonde hair, pain piercing through his blue eyes. He looks down at the ground before his fists clench at his sides.
“Kai?” Markus asks, lifting his eyes to look at him. Kai’s just been laying in the bed of the truck, arms behind his head as he stares up at the blue sky. “What do you think?”
“I think Reis is right,” he says simply. “The more I think about it, the more I want to hurt someone because I feel so… disgusted. I think that I want to never see her again.”
I nod, shoving my hands in my pockets again.
“Me neither,” I agree, looking at them and taking a deep breath before I pitch my idea. It’s either going to be really good for us, or we’re going to burn every bridge we have here. “You know how we always said we would move to New York City aftershegraduated?” I sneer where her name would be. I’m so angry that even her name makes my heart feel like it’s bleeding.
They all nod and Adam’s face contorts in pain. He’s always been sensitive, more attuned to his emotions than us, so this has to be killing him. Rotting him from the inside out like me.
“What if we go now?” I drop that bomb and wait for the dust to settle. There’s a beat of silence before they all start to disagree, but I put my hands up to stop them. “Think about it, guys. If we need to, we get our GEDs down the line. We have some money saved up, and all we need is a few days’ worth of clothes and stuff. But more importantly…” I swallow the lump of ash in my mouth because even thinking this feels wrong, but I have to push through for us all. “She won’t find us. We’ll leave and never lookback. I think we can make it; hell, I’m more determined than ever to make it. Trust me.”
The guys look at me in varying stages of acceptance, but Kai sits up and leans over the side of the truck with a smirk he wields like a blade. “I’m in. Get me the fuck out of here.”
I pump my fist in victory before looking at Markus and Adam. “What do you guys think?”
Markus takes a deep breath, standing up and dusting himself off. His hair is longer than it has been in a long time, just brushing over his forehead, and he pushes it out of his dark eyes. The guy is lucky—he’s got that natural tan all year round and, at eighteen, is 6’2” already.
“I say we go. Tonight.”
“Tonight?” Adam asks quickly, running a hand through his hair and pacing back and forth. “I don’t know man, something feels off.”
“Yeah, it’s that we all love the same freaking girl and she could give a shit less about any of us,” Kai snaps, the anger and hurt clear in his voice. “At least if she had chosen one of us, I’d have known she… wasn’t so horrible. But no.” He grinds his teeth and shakes his head. “She was just using us and laughing behind our backs. So yeah, I say we leave tonight.”
I pull my phone out of my back pocket and notice a few texts fromher, asking where we are, but I don’t answer. We’re going to need to get some new numbers. I quickly search for bus tickets to NYC from here. There’s a bus leaving from Tulsa at two in the morning. We’ve got some time to get all our important stuff and then sneak off into the night when all our parents are asleep.
Adam takes a deep breath, as if Kai’s words knock him square in the chest before he reluctantly nods. “I’m not staying behind. I’m the drummer; your asses won’t make it without me.”
“There it is!” I yelp excitedly, trying to ignore the fact that my heart feels like it’s being stomped on, as well as fightoff the embarrassment creeping through my spine at being manipulated for so long. “Alright boys, at midnight, we head to Tulsa. From there, we catch a bus to the Big Apple. No more shitty fucking judgemental town breathing down our necks as we make music. No more parents telling us how disappointed they are in what we choose. No more girl who strings us all along only to stomp on our hearts in the end.”
Adam’s eyes drop to the ground, his eyebrows knitting together. Kai nods along, agreeing with me while Markus stands, clenching his fists like he needs some outlet for his grief.
“Together?” I ask softly, letting them see some of the cracks in my armor. Letting them see how much this is killing me too.
Markus nods. “Together.”
