On Edge (14 page)

Liv shrugged. “Sure. I'll have to meet you out front. I'm not sure why, but I'm grounded. As long as I don't leave in front of them, they'll never know I'm gone.”

I smiled. “Okay, I'll meet you around the corner.”

***

By “shotgun wall” I could only assume Warp meant the wall we were at when I met Haze. The same one where the crazy business owner came out with a shotgun. Not exactly a place I wanted to revisit, but since Warp never texted me, I figured it was important.

Liv and I walked up, and though Warp stood there, I barely noticed him. All I could see was a big depiction of my face and beside me…Heather, both of us bathed in sunshine that stretched past the clouds. A halo hung over her head and her eyes were mockingly turned up to the sky. I looked pretty normal, though my eyes were slightly rounded, almost as if I were surprised by something.

“At least I'm not fat,” I said, trying to downplay my anxiety.

“This is no time for jokes, Emanuella! This is a blatant threat. I told you hanging around that guy was trouble, and now look.” Warp wore all black, looking a little like a Ninja warrior on a kill mission. I had an image of him running across rooftops anime-style wielding a large, sharpened, and unsheathed katana in search of Haze.

“He wouldn't do this.”

“This is his signature style. No one else in this hood paints the way he does.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about,” I accused.

“I know exactly what I'm talking about. There is a particular style to every artist's work. And he is the only one with this thin to broad line style on the curves of these clouds, and that type of line is in every one of these pieces of you!”

“You don't know jack about graffiti, Warp. You think someone can't copy a style? People forge paintings all the time!”

“Yeah,” he shot back. “For millions of dollars. Who would take the time for a no-name graffiti artist?”

I folded my arms across my chest, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of his accusations. “You're so against him you'll say anything.”

“I don't know, “ Liv interjected, her voice low as if she didn't want to make me angry but wanted to give her opinion. “On a style so specific, it's hard to imagine someone copying it.”

I studied the masterpiece more carefully. Other than the fact that I was situated beside a dead girl, I didn't see a reason to freak out. “Let's say you're both right and Haze is doing this. Why? It doesn't make any sense anymore.”

“Since when does a psycho make sense?” Warp took out his phone and began texting.

“What are you doing?” I asked, afraid he was sending out a personal APB.

“I'm going to tell Surge. I want him to keep a close eye on you at all times.”

“That's enough, Warp!” I walked over to him and slapped his cell out of his hand. It skittered a few feet away. “I know you're my brother and all, but you're not my father.”

“Pops isn't at home and can't be, or I'd call him and tell him what's going on!”

“I don't know why you are making a big deal out of a stupid picture! It's just someone trying to bully me and get under your skin. You're falling for it!” But Haze's words came back to me, calling me a fool or some such for challenging the writer. Could someone really be trying to threaten me because I messed with their art? Could it be Haze?

“I'm going to tell Surge anyway.” He bent and picked up his phone, rubbing it off on his pants.

“You'll be wasting his time.”

Warp shook his head and palmed his phone. Digging around in his pocket with his other hand, he produced a folded piece of newspaper and with shaking hands, thrust it at me.

“You think I'm wasting my time?! Look at that, Emanuella, and tell me I'm being too cautious.”

Liv moved next to me and rested her chin on my shoulder as I unfolded the paper. The color print of a graffiti wall was the first thing that came into view. The next was an outline of a body right below it traced with mourning flowers.

Liv gasped, and I scanned the parts of the article that had survived Warp's hasty ripping. I caught sight of Heather Craig's name and realized this was her murder scene photo as it had appeared in the
Tribune
two years ago…

I knew Warp felt this picture was proof of guilt, so my heart didn't want me to look too closely. My head, though, scanned the graffiti with a thirst to know the truth. The painted landscape was actually quite intricate and stunning. There were clouds that parted to reveal stylized rays of the sun, shining over the beginnings of a name over a swirling background. I could see the H and a few lines above the H that denoted there was more to the piece than I could see.

The graffiti proved Warp right about one thing, something bizarre was going on. I looked from the artwork in the photo and the newest painted on the shotgun wall in front of me. The article was damning, but I wanted more. I needed more. I needed something that didn't make Haze look guilty.

“The photo's caption says the graffiti is the last thing Heather ever painted. She worked on it seconds before she was murdered,” I said out loud, but my brain was lost in the enigma.

“The fact that someone is spraying in the exact same style is proof the police were wrong, LL. Heather didn't paint that wall. Her murderer did. I think she knew whoever killed her and where he would be and she went there to confront him.”

“You've already convicted Haze in your mind. You think he was there painting this piece and when she came to talk to him, he killed her?”

“The police suspected him,” Warp pointed out.

“The police suspected everyone!”

I hadn't even felt Liv move away from me but I saw her now as she stood next to my brother, her face ghost white. “This is not good, Ellie,” she said in a small voice.

I didn't want to agree with her but I did—only, not for the reason she would think if I voiced my agreement. Right now, all I knew was that Haze thought someone was biting his style. If he was right, and whoever was mocking his work killed his sister and was now painting me…shit was definitely not good. “I think I'm…”

“You're not thinking,” my brother interrupted me with a yell. “The truth is staring you in the face! You broke up with him and now things are going to get worse unless I do something.”

“Part of the article is missing,” I mumbled. I stated a fact only, focusing on the one thing that didn't scare the pants off of me.

“I was in a bit of a hurry. They tend to frown when you rip stuff out of old newspapers in the library.”

My head bobbed, acknowledging his words but unable to focus on any of them. “It wasn't Haze. He wouldn't kill his own sister.”

Warp glared at me as if I was the stupidest woman alive.

Instead of being supportive, as I would have liked, Liv's face was contorted with concern. “Ellie, please.”

“Like you said, we're not together anymore anyway. But even if we were, I know he wouldn't hurt me.”

“You're being a moronic child,” Warp came back at me. “This asshole is threatening you!”

“No, I'm being rational. There is someone else involved here, Warp. There has to be.”

“Well I'm not taking the chance. Even if you're right and it isn't Haze, which I doubt, someone's obviously making a statement. And it's time to make one back.”

In the background, I could hear Liv arguing that starting a war could make things worse. She begged him not to do it, to call the police. Warp argued that there wasn't enough evidence to hand over to the police and involving them might speed up my stalker's plan to kill me. I'd heard all I could take and drowned them out.

My entire body felt as though it were stretching in every direction, reaching toward every fear I'd ever experienced.

Who hated me so much? Who hated Haze so much?

Or was I really blind to the truth? Had Haze come up with an elaborate plot to find someone who reminded him of his sister, drag her through hell, pretend he liked her, harass her secretly while openly championing her, only to kill her in the end? Was he doing that to me?

Either way I looked at the situation, whether my boyfriend was at fault or not, one thing was straight-up: A murderer was targeting me.

Eighteen

UR not n class

I looked down at the message on my cell and sighed, half expecting the text to be from Haze. He'd been trying to get ahold of me since last night, but I couldn't bring myself to talk to him. Not yet.

Monday night, Surge had waited in the park for him like I asked, and the two of them were in the middle of discussing callus treatments when Warp's text telling Surge he thought Haze was after me went through.

According to Surge, Haze looked at the picture Warp sent of the graffiti on Surge's phone with a horrified expression, apologized and took off.

Nothing made sense. If Haze was some sister-murdering freak, why would he look so horrified? I knew my judgment might be clouded, but the way Surge explained Haze's shock-face in such detail, I think even he was a little doubtful of my boyfriend's guilt. Not that he would admit it to me.

“Aren't you supposed to shut those things off in here?” Surge asked, interrupting my thoughts—and the thoughts of everyone else in the library.

“Keep your voice down,” I said and looked from the newspaper I'd been scouring to my phone on the table beside me. “I have it on vibrate. If Warp tries to text me and I don't answer he'll go apeshit.”

“No, he'll call me and then go apeshit.”

Poor Surge, he didn't dare leave my side. He claimed it was because my brother hounded him, but we both knew he was terrified something would happen to me the instant his back was turned.

“Is it Haze?”

“No. This time it's Liv. I told her I had something to check out but I had you with me.”

He nodded. “Everyone is a little weirded out. I dunno what I want to wish for. That it isn't your boyfriend or that it is. I'd rather know who to strangle to keep you safe, but I know you don't want him to be guilty.”

“You know as well as I do that things aren't adding up. Everything points to Haze but…”

“Yeah, I know, LL. I would've taken a beating last night if he were the type to kill. If I believed otherwise, I woulda knifed his ass.”

I gagged on a sudden whoosh of breath. “Tell me you're not carrying a weapon around with you! You get caught with that, the cops really will bust you.”

“It ain't metal. No alarms are gonna go off. My cousins told me how to keep myself armed for protection but fool the pat downs and metal detectors. I can't really protect you if I don't have a weapon, LL.”

I blinked. The situation was getting beyond serious. The words death and murder were being thrown around a lot more in my inner circle than ever before, and Surge was taking to carrying a shiv. Maybe it was time to call Pops and the police.

“You're thinking kinda loud,” Surge said.

“I'm thinking this is next-level shit, Surge. We're not cold case detectives. What are we doing?”

“We are being cautious. Someone with the exact graffiti style suspected in a murder two years ago is painting faces of you. It's too weak to go to the cops with some ‘I-think-someone-might-be-threatening-me' complaint. They might call your dad, but I don't think they're going to spring for round-the-clock watch of a troubled teenager in the hood who has no evidence that anyone actually is threatening her.”

“Well, there is my picture painted on the wall….”

“You mean the wall that was erased last night?”

I blinked. “Damn. You think Haze erased it?”

“I don't know who did, but anything that linked Heather's murder to a threat against you is gone.”

This couldn't be good. I stared down at the newspaper in front of me, trembling. “This is all so fucked-up.”

“Hey, I think I found the paper,” Surge practically yelled, only to be shushed by the librarian. “Yeah, yeah lady, I'll zip it. Just give a brutha a break all right. Been in here three hours.”

The librarian shook her head at Surge, but like almost everyone else in the city, she was instantly mollified by Surge's persona.

Making room on the table by pushing the other papers aside, I slid Surge's newspaper in front of me. Now that I didn't have my brother breathing down my neck, I took the time to read the whole article and shivered. The report said the attacker chased Heather up the fire escape, only to throw her over the edge when he'd caught up to her. What a horrible way to go out; no one deserved to die like that. I glanced up at the captured picture and frowned.

“Wait.” I took out the torn piece Warp had given to me last night and placed it beside the article. “I don't get it. This newspaper is intact. Warp said he ripped it out of the library's copy.”

I looked up in time to see Surge frown at me. “I don't get it, either.”

The picture in the paper was easier to see than Warp's torn version, including a look at the crowd gathered for the vigil, and the outline of Heather's body traced end-to-end with flowers. In the background I could see Liv, as well as Heather's family. Haze stood there, the camera capturing his expression.

Grief was written all over his face. I recognized it well, as it mirrored my own feelings when my mother had passed.

I remembered my mother's funeral then and the sparse number of people who stood beside her casket to pay their respects. She had so few friends and even fewer family members. No wonder no one had seen her death coming. There was no one there to see the outcry, and my brothers and I had been too young to read the signs.

My brothers—oh my God, my brother!

I squinted down at the edge of the photo to the blur at the corner and felt my heart stop an instant before kicking into overdrive. “Oh my God, Surge. Look!”

I turned the paper toward him and pointed to the corner.

“So?”

“So,” I repeated. “That hoodie look familiar to you?”

Surge peered down at the newspaper photo much like I had, before his shocked face jerked up to stare back at me.

“Next-level.”

***

I paced around the kitchen and then sat down for the twentieth time. I can't remember a time in my life when I was ever so anxious about a run-in with my brother. Of course, I'd never suspected him of murder before.

A million thoughts went through my head, a million outcomes of confronting Warp with the full newspaper clipping, and none of them turned out with a hug of forgiveness in the end. What could he possibly say to make everything better?

Two years ago my brother started acting different. He had what Pops called a chip on his shoulder, whatever that meant. I'd always thought my mom's death had taken a little while to get to him and the realization finally sank in around that time. After all, it took a few years for me to understand the full impact of my mom's absence. But I guess I felt it before either of my brothers, because when my mom took her own life, I became the only female in the house, without anyone to confide in.

Ander's moment of anguish came shortly after mine. Warp's? Well, I'd assumed that our mother's death finally caused him to have his own downward spiral two years ago. But now I suspected a different reason for his personality change.

“What are you doing in here?” Warp asked, walking toward the fruit bowl. Most everything in the bowl was overripe but the apples were okay. He picked one up and took a bite, staring at me expectantly.

I reached into my pocket and withdrew the torn newspaper he gave me the night before.

He looked from it, to me and shrugged. “And?”

“You didn't get that from the library.”

He stopped chewing and talked around the apple bits in his mouth. “What?”

“I went to the library to read the full story. I was hoping I'd see something that would clear Haze's name or at least give me insight as to why he might want to murder his sister and then me.”

Warp swallowed hard. “So?”

“So…I found out some very interesting things. One, that you never went to the library to get this article, and two, the reason you tore it the way you did is because you didn't want to take a chance I might recognize you standing in the top left corner!”

I reached into my pocket again and withdrew the photocopied version of the newspaper with his silhouette circled in red pen.

“I don't know what you're talking about. You can't pick out a random guy and pretend it's me to clear your boyfriend's name. A boyfriend, by the way, that you told me you broke up with but now I'm thinking you never did!”

“Don't try to change the subject, Warp! That,” I pointed to the hooded figure, “is you.”

He shook his head and I wanted to scream in frustration. He obviously thought I was an idiot with the memory of a goldfish.

“The last hoodie Mom ever bought for you. You slept in it, you wore it every day, even to school. You fluffed it in the dryer when the stench became too strong, afraid to wash it or it might fall apart.”

He looked away from me and set the apple down on the counter.

“We were beginning to learn parkour from Ander and you fell off Mr. Zegger's fence and tore open the right sleeve. You got up, looked at Ander and me, and you tried so hard not to cry. Blood was everywhere and you panicked, not wanting to do any more damage to the hoodie, so you ran home so fast that Ander said you were at—”

“Warp speed,” he finished.

I nodded and tapped my finger against the picture. “There's a huge scar on that sleeve, in bright white thread so thick it looks like yarn. You started a fashion trend without intending to after you patched it up. But I remember the truth behind it. I bet after this showed up in the newspaper, you never wore it again so no one would know what you did.”

His head snapped up and his eyes blazed with fury. “You think you got it all figured out, little sister? You think I killed Heather? You're a genius! This is exactly what you need to clear your boy of everything and see that your brother is behind bars. As long as
you're
happy, right?”

“What are you talking about? I wouldn't—”

“You think I don't know what this looks like? Why do you think I've been hiding it these last few years? I look guilty! If the cops find out I was involved with Heather, what do you think they'd do to me?”

“Johnny.” I hadn't called him by his given name, in anything other than a joking manner, in a long time. He lifted his bloodshot eyes to mine when I whispered it. “I'm here to listen if you'll explain to me. Around the time of her death you changed. You became darker.”

“Dark enough to want my own sister dead?”

“No, I don't think you want to kill me. I wouldn't confront you at our house alone if I thought you were capable of murdering me. But something isn't adding up and you need to tell me what is going on. Are you painting pictures of me so you can frame Haze?”

I watched his jaw tighten and his fists clench, and for the first time, I was afraid I'd been wrong about him, but I did my best to pretend I was calm on the inside.

“No. I need you to tell me what you think you know. You think seeing me at Heather's memorial somehow makes me guilty of killing her and makes Haze innocent?”

“No. But you lied to me, Johnny. I don't think you murdered her in cold blood. Maybe it was an accident, maybe you're protecting someone. I don't know. I only know you hid the fact you even knew Heather.”

He leaned against the counter and pinched the bridge of his nose, the strain of his memories obviously weighing on his mind. He was quiet so long I thought he was just going to ignore me.

“Like you and Haze,” he started, “Heather and me hid our relationship from everyone. There wasn't much of a rivalry back then, but there was definitely some tension. The city grouped parkour and graffiti artists in the hoodlum category together and practically dared us to take each other out. People were starting to choose sides.

“So when we started dating, we kept it quiet. I tried to show her some moves and she took to them immediately. She was resilient and graceful.” The way Warp talked about her, I could tell he'd loved her. It reminded me of how I felt about Haze. He and his sister were so much alike, I could sympathize with the pain I saw shimmering in the corners or Warp's eyes. How would I feel if Haze was dead? Oh, God.

The grief he felt was palpable. His body shook with his attempt to hold back sobs he'd probably only dared let loose in private, if he ever had at all.

“She took care of me. I'd bust skin on a move and she'd be there, grinning, with gauze in her hands and med tape. She'd always use too much.” He choked out the last, disguising his emotional hiccup with a cough.

My eyes started to water, and though I didn't need Warp to prove his innocence any longer, I didn't dare interrupt him. “She was nearing the point of telling her brother and his crew about us in hopes of bringing us all together. We talked about it the night she died. ‘Freerunners and graffiti artists complement each other,' she said.”

Swallowing repeatedly wasn't helping him. Loss laced every word he spoke.

“You don't have to say any more,” I said, my voice unstable.

“No. You have to hear.”

I nodded and he continued. “We met on a rooftop that night for her first-ever training session outside of a park. We made a few jumps and then we—” He shook his head, the details of the night haunting his face. “I had…presidential relations with her, yanno?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It was the first time for both of us. We could see the whole city from where we were and everything felt right. But she couldn't stay long. She told me she had made plans, and after what we'd just done, she wanted to tell everyone she knew how much she loved me.” His gaze grew distant. “She still glowed. I waved at her and could see her face and…she glowed.”

He broke down. Turning away from me, he put his elbows on the counter and his head in his hands and he actually wept.

I sat at the kitchen table and frowned, my eyes streaming with pity but my mind numb with shock. I'd never seen my brother react to anything so strongly. It was as if everything he'd been trying to hide behind his anger in the last few years came out in heart-wrenching grief.