My vision tunnels. I must have misunderstood what he said. If he’s been ordered not to discuss Mom’s death, then... “Mom’s death is club business?”

He holds up his hand. “I didn’t say that.”

Yeah, he did. “Then why else would the board silence you?”

“For the same reason you’ve been kept in the dark. We can’t trust you.”

“The club patched me in. The board voted—”

“Because if we didn’t, by our bylaws, you would have never become a member. You’d reached the maximum time anyone’s allowed to be a prospect. None of us were willing to let you go, but you weren’t ready. You still aren’t ready. That patch on your back—it’s borrowed.”

I stumble back as his words strike me like a wrecking ball.

“You have to learn to trust us,” Dad continues. “This club is your family. Let us in, Thomas. Let me in.”

“How?” My arms are stretched wide, begging for him to give me an answer, any answer that will end this torment. “Tell me how, because I thought I was trusting you. I thought I was trusting the club.”

“Let your mother’s death go.”

The world tilts and nausea sets up in my stomach. He’s asking for the impossible. He’s asking me to bleed out on the street. “I can’t.”

“Then we can’t trust you. Not until you trust us.”

Fuck this. I swipe the bag off the floor, but Dad doesn’t move. “This is your home.”

“It was,” I answer. “But then Mom died. This ain’t a home. It’s walls with a roof.”

Pain flashes in Dad’s eyes and he stiffens like he’s paralyzed. I use the opportunity to stalk past. The new woman of the week hugs herself in the kitchen and opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but thinks better of it when I won’t meet her gaze.

I’m out the door, down the steps, and I leave with no intention of coming back.

Breanna

KEEPING IN MIND the most frequently used letters in the alphabet, I’m toiling my way through the Caesar encryption method. It’s a simple method. One I don’t expect to work because that would be too easy, but it’s what my English teacher used on Friday.

The library’s busy; at least it is toward the front. Because of that, I selected a table in the back. Joshua had practice before school, so I’ve been here for the past hour jotting down possible solutions and crossing them out just as quickly. It’s frustrating and exhilarating, and if this is what being employed with the CIA is like, I want in.

There’s a low buzz of conversation. Occasionally some girl laughs too loudly for too long, but a shush from the librarian silences her. There are footsteps on the carpet and a pause behind me. A flutter in my stomach wishes it’s Razor, but then the overpowering smell of too much aftershave squashes that hope.

The chair across from me is drawn back and Kyle drops into it. I’ve been going to school with Kyle since kindergarten. He ate worms. I strung clover together to craft necklaces. We belonged to two different worlds then and nothing since then has changed, yet here he is talking to me again.

“I’m not writing your papers. I will help you, but I’m not writing them.”

He scratches behind his ear and the action reminds me of a dog. Strands of his black hair now stick out. He rests his elbows on the table, then rests back in his seat, then forward again. A strange unsettling forms in my bloodstream. Whatever is about to happen will be bad.

Time to bolt. I turn off my phone, put it in my purse and scoot out of my chair as I sweep up my notes.

“You’re going to write my papers,” he says.

I stand and shove my wrong answers into my backpack. Mimicking my younger siblings, I ignore his existence.

“Did you know I have over six hundred Bragger followers? Thanks to football camp, I’m hitting close to seven hundred and I like to post stuff. Stuff some people may not want seen.”

“So?” I empathize with those antelopes on the National Geographic specials that glance up from the watering hole and come face-to-face with a tiger. Like them, I’m terrified into immobilization.

Kyle rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and I shift my weight from one foot to the other. If I run, maybe whatever it is he’s planning will fizzle, but something warns me that no matter how fast I sprint, he’ll be able to catch up.

“You’re wanting to go to college, right? Knowing you, you’re going to some Ivy League school, am I wrong?”

He’s not. Not at all. I hunger to go far from here. To go where there will be other people like me. Someplace where I won’t be the one who is odd, but the one who belongs.

“Coach had a meeting with us a few months back on how we have to watch what we do online. How guys who have great track records on the field lose chances at scholarships because of their behavior off the field and online.”

The entire left side of my body goes numb, and I randomly wonder if I’m experiencing a stroke. Kyle’s right. Universities do research people online. They do care about our personal lives when it pertains to coveted spots or scholarships—especially with the schools I’m interested in attending.

The wooden chair cracks under his weight and he yanks his cell out of his pocket. “Have you seen this site before?”

Snowflake Sluts. Every girl I know hates that site. The first few times it sprang up on Bragger, someone told the school’s administration and it was taken down, but like a bad pimple, it pops back up. No one reports it anymore, since the next picture in line is of the girl who snitched.