Don't Know If I Bleed

Believe it or not, life in Charming used to be simple.

The minor details have escaped my memory by now, but I remember the big picture. Jax and Opie had been friends since they were young, and it was only after a particularly traumatizing lunchroom incident during which Jackson tripped me on a dare from his best friend, subsequently breaking my arm, that they adopted me into their friendship. Even at fourteen I knew they were trouble, but I was so caught up in actually having people to hang out and eat lunch with that I didn’t listen to reason.

We spent most of our days shooting empty beer bottles in the abandoned lots on the outskirts of town, sometimes with guns Gemma and John would forget to lock away or with Ope’s homemade slingshots. Every bottle had a name, a bully who made our lives hell or a teacher that had it out for us personified. Jackson only went along to fit in and pass the time—he was funny, charismatic and would do anything for a laugh and everyone loved him for it—but it was therapeutic for me and Opie.

“Say goodbye to Tim Graham,” he’d say, inviting me to recall every horror story ever told in a high school locker room. Captain of the football team, the junior class president, and he was disintegrated into a cloud of glass at the pull of a trigger.

I was dangerously loyal back then. “This one’s Amanda McKee,” I said. Amanda was a beacon of teenage perfection with her blonde ringlets and bake-sale personality. Opie had spent half our freshman year pining after her, and once he’d finally found the courage to say two words to her, she humiliated him in front of everyone and said she’d never resort to biker scum like him.

All I had to do was steady my arm, find my target, and squeeze. Pow. Bye, Amanda. Bitch.

Life went on like that for the next couple years. Tim Graham had long since graduated and Amanda McKee transferred to a school with less degenerates like us. I failed my sophomore history class and had to repeat it the next year and Opie failed everything except the automotive elective he took. Jackson charmed his way to extended deadlines and make-up tests to earn barely-passing grades. Then everything changed.

It wasn’t a big deal at first, just Jackson being Jackson. He was always forgetful and irresponsible, so when Ope and I would show up at the lots and wait for him for hours to no avail, we figured he must’ve been stoned somewhere and it slipped his mind. After not seeing him outside of school for two weeks straight, we knew marijuana wasn’t the only problem. Opie, his best friend since before they could speak coherent sentences, was furious. I’d only ever been along for the ride.

When Ope and I weren’t looking, Jackson had gone and fell in love. Sixteen years old and ready to take on the world, he was. Bonnie and Clyde version two-point-zero.

I always thought Jax had some kind of White Knight syndrome. He was always trying to fix things, fix people, and Tara was no exception. She was just as broken as we were, and I tried so hard not to blame her for stealing Jax away from us. Him and Ope were all I had; regardless if it actually was, it felt personal.

It was us who helped him through John’s death. It was us that convinced him to give Clay a chance to be his stepfather. It was us that talked him off the ledge when it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the morning, hungover and caked in his own vomit. Tara hadn’t been there for any of that, just took advantage of the better version of him Ope and I had coached back to life. I channeled all the hatred I thought I’d expelled shooting at empty bottles and directed it at her.

They were eighteen the first time they got arrested. Jax had tried calling Opie to come get him first, but Ope had cut him out of his life long before then. Clay and Gemma were more than happy to let him sit in jail for a few days to earn his stripes, so I was next on his list. I ignored his calls, too.

No one heard from him again until Tara left. Just like a ghost, she stuck around long enough to give Jax a glimpse of teenage love before she disappeared, taking my best friend’s heart with her in the process. If I thought he was bad when John died, it was nothing compared to when Tara left. I had half a mind to go down to San Diego after her and drag her back, kicking and screaming, but all the loyalty I’d ever felt toward Jackson Teller had aged and staled, leaving me with nothing but a hollow shell of betrayal and angst.

I’d looked up to him, found solace in knowing the three of us were one in the same. There was only one direction in which all of our lives were headed and that was straight into destruction. We weren’t meant for better things, had never fallen in love with the idea of seeing the grandeur side of life. Things like that hadn’t been written in the stars for us, so we never had to play pretend. Jax and Ope were the children of outlaws and by extension so was I. I didn’t have any parents of my own—none to write home about anyway—but none of that mattered to them.

But Tara…she was different. Maybe that’s why Jax chose her over us, because she was salvageable and destined for something more. Being the Old Lady of a biker anarchist wasn’t good enough for her, but it was my only hope at the great beyond.

I raised the glock. Bracing myself for the recoil, I locked my sights on the bottle and squeezed the trigger. “Bye, Tara.”