Chapter 13 #2
Tyler left for the bathroom and I pinched my eyes shut. No more thinking. I just had to follow the steps of the plan. Thinking could come later.
Tyler returned, Addison’s clothes carefully folded. He held them in a stack away from his body. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Dress him. I don’t know, I just don’t think I can.” He shook his head.
“I can do it.” I took the clothes. “You’ll be able to get into the basement?”
“It’s open. I went down there when I got back. I thought maybe Addison was doing laundry.”
“Okay. Go now.”
He left and I looked around. I had often wondered about this room.
I had even looked up the dorms on the college website.
For photos, so I could better picture Tyler’s life.
His side was perfectly ordered, everything on his desk just so, a neat line of shoes at the closet.
There was one poster, some soccer player suspended in air.
And that was it; no other sign of who he was. It could have been anyone’s room.
I crossed the narrow gap between their beds.
Tyler had arranged Addison neatly along the mattress.
He’d closed his eyelids and folded Addison’s hands over his bare chest. A dark oval around the body marked the blanket; it had gotten wet and was still damp.
Even in death, Addison was a thing of beauty.
Perhaps more beautiful. The stillness brought out the sharp nose and straight brow.
A small bruise bloomed on his cheek, marbled violet against the white skin.
He must have hit something on his way down, a spigot or a knob.
The light from the desk lamp traced the tight round curves of muscle.
Under his hands, across the arc of his chest, a light patch of hair.
It narrowed to a line down his torso, leading to a darker, thicker patch.
Tucked beneath it, his penis and balls curled into one another, like soft pieces of candy.
I bent in close. A powdery smell wafted off him, soap from the shower perhaps.
It would still be some time before he started to reek, his insides breaking down.
I noticed then, beside him, a pillow and a creased fold down the length of the blanket, and I understood immediately: This is where Tyler had spent the night.
I grabbed the plastic baggies, slipping one onto each of my hands.
Addison’s body had passed the peak of rigor mortis; the muscles were softening again, releasing the calcium that had started building up at death.
I looped a foot through each opening of the underwear and then lifted his legs.
Purple splotches like exploded flowers ran up and down the back of his calves and thighs.
Gravity’s pull on the blood cells. I got his jeans on and cupped his head.
It was a heavy, somber thing. I slid my hand down to balance him and I felt the push of a bone against my fingers.
A snapped vertebra. I shuddered at the thought that something so small could end a life.
I pulled his sweatshirt around his face.
I raised one arm then the other into the sleeves.
A pair of shoes sat at the foot of the bed.
I picked one up, turning it over, and brought it slowly to my face.
I held it there, warm with his loamy scent.
Imperceptible remnants of Addison—flakes of shed skin he’d never miss—flowed into me.
I knelt on the floor at his feet and pulled on his socks and then the shoes. I tied the laces, two small, neat bows.
I was still on the floor when Tyler returned from the laundry room with a deep bin on wheels. He had explained they had them for move-in days, for carting things up from cars and into their rooms.
I stood. “Where’s the sleeping bag?”
He pointed to a closet. “It should be on the top shelf. He never used it.”
“Okay. Pack your change of clothes and I’ll get it ready.”
Across Addison’s desk were the scattered remains of their day. Two plastic cups and a half-finished bottle of vodka. An open pizza box, a pile of crusts, abandoned slices congealing in their own grease.
“When Addison ordered the pizza, did the delivery guy come up?”
“No, he met him downstairs, outside.”
“Just Addison?”
He nodded. I looked back at the desk. Something glinted and I bent closer. A smudged mirror, a rolled-up bill on top, and next to it, an orange prescription bottle. The Adderall.
Tyler stood watching me. “We crushed up some pills and snorted them.”
“Clean this all up. Bag it all. And anything else from last night.” I passed Tyler a trash bag I had brought from home. He picked up the bottle of pills. “Not that. Give it to me.”
I put them in a baggie and into my pocket. I unrolled the sleeping bag across the strip of floor between their beds and folded it open.
“You’re going to have to help with this part.”
I stood at the head of the bed, Tyler at the foot. We slipped our hands under Addison. Tyler looked past me, eyes on the ceiling.
“Lift.” Tyler’s arms shook. We lowered Addison to the floor. “Where’s his phone?”
“There.” Tyler pointed to the desk. I picked it up and stared at it in the flat of my palm.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I lowered the phone. “Is he right- or left-handed?”
“Left.”
I slid the phone into the left pocket of his jeans.
I zipped the sleeping bag around him. There was a small opening at the top.
I stopped, watching for some movement, some change that would not come.
I pulled the bag up over his face and pulled the drawstring closed.
We lifted again. Tyler seemed calmer this time, with Addison’s face hidden from view.
He took the top half and I the bottom. I tucked his legs as we lowered him into the cart.
“Did you pack a pair of shoes for yourself?”
“Yes.”
“And the bag of trash?”
He passed it to me. I set the bag into the cart, nudged into a corner, beneath Addison’s feet. We stayed there for a while, long enough that Tyler finally asked, “What’s next?”
I looked up from the bin. Tyler’s face—frightened, waiting.
“Did you love him?”
“What?”
“Did you love Addison?”
He looked away, down at the floor, and mumbled his reply. Just my name—“Mark”—a softly whispered plea.
I’d thought we could haul the cart down the stairwell, but it was too heavy, the weight unwieldy.
We would have to take the elevator. My heart raced as its doors opened to a small lobby, glass-fronted.
But there was only us. We retraced our path to the car, less than a minute.
I opened the trunk. We reached in and took hold.
We had gotten a sense of the weight and positioned ourselves for leverage; it’s amazing, really, how quickly a body can learn to do a thing.
We hoisted Addison up and into the trunk.
He made a soft thud and the car sunk under his weight.
I shut the trunk and grabbed the bag of trash.
“I’ll wait in the car. You take the bin back.”
“Can’t we just ditch it here?”
“The last thing we want is to be leaving evidence behind.”
“It’s just a cart.”
“But it’s not,” I said. “You have to do exactly as I say. That’s the only way this works.” Tyler agreed, wordlessly, and headed back. I watched until he disappeared and got in the car to wait.
Earlier in the room, when Tyler left for the basement, after I dressed Addison, I had thought of running.
I pictured myself going to my car, driving home, and getting into bed.
I would pretend none of this had happened, that Tyler had never come to me.
I would just let things unfold however they would.
But I didn’t run. The thought of Tyler returning to the room and finding me gone, realizing he’d been abandoned—the idea of Tyler going through this alone was more than I could bear.
I thought that when Tyler got back to the car, I could tell him this story.
So he would understand I had chosen to stay.
Through all this, I would be with him. And I thought of the other things I might say.
That when I picked up Addison’s phone from the desk, there had been two missed calls from his mother.
That on our last night in New York, I had almost told Tyler I loved him.
But I didn’t, because I was too scared he wouldn’t say it back.
Now I wished I had said it anyway. And I hoped he had told Addison and that Addison had said the same to him.
What were we protecting? What was there to lose? Everything, it seemed, and nothing.
But when Tyler emerged from the dark and slid into the car, all I said was, “Ready?” and started the engine and pulled into the night.
I drove us to an enormous, forested park, forty minutes outside of Sawyer.
I had been there once with Stephen last summer, our early days.
I’d forgotten until Tyler mentioned it—I had asked him about places off-campus Sawyer students might hang out.
There were clearings in the woods and he said they’d gather for small parties, usually a few times over a semester.
In the fall when the weather was still good, at the end of spring.
“It’s stupid,” he said, “just another place to get wasted.”
A small road ran along the eastern edge of the park and I followed it until we arrived at a parking lot.
Tyler pointed. “Pull in here.” I cut my headlights and rolled forward.
There were tennis courts ahead. The tall towers of lights were out.
We were well into the park, shielded from the road by the dark, enclosed on all sides by evergreen woods.
“Where are the trails?”
“They start behind the tennis courts, and go up that way.” He motioned deeper into the forest. “Now what?”
“We’ll get him out and take him that way.”
“We have to carry him?” I nodded, and he protested. “It’s wide at the start of the trails. You can drive up part of the way.”