Chapter 13 #3
“We can’t chance it.” I’d checked the weather.
Temperatures were supposed to keep rising, and the next few days should bring more rain.
I was hoping it would wash away any trace of us but I didn’t want to push our luck.
“It’s bad enough there’ll be footprints.
We don’t want to leave any tire tracks, too. ”
“We could just put him here. We’re nowhere near campus.” A vibrato crack of desperation cut Tyler’s voice. I didn’t like it; I needed him calm.
“Tyler, we went through this.”
I gave him a moment and then opened my door and got out. He followed. The air was cold, we were well into the middle of the night, past one in the morning. If anyone was there, there would be no way to see them. We would move as quickly as we could and be done with it.
As I popped the truck, I had an absurd wish—that we would find it empty.
It wasn’t, of course. The body was there, encased in the sleeping bag, just where we’d put it.
We hauled it out and carried him past the courts toward the trailhead.
The path ascended sharply, Addison weighty and burdensome in our arms. The outer fabric of the sleeping bag was a slick nylon and I had to dig in to keep it from slipping.
I walked backward and Tyler navigated. His pale face glowed against the dark of the woods.
The path crested and continued up to the right.
A smaller path forked to the left. Tyler nodded his head. “That way.”
We were deep in the park now, enclosed in a thicket of massive hemlocks blackened by the night.
In their terrible reach, the trees blotted out the sky.
As we moved in, I strained to listen and could hear the sound of it growing louder: the rushing waters of the river below.
The path emptied onto a clearing and Tyler stopped.
Remnants from past gatherings littered the ground, plastic trash bags weighted down with melted snow, a pile of cans and bottles.
“This is it.”
We lowered Addison and as the body touched the ground Tyler leapt back, as if surprised.
We paused a minute, catching our breath, and then Tyler led me past some trees, to a smaller clearing.
My arms ached in the absence of the body’s weight.
We stood at the edge of an embankment, a sheer drop of twenty feet, maybe thirty, down to the river below.
Tyler leaned to look. The lines of his body stretched before me and then out of nowhere, in a flash, I thought: with just one, quick shove, all of this would be over, I’d be free.
I swayed—a sudden rush of vertigo—and grabbed Tyler’s shoulder to steady myself.
He jerked back, out of my hold, and I saw it in his eyes: He had been thinking it, too.
We returned to the sleeping bag and I unzipped it so we could take Addison out.
I could feel Tyler at my side, watching.
Stretched out before us, you could imagine Addison had simply lain down in the woods to rest. I heard a sound, some murmur and turned to look.
Tyler held himself, weeping—soft moans, a plaintive cry.
I waited a moment, then called him forward.
We lifted Addison a final time. We carried him to the ledge.
I rooted down, pressing my weight, and told Tyler to do the same.
We were anchored in place, Addison hanging between us, like he’d passed out, like we were carrying him to bed.
“We need to make sure he clears it. Do you understand? We lift and throw on three.” Tyler nodded. With the early spring melt, the river was swollen, whiteheads rushing past. I counted, my voice low. “One … two … three—”
We swung Addison out over the edge and released him to the air.
Tyler gasped and turned away but I stood watching.
Addison blinked from view and then a crash sounded as he hit the water.
He landed close to midstream, away from the shallow edges and any branches gathered there on which he might get snagged; we’d done well.
In an instant, he was gone from view, riding the currents below.
We walked back to the clearing. If needed, I wanted a plausible story of how Addison had ended up in the river.
A night partying in the woods, a slip and fall.
And hopefully, if he was found, it would be after enough time had passed that decay would hide the fact that he was dead before he entered the water.
I dragged his sleeping bag through a small opening between a tangle of growth.
I took the bottle of Adderall from my pocket, opened the baggie, and tossed it.
It landed on the bag with the quietest thud.
I returned to Tyler and we left the way we came.
I drove back to campus, returning to the spot I parked in just a few hours ago. Those few hours a split in time: before and after. From the back seat, I grabbed a trash bag.
“Okay, get out of those clothes.”
Tyler wriggled in the passenger seat, pulling off each item and passing it to me. I placed the clothes in the garbage bag. I would do the same with my own when I got home, and then tomorrow, I would find somewhere to dispose of it all. When Tyler got down to his underwear, he stopped.
“Everything,” I said. I turned my face as he slid from them.
I knew I was being overly cautious, but I wanted no trace left on us of where we’d been left.
He passed the underwear to me and then his shoes and socks.
He looked small in the seat, naked, hands pinched between his knees, waiting. “Go ahead and get dressed.”
When he was done, I reviewed our next steps.
Tyler should clean the room thoroughly. In the morning, he was to text Addison’s phone, ask where he was.
Students would be returning to the dorms. To those who knew Addison had stayed behind—the group from the ski trip, the RA—Tyler would mention that he hasn’t seen him.
And then Monday he would talk to the RA again: He hasn’t heard from Addison and is getting worried.
“That’s it. Don’t say anything more. And don’t put too much stress on it.
Don’t act more worried than you should be. ”
“Alright.” He sounded far away.
“You have to put all of this out of your mind. It’s the only way to get through these next days. You have to believe the story you tell—that Addison wasn’t here when you got back. And that’s it. And then you need to let me know as soon as you’re contacted by any administrators or the police—”
“Police?”
“There’s going to be an investigation. Addison is a missing person. Or he will be. That’s why we can’t stir up too much concern too quickly. Once things get going, that’s it. These first moments are the only ones we can control. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Okay.”
He sat for a moment. “I guess I should go now.”
“Can I ask you something?” He nodded. “Why did you lie about the Adderall?”
“I didn’t. I told you, we did some lines of it.”
“Not tonight. Months ago. That story about not having health insurance and Addison getting the prescription for you. You made that up. And about your family, about not having money.” He said nothing, so I continued.
“Addison told me, in Columbus. That you’d spent the break with your grandparents in Malibu. ”
“I know. He felt really bad.”
“Addison knew about us?”
Tyler nodded again.
“Why did you lie about all these things?”
“I don’t know, it just sort of happened. You assumed I didn’t have money, and I let you believe it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember when I told you about my soccer scholarship?”
“Yes.” Of course I did—I remembered everything.
“It’s true, I am on one. Not because I need it, just ’cause I’m good at soccer. But I could see it in your face—it changed what you thought of me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Like it made me different from what you assumed. Different from all the other rich kids at Sawyer. And I could tell you liked it.”
“Liked what?”
“That I was some poor kid you were going to rescue.”
“That’s ridiculous. You didn’t have to tell me all those stories.”
“I think it’s something about me,” he said. “Like people are into some idea of me, but it’s not really me. It’s something they make up in their heads. So I was just, I don’t know—trying to be the Tyler you had in your head.”
We sat in quiet for a while, neither wanting to move. I didn’t like what I’d heard, but I knew he was right. I wanted him to need me, I wanted to believe I could look after him. And all this time, he’d seen right through me.
“Okay,” I said, finally. “Go in. Clean up and get some rest.”
Tyler reached for the door but stopped.
“I did love him. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it.
And he loved me, too—I know he did. But he kind of loved everyone, I think.
We hooked up once, last year, drunk after some party back at the room.
I couldn’t believe it was happening. It’s like, I know it’s just sex.
It’s not a big deal. But I had thought about it so much.
What it would be like if it ever happened.
We were kind of wasted and we passed out and when we woke up the next morning, my head was killing me but I was so happy.
I felt so good. Like everything that usually stressed me out, soccer or my parents or grades, it didn’t matter.
It would be fine. That’s what I thought—now everything will be fine.
And I was just watching him while he slept—we were crammed together in my bed.
And he opened his eyes and do you know what he said?
He said—Don’t look at me like that, I don’t want anything to change.
I felt so stupid. I just said I’m not looking at anything, or something like that.
And then he goes, What a funny night and jumps up and gets dressed like it was nothing.
” Tyler paused, staring ahead, not looking at anything.
“The ski trip was supposed to be special. For us. I really wanted him there—”
“I get it.”
“He was supposed to be there. It was my birthday. I’m twenty now.”
I moved through my apartment with the lights off.
I stripped and stuffed my clothes into the plastic bag with Tyler’s.
I placed that bag in another, knotted at the top, to be safe.
I showered, the heat as high as I could bear, and dressed.
In the kitchen, I found a bottle of whiskey, untouched all these months.
I poured, the amber liquid pooling in the dark.
I pressed the kitchen window open. Cold air rushed in.
I sat on the sill. There was nothing to see, just a great blank world.
A half-smoked cigarette was tucked into a corner of the window’s outer ledge.
One of Tyler’s from the fall, left to be finished later and forgotten.
It was soggy from months of snow and rain, spongy between my finger and thumb.
I brought the stub toward my mouth and touched my tongue to it. It tasted dirty but also like nothing.
In the silence and stillness, I finally felt the full weight of what I had done.
What I had willingly, willfully gotten myself into.
There was no turning back. Not for me, not for Tyler.
It was the right thing to do, it had to be.
If Tyler had called 911 right away, he could have passed it off as an accident.
Addison had been drinking, a slip and fall was entirely plausible.
But he had waited an entire night. And then came to me.
When he needed help, he chose me. What choice did I have?
Addison’s life was over. It was cruel and unfair—but nothing could change that.
What justice was served by Tyler’s life being over as well?
I thought about Tyler, in the cold of that room, lying with Addison’s body an entire night.
Pathetic to be jealous of a dead boy, I know, but Addison had gotten what I wanted, what I knew all along could never be mine: Tyler’s true affection, the heart of him.
These past months—Stephen wanting me, me wanting Tyler, Tyler wanting Addison, Addison wanting Kennedy …
is this all the world was? A chain of misplaced longings, never met?
But now, in some twisted, unbreakable way, I had gotten what I wanted.
Now Tyler and I shared something no one else could or ever would.
Something undoable. Finally, Tyler belonged to me and I belonged to him.
And for this, I only had to sacrifice everything.
I pinched the cigarette stub and flicked it into the void. A small price to pay.
I stayed in the kitchen the rest of the night and let my limbs grow tired and sore pushed against the window frame until the weak white sun climbed into a gray dawn.