JOSIE
How do you tell a dead body from a prop? The smell. The smell is so pungent that I almost throw up in the trunk. I shut it and take deep breaths, trying to figure out what’s happening.
There’s only one person I can call, Rika. She’s still inside the bar, so I dial her.
“I need your help, Rika. Please! I’m outside,” I blurt.
I wish I were a braver person and could deal with this on my own. At least Rika will know that I had nothing to do with it.
Rika comes out of the bar right away. “What’s up?”
When I pop the trunk open, she stares at what’s inside. “Is it what I think it is?”
“It is,” I whisper.
“We need to call the police. Now,” she says, still staring into the trunk and covering her nose with her forearm.
“I know. I didn’t do it, Rika. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what this is, but I have nothing to do with it. I swear. I was with you inside.”
She looks around. “Dammit, the cameras are only in front of the bar, not here. I’m calling 911.”
That very moment, my phone beeps with a message, and I meet Rika’s eyes.
“Check it?” she prompts.
I do.
Unknown: I know what you did to your daddy.
I read it out loud, in a half whisper.
“Who is in the trunk?” Rika asks, staring at me.
My hands trembling, I pop the trunk open again. I hold the trunk lid halfway up, gagging at the smell, then shine my phone on the face of the body. It’s blue-white, condensation gathering on it, and I hold my breath in horror.
“It’s him,” I say, horrified. “The man from the news.”
“James Derek Sickler,” Rika says.
“Yes,” I breathe out. “Oh my god. It can’t… It’s… Oh, god. That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Wait, he’s dead? Who’s texting you then?”
I look at the phone. “I don’t know. I thought it was him.”
My phone screen flashes with an incoming message, and it is an unknown number, but when I double-check, it’s a different number than the one from before.
Unknown: If you call the police, they’ll find out how you killed your daddy. And you probably did it with that big knife from the butcher’s block in your kitchen. Bad girl, Josie.
My stomach drops. The knife, the missing knife from the kitchen—
But how?
Then all the pieces start coming together. Grandma wasn’t confused when she said she heard someone come in yesterday. What if the missing knife—
“Let me see.” Rika yanks the phone out of my hand. “What knife is he talking about?”
“There’s a knife missing from my kitchen.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how. But it is.”
“Girl… And it has your fingerprints on it?”
I meet her eyes.
“Who is this person?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say in a forced whisper, my voice shaking. “I don’t know, Rika. I don’t know what to do. It’s not me. I swear. It’s some sick setup. What if the police find the knife and it has my fingerprints and…”
My phone beeps again.
Unknown: You are in trouble, Josie Boots. Just like your mother once was. Is your grandmother going to cover it up again?
Rika stares at the message. “They’re watching us.” She looks around. It’s dark, no one in sight, but she might be right. “Okay, we need to go elsewhere.”
“What? With this?” I point at the trunk.
Rika slams it shut and looks around. “What else?” She turns back to me. “Call the police? We will. We just need another option.”
“Another option? What option, Rika? There are no options. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I swear, I didn’t do it!”
I start shaking. Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe, panic clogging my throat. I close my eyes and try to focus on breathing.
“Josie! Josie, look at me!” Rika shakes me. “Get your shit together! We’ll go to a different place, talk about this, figure out what to do. I’m driving. Come on! Giddyap! We don’t have all night.”
Rika walks around my car and gets in the driver’s seat. “Come on!” she urges me, and I get in the passenger seat. “Keys.” I pass her the keys. “Buckle up,” she orders.
We pull out of the parking lot, and only a minute into the drive, there’s a pair of headlights following us.
My phone pings.
Unknown: Running away?
I show the message to Rika.
“Hold on, Boots,” she says, then guns the engine.
In five minutes, we are parked on the outskirts of Burnville, beneath some trees on a dark side street.
“Where did you learn to drive like this?” I ask.
“Running away from cops.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Didn’t work, though.”
“Are you referring to your grand theft auto?”
“Yep.”
I wish I could laugh right now, but my heart is pounding.
Rika picks up her phone and dials someone. “Hey,” she says softly. “We have a problem… Yes, a big one…”
“Who are you calling?” I ask in panic, acutely aware that there’s a dead person in my trunk, and now I can smell it inside.
The smell seems to be everywhere. If that man was hit the night I witnessed it and died right there, it’s been—oh, god—days!
It felt like cold emanated from it. Did someone keep it frozen?
“I can’t tell you on the phone, but we need help,” Rika says calmly on the phone. “At least your opinion. There’s a lot. I can’t explain. Yes… Me and Josie Boots. Yes, she’s in trouble. Yes, in ten… Got it.”
She hangs up and starts driving.
“Who was that?” I ask.
“My nana.”
“Your what?” I gape at her. “What nana? Where?”
“Boots, this is not the time. Calm down. Keep yourself together, okay? We’ll find the best way to deal with this. If we have to call the police, at least we need a story.”
“There’s no story.”
“There has to be a story. Think. Something you might’ve missed. Something he said.”
I take a deep breath and blurt out the truth, “I went to meet him before.”
Rika slams on the brakes, the car halting abruptly. Slowly, she turns her wide eyes at me. “You what?”
“That night, when that guy texted me about a meetup, I did go.”
And then I tell her everything, down to every little detail.
“Wow,” Rika whispers and sits quietly for some time. “That changes things. You think the guy has been dead all this time?”
“I don’t know.”
Rika resumes driving, and I close my eyes, thinking that my family’s past finally caught up with me in the worst way possible.
“You fleeing the hit-and-run scene could be considered a crime,” says Rika as she drives.
“Depending on the circumstances. But if you returned to report it, and he wasn’t there, then it’s not a crime.
But! If the guy has been dead all this time, then he might not have been stabbed. Or was stabbed afterward.”
Silence burns between us. There are too many but’s and or’s. And we are already pulling onto a familiar street several blocks away from my grandmother’s.
Rika turns off the headlights as she drives.
“Why?” I ask.
“Not to attract attention, Boots.”
“Where are we going?”
“Patience. Almost there.”
She pulls into one of the back streets, between two rows of houses. I know this street, though I’m not sure which house it is. It’s hard to tell in the dark.
She stops the car by a shed, then turns off the interior lights so they don’t come on when we open our doors. We get out of the car in silence, walk to the trunk, and wait.
Only seconds later, a shadow detaches from the house.
I squint in the dark, trying to see who it is. Rika’s grandmother? How did I not know that she had a grandmother in Burnville?
The woman turns on the flashlight in her hand. When she gets close and stops in front of us, my jaw drops.
“Hey, Nana,” Rika says.
I can’t help staring. It’s Mrs. Snickett.