Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
RIDE OR DIE
TARYN
My body sways from side to side and I’m unsteady on my legs, like a baby calf right after birth. Whatever was in my drink was definitely strong, and it isn’t totally out of my system yet. I use the heavy wooden door to support my weight.
“Jo-Jo,” I whisper, opening the door just enough to peek my head out into the hallway but making sure no one can see inside the bedroom. “Something happened and you have to promise me that you’ll stay calm.”
Totally unaware of the hell that awaits behind the door, Jodie chuckles. “Calm is my middle name.” She winks, but the smile fades from her pretty face when she takes a second look at me. “Is that blood on your cheek? Are you ok? Did Tim hurt you? If he did, I swear to God I’m gonna kill him.”
The words tumble out of my mouth before I can think of it. “Yeah, too late for that. Come on in, please. Be quick.”
I pull my best friend into the room and shut the door behind me, leaning against it for support.
Her eyes land on me before anything else, her back turned to the massacre scene in the room. “What the hell is going on? Taryn, you’re covered in blood. Did you get your period?” Her smile turns into concern as she assesses me.
“No.” I shake my head, my voice hitching in my throat. “I wish the answer was yes, and that I called you to bring me tampons to avoid an embarrassing situation. It’s so much worse. Before you turn around, just know that there is a lot more blood. Tim is dead.”
Jodie’s mouth opens in a little surprised ‘o’. “Dead? What do you mean dead?” She asks as she turns around. “Holy fucking shit.”
Neither Jodie nor I am shy. We’re dancers, used to performing and being in the public eye, at least on our campus. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jodie speechless until today.
My best friend takes a couple of hesitant steps closer to the bed. “What am I looking at?” she gasps. “If this is a prank of some kind, I swear it isn’t funny.”
I don’t know how I kept myself relatively together until now. Her shocked tone is the straw that broke the camel’s back, and my tears break the dam, running hot and fast down my face.
“It isn’t a prank, Jo-Jo. I just woke up, and he was dead. His head was under the covers and I fucking kicked it. I kicked it. I—”
Jodie grabs my biceps before pulling me into a tight hug.
“It’s ok, babe. It’s ok. I’m here now. We’ll figure this out.
” She pulls me back to look at me again.
“Just tell me what happened. I can’t help you if I don’t know what we’re really looking at.
Did he try to hurt you? Did you have to defend yourself from him? ”
“He was like that when I woke up, I—” I stop in my tracks as the realization hits me that Jodie thinks I did this.
Her first question was if I killed my hookup in self-defense. That confirms my fears that this looks bad.
If even my best friend thinks I’m responsible for this scene worthy of a slasher movie, what will the police think?
I cover my mouth again. The tears are now coming so fast that I can’t even breathe, let alone speak.
Jodie pulls me into her arms. “It’s ok, Taryn. As long as you’re ok, we can figure the rest out.”
I tell her everything I remember, which isn’t much. I start with coming up here with Tim last night and end my story with the panicked text I sent her.
“Do you still think I did it?”
There’s a moment of hesitation on Jodie’s face.
“Honestly, sweetie, I don’t know. I’ve known you since sheer luck made us roommates freshman year, and you’ve been my best friend ever since.
The Taryn I know wouldn’t hurt a fly. But if you were roofied…
that shit can induce psychosis. Remember what happened last year to Laura Hamilton? ”
That’s the girl who was found naked in the middle of the interstate.
“What am I going to do? When the police see this…”
Jodie grabs my biceps again, a determined look on her face. “That’s if we call the police. And you’re right, this looks bad. But there’s another option.”
I blink a couple of times, attempting to clear the fog in my head. “Is there another option?”
“The way I see it, we don’t have to call the emergency services.
” She nods her head toward the king-sized bed in the middle of the room.
“Tim, over there, is beyond help at this point. Right? I don’t know what happened and I don’t care.
Besides, if he’s the one who put a roofie in your drink—and you didn’t hang out with anyone else last night—he deserves what happened to him. Fucking rapist.”
I start shaking uncontrollably. “Do you think he raped me? I mean, I wanted to hook up with him.”
Jodie’s jaw ticks as she pulls me into her arms again.
“That’s a difficult one. You were consenting to having sex with him, but did he bother trying to find out?
No, he made sure you were in no shape to tell him that you wanted what happened between the two of you.
So as far as he knew, he raped you. Plain and simple. ”
She’s right.
I shudder still in her embrace. What a fuck up of epic proportions. I have no idea how my first time was because I can’t remember it.
“I don’t even want to think about consent.
” I admit to Jodie. “All I want to tell myself is that I wanted to sleep with him. I can’t believe that he drugged me.
He was so nice to me. Witty, funny, even a little sweet.
I felt comfortable coming to his room and not frightened at all.
I actually liked him, or I would have chickened out. ”
My best friend sighs. “Yeah, I know. I’m proud of you for sticking to your guns and going through with it. But we’ll talk about that part later. We have a problem. I think we shouldn’t call the cops. We should just go.”
“You want to leave?”
Jodie nods. “You’re my best friend and I know you aren’t a violent or dangerous person.
But the cops don’t know that. And I hate to hurt your feelings, but this looks really bad, Taryn.
They’re going to think you did it. No one knows what happened but me and you.
And Tim, I guess, but he isn’t going to tell anyone.
Right now everyone in the house is still asleep, probably still drunk.
We need to get out of here before people start waking up. If they see us, we’re fucked.”
My bottom lip trembles as I consider her plan. “And then what?”
“We pack our apartment, get in your car and drive as far away from here as we possibly can.”
I rub my temples with both my hands, wishing my head stopped throbbing. “What about graduation?”
“We don’t have to attend the graduation ceremony. The school will mail our diplomas to the addresses they have on file. My parents will keep mine safe.”
“My mom will do the same with mine.” I agree. “So we drive west and then what?”
Jodie shrugs. “We’ll drive until we find somewhere interesting to stop, and we’ll keep an eye on the news to see what happens here. The further we are from here, the better.”
My eyes go to the bed for just a split second. I flinch at the sight of Tim’s lifeless, headless body. “Ok. Yeah, I’m in. Let me find the bathroom. I need to clean up.”
She stops me by stepping in my way. “Absolutely not. You’ve already touched the murder weapon and you have Tim’s blood all over you. In the off chance you didn’t do this, let’s avoid giving the cops any more evidence by spreading your DNA all over the place.”
Fuck. She’s right. I hadn’t thought about that. I’m glad at least one of us remembers the stuff we learned from the true crime documentaries and podcasts we love to binge on our nights in. “That’s true. But I slept with him. My DNA must be already in the room.”
Jodie agrees. “True. But you don’t have a criminal record.
So the police won’t have anything to match your DNA with.
And like every frat brother I know, Tim probably had regular hookups.
Chances are that if you lost some hair, or you left some skin cells in the sheets, your genetic material isn’t the only one in the room. ”
“Yuck,” I say with a shudder. “I hadn’t thought about that. Do you think Tim didn’t change his bedsheets between hookups?”
Jodie rolls her eyes. “Girl, some of these guys are pigs. That’s why we came here to get you laid; we knew it would be a sure thing.
You might have not noticed last night since you were a woman on a mission, but Andy took the president of Zeta Theta Beta to his room shortly after we got here.
They came back about an hour later and by the time you and Tim left, Andy had another girl in his room. ”
Her tone is bitter and a little disgusted, but I detect the sadness in it. “Jo-Jo, Andy is an idiot. He didn’t deserve you.”
She’s been putting on a brave face after she found her boyfriend of two years in bed with another woman, but I know Jodie is still hurting.
“Yeah, whatever.” She shrugs, pretending to be fine.
“It’s been three months; I’m over it. I’m over him.
Look, we should really go. The more I think about, the better this sounds right now.
We both need to get away from this place.
You for obvious reasons, and me so I can stop hooking up with my ex’s frat brothers hoping to make him jealous. ”
Oh. “You stayed here too last night.”
It isn’t a question. In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t noticed that Jodie is still in last night’s clothes. And she got here really quickly after I texted her.
“Yeah, I hooked up with Owen Smith. Andy can’t stand him; I hope he noticed. But we’ll have all the time in the world to talk about our disastrous love lives on the road. Let’s go.”
She walks across the room, opening the door to what looks like a closet.
“What are you doing?” I ask as she walks out with a purple bedsheet in her arms.
Jodie begins draping the sheet over the bed, covering Tim’s headless body.
“Let’s cover him up. If anyone looked inside the room from the door, without coming all the way in, they might not notice all the blood splattered everywhere.
They’ll see a body in bed covered by a sheet and think he’s still asleep.
That might give us more time. Once his frat brothers see him, the whole campus will be swarming with cops.
We need to leave before that happens, if we can. ”
I help her drape the sheet over the bed. “Ok.”
Once we’re done, rather than going toward the door, Jodie returns to the closet.
“Put these on.” She hands me an oversized Gamma Delta Tau t-shirt and a beanie. “We can’t leave the house with blood all over our clothes.”
I notice that there’s blood on her dress too from hugging me. “Oh shit. I ruined your favorite dress. I’m so sorry.”
She covers herself up with a similar t-shirt and a baseball cap.
“Don’t worry about it. I wore this dress on my last date with Andy.
It was tainted anyway. Come on. Carry your shoes in your hand and act as normally as you can.
If we look like two girls on their walk of shame after last night’s rager, no one will give us another look. ”
Tears well in my eyes again. “I don’t know what I would have done without you, Jo-Jo.”
She’s holding a pillowcase as she collects the solo cups from Tim’s nightstand, my dress from last night, and the machete from the floor.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Just making sure we get a good head start by making things a little harder for the forensic team. We’ll take this stuff with us and leave it somewhere far, far away from here.”
I’m thankful that she can think clearly for both of us right now. “That’s right. I can’t wait to clean up.”
Jodie grabs my wrist, her tone more serious than I’ve ever heard it.
“Neither of us is going to clean up in our apartment. Actually, you just stay in your car; you have way too much blood on you. I’ll take what we need.
Luckily the apartment came furnished, and we had already begun sending most of our things back to our parents.
So we don’t have much left. We’ll be out of here in an hour at most. Hey Taryn, make sure you take your phone with you and make sure it’s turned off until we leave the state. ”
We crack the door open to make sure that the coast is clear.
Last night most people had their final exams. That means that there were several big parties happening on campus and at this early hour, everyone is still asleep or drunk, like Jodie said.
We don’t see a soul on our way back to our apartment.
One hour later, my beat up Volkswagen Beetle is stuffed with all our belongings, and I drive us off the campus perimeter and onto the highway.
“Jo-Jo,” I say once we’re headed west and away from Hemlock Beach city limits. “I hope you know how much this means to me. You’re running away with me, putting your life on the line.”
My best friend’s tone is steady and confident. “You’re my best friend, the sister I never had. You’re my ride or die and I’m yours. You would have done the same thing for me if roles had been reversed.”
“You’re right.” I agree. “I hope you know I mean it.”
She nods. “I’ve never doubted that we’re each other’s lifelines. Besides, what else would I do? You got blood all over me too, explaining that to the cops without implicating you wouldn’t be easy.”
Guilt twists my insides and it feels like there’s lead in the pit of my stomach. “Where are we going to go? I have three hundred dollars in my account.”
“I have five hundred.” Jodie says. “Let’s just go as far west as that takes us.
We’ll drive all night and stop tomorrow to rest and to dump our clothes and that pillowcase somewhere far, far away from here.
We’ll stop when we’re out of money and look for jobs.
Let’s lie low this summer and then we’ll see how things are in the fall. ”
“Ok,” I say, still feeling guilty.
“Hey,” Jodie says. “We’ll be ok. This will be our little adventure. One summer to let loose and run a little wild. I’ll be the Thelma to your Louise.”
I chuckle at her reference. Old movies are another one of our binge watches when we aren’t in the mood for true crime.
I nod, feigning a courage I don’t really feel at the moment. “Deal. You and I on the open road on a wild summer adventure.”
Jodie opens the window and sticks her head out. “Ride or die, baby!” She screams into the wind.
With my best friend by my side, I feel hope that one day soon last night will be a distant memory.