8. In Which Aiden and Juniper Find a Very Dead Body #2
“What does he do?” Juniper says quietly, watching with an amused expression as Rocco fights through the tide of students and then disappears around the corner. “He looks familiar.”
“Gym teacher,” I say.
“Who was the gym teacher when you were here?” she says, looking over at me. “Ours was Kennedy. Is that who you had?”
“Old guy with grayish-blond hair?” I say, trying to remember. I have vague memories of excessive whistle-blowing and lots of shouting. “Drill sergeant in his former life?”
“That’s him,” she says with a grin. Something swoops low in my stomach at the sight—she’s really, really pretty—so I look away.
This is going to be a long night.
By the time I step back outside after the dance, I’m ready to call it a night. Heck, I was ready to call it a night three hours ago. But now I’m really ready. If I have to watch one more couple having a sloppy makeout session in some dark corner, I’m going to lose it .
Just a quick stop by the statue, and then I can go home.
Juniper trots along next to me as we cross the parking lot, the little click-click of her heels percussion against the whispering wind. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright, her skin glistening.
“Do you want my jacket?” I say as the breeze ruffles my hair.
“No,” she says. “Thanks, though. This feels good for now. It got hot in there, didn’t it?” She fans her face. Then she tilts her head to the side, drawing my attention to the smooth line of her neck, the delicate curve of her collarbone, all cast into exaggerated shadow by the parking lot lights.
“Hot,” I mutter, tugging at my collar. “Too hot.” I pick up my pace; no need to dawdle. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
“Thank you for coming with me,” she says, hurrying along after me. I slow down a touch—just enough for her to keep up in those heels—and nod.
“Ten minutes,” I remind her.
“Ten minutes,” she agrees. Her voice is a little breathy, and when I look over at her, she’s gripping her skirt with white-knuckled fingers.
“Nervous?”
“Of course,” she says lightly as we start descending the stairs that lead from the parking lot to the track below. “I’d be crazy not to be a little nervous.”
We step aside as we pass two of my coworkers coming up from the opposite direction—both of whom were supposed to be chaperoning the dance, by the way, but were clearly elsewhere.
With Hailey and Bethany, I’m not surprised.
Their dresses swish in the wind as they talk together, their steps hurried, their voices low.
They don’t even acknowledge us as we let them by; Juniper watches them rush away for a moment before turning back to our path.
I look at her and swallow, trying to figure out the most tactful way to ask my next question. “So your mom…”
But Juniper takes the matter out of my hands when she answers, even though I haven’t finished speaking yet.
“She never told me anything about my dad,” she says. “He was a one night stand she barely remembered. A random hookup.” She shivers, turning her head this way and that as we reach the bottom of the concrete steps.
“There,” I say, pointing straight ahead of us.
Solomon the Spud is hard to see at this hour, but he’s just across from us on the opposite side of the field.
I almost set off through the grass, but then I remember Juniper’s shoes.
Those heels will sink three inches deep in two seconds flat.
So I stick to the spongy red track instead.
The moon is playing peekaboo with the clouds, hiding and reappearing, and the wind rattles the leaves in the trees. Something about the whole scene feels eerie, though I couldn’t say why. I can tell Juniper feels it too, though, because she picks up her pace.
As we round the track, the shadowy figure of Solomon the Spud slowly becomes visible, looming in a way that only a potato statue can—bizarre and lumpy-shaped.? * He’s nestled right up against the forest, but every now and then I spot the dull glint of moonlight on metal.
When we reach Solomon, we stand there in silence for a second, looking up at him by the light of my phone flashlight. He’s depicted emerging from a vague, blob-like hunk of metal, and his arms are in the flying Superman pose.
“Interesting that they gave him a belly button,” Juniper says from next to me, her voice musing.
I sigh, embarrassed on behalf of the entire institution. “I know.” Then I stroll forward, my hands back in my pockets to keep them warm, and seat myself on the plinth of the statue.
“Let me know when ten minutes is up?” Juniper says.
She’s turned away from the statue now; she’s so nervous that even a weirdly anthropomorphized potato can’t keep her attention.
She paces instead, radiating that same tension I felt when we first read the note on the back of the invitation.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her to please sit down, because it feels like all her nervous energy is trickling over to me, but I hold it in.
She doesn’t need to hear from me right now.
“I will” is all I say, and then I watch as she continues to pace. She looks around almost constantly, craning her neck, searching in every direction.
But no one is here.
And no one comes.
The minutes tick by almost painfully slowly, and though I would never admit it, I actually don’t speak up until fifteen have passed. It’s getting colder, and later, and something feels…off.
What exactly is going on here?
“Juniper,” I say. My voice cuts through the expectant silence, and Juniper turns to me.
“Yeah,” she says breathlessly, coming to a halt.
I swallow. “It’s been ten minutes.” It’s been seventeen.
“Right,” she says. “Okay.” Her voice is wobbly, full of things she doesn’t need to say. I can only imagine how she’s feeling right now.
And maybe that’s why I find myself speaking, offering something I never intended to offer. “If you want,” I say, “we can look around. Just check and make sure we didn’t miss them. Maybe they hid in the trees.”
I sincerely doubt this is the case, but I know what it’s like to have regrets; even though she pushes my buttons, I don’t want Juniper to leave here with any lingering what if s.
When she doesn’t answer, I stand up, smoothing my suit coat absently. “Do you want to do that?”
“Yeah,” she says finally. “Let’s—” Her voice cracks, and she tries again. “Let’s look in the trees for a second. Just to make sure we didn’t miss them.”
I think she knows as well as I do that it wouldn’t make sense for someone to be lingering out of sight in the trees; still, I follow her around the statue and then back to the tree line. I hold my phone up higher so that we can see.
We do not go gently into that good night. We crash through the underbrush, and we may as well just announce our presence with a foghorn. But despite my light, the darkness still hides plenty for us to trip over, and we do—especially since Juniper is in heels.
We’ve been walking (read: stumbling) for about one minute when something appears in my line of sight. I can’t quite tell what it is, but I can certainly tell what it isn’t: undergrowth or a plant of any kind.
“What’s…” Juniper begins, but her voice trails off into silence as we start walking faster, approaching the strangely shaped lump on the forest floor. I lower my light a bit. That looks—it looks—like?—
“A person,” Juniper whispers, sounding stricken. “That’s a girl.”
I hurry to get closer, crouching over the figure and using my light to inspect the scene.
Juniper is right. It’s a girl.
And she’s dead .
She has to be. There’s too much blood—it’s matted in her hair, thick and glistening grotesquely in the light of my flashlight.
Her skin is ashen, half of her forehead and much of her face obscured by the creeping red blood stain.
Despite the blood, though, I can tell that she’s young.
That, combined with the formal dress she’s wearing, tells me one thing: she’s a student.
Or rather, she was a student.? *
My mind whirls at the implications of this sight. What happened here? Is this?—
But a little whimper from next to me reminds me that I’m not alone, and I turn just in time to see Juniper crouched down, hand extended, her fingers hovering under the girl’s nose.
Searching for breath.
“Don’t look,” I say without thinking. It’s the first thing that pops into my head: that Juniper should not see this. No one should see this. I turn off my phone light and shove the whole thing into my pocket.
It’s too late, though—I hear the guttural sound of retching, followed by a sickening splatter that makes me wince.
I don’t blame her for vomiting; my stomach is turning too.
When the splattering noise stops, I reach into my chest pocket and pull out the handkerchief, passing it blindly in Juniper’s direction.
It takes a second of feeling around in the dark before my hand finds her shoulder; I tap gently.
“Here,” I say. “Wipe your mouth.”
I had assumed that without the light of my phone we wouldn’t be able to see the body, but I was mistaken; the moon is too bright, and if anything, the faint illumination makes it worse.
I can see, but not well; shadows become monsters and men, tree branches turn to greedy, grasping hands.
The wind through the leaves plays tricks on my mind, carrying whispers of death and the faint scent of decay.
“Aiden,” Juniper says. I’ve never heard her sound like this, her voice unnaturally high-pitched and shaky. “That’s a dead body.”
I swallow, the chill in the air settling over me. “Yes.”
“Like, dead dead. Unalive. She’s unalive. She’s not breathing. She’s too young—Aiden, she’s too young—” Her voice rises higher and higher with every word that spills out of her mouth, and I can feel her practically vibrating with panic from next to me. “And what about us?” she says.