CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR NOW

“Bury her?” I ask, stunned.

Melody steeples her hands in a prayer position. “Yes.”

A hard silence follows this statement, as if neither of us wants to further acknowledge it. Bury our best friend. This would be crossing the Rubicon, admitting murder. This would be me becoming Eric Myers, and all the countless murderers before me who took the unoriginal but often effective way out of murder. Hiding the body.

I swallow down nausea, sickened by the thought.

I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to bury my best friend.

“We can’t,” I say.

Melody nods but then meets my eyes. “We can though.”

“No,” I say, standing up. I can’t sit here calmly and consider this. “It’s hideous.”

“It is,” she agrees.

“And even if we were to think about it … there’s like ten feet of snow outside? The ground would be rock hard.” I start pacing again. “We don’t have a shovel.”

“There is a shovel,” she answers, her demeanor unnervingly calm. “In the basement. I saw it in the corner when we were getting the gun.” She stands up now to join me. “We can clean up the place. There’s bleach in the kitchen.”

I turn to her. “You seem pretty adept at this, Melody.”

She doesn’t respond to my jibe. “We can do it,” she repeats.

I keep pacing back and forth. “Okay, let’s say we do bury her. Then what? Just hope no one notices that she’s gone?”

Melody leans against the wall, like she can barely keep herself up. “Obviously we need a story.”

“A story?” I say, incredulous. “What are you talking about? I saw Noah and his mom. I told him about everything. He’s probably coming any second now.”

She squints, thinking about this. “We take her further into the woods, where he can’t see us. And we tell him it was all a joke.” She nods to herself. “That could work. They don’t know how the night went. They don’t know you shot her.”

I stop pacing and lean against the wall next to her in exhaustion. “Forget it, Mel. It’s not gonna work.”

“Maybe,” she says, ignoring me, “we tell them it was a prank. And she was doing her part of the prank and was running away but she just … never came back. Just a tragic accident.”

I don’t answer.

A long pause follows her statement. It’s simple. It’s stupid.

But I have to admit it.

That story might work.

Outside, a mourning dove calls, the sound dull and gloomy.

“I’m gonna need your help, Alex.” Melody tugs at her arm, but the body barely budges. “She’s heavy.”

I’m standing six feet away from them, trying to pretend this isn’t happening.

“Alex,” she grunts.

Gritting my teeth, I inch toward them, but then my stomach starts roiling, and I back away again. “I can’t do this.”

“You have to.” She keeps dragging the body, sweating. “I can’t do this alone.”

I wipe sweat from my own face, not from physical labor but from nausea. I feel physically ill doing this.

“Just … give me a second here.” I take deep breaths to fight gagging. I get closer to her and reach down, but my hands are shaking too hard.

Melody puts her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Alex. We’ll do this as fast as we can.”

I swallow, my throat so dry that it hurts. “I don’t think I can.”

“Come on,” she prods me, her voice not gentle now. “Do you think she would want you to go to prison? Do you think she would want that for us?”

I shake my head, my eyes filling with tears. I ball my hands into fists, knocking them against my head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

“Alex,” Melody yells this time, snapping me back into reality. “It’s almost daylight. Noah will be here any minute. We need to get this done before someone sees us.”

“Okay,” I say, breathing deeply. “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

“Take one of her arms,” Melody says, pointing.

Fighting the heaving in my stomach, I reach down to her arm. Then I back up again and turn away, smacking my hand against the wall. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

“Alex,” Melody yells again. “Please stop. You … you need to help me. I can’t do this alone. Three musketeers, remember? This is what she would want. I promise you. This is what she would want.”

I spin around to face them. “Okay,” I say. “I can do this. I can do it.”

With trembling hands, I reach down for her arm. But first, I brush the hair from her eyes, though that doesn’t matter now. She won’t need her damn scrunchie anymore. I grip her arm and pull hard, but then her body springs to life, sitting up. I drop to the floor, my heart squeezing in my chest.

“Um,” she says, with an apologetic lilt, then offers a sheepish grin. “Happy bachelorette party?”