Page 26 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer

“Come on, we need to move him before the sun comes up or the kids get up whichever comes first,” I say.

We’re already halfway down the hill before I realize I’m still holding the gnome like Doug’s going to come after me again. Jesus Christ.

fourteen

. . .

Elle

The grass is colder now,feeling almost sticky against my shoes. We retrace my earlier steps, trying not to leave more prints, but every squish underfoot sounds like a scream.

Doug hasn’t moved.

Thank God.

Amy circles his body a few times, studying him from various angles, her index finger back to tapping the tip of her nose. “I can’t believe you killed someone. I’m not sure if I’m scared of you or impressed.”

“You and me both.”

“You tried moving him already, right?” she asks.

I nod. “It’s impossible with one person.”

Amy takes his arms. I grab his ankles. The moment my fingers wrap around him, I flinch.

His skin is still warm. That unsettles me more than it should. He’s supposed to be a corpse now, abstract, gone. But he feels too real. Too recently human. Like a man who might still sit up and ask what the hell we think we’re doing.

I shake it off. There’s no time for second thoughts.

“We’ll lift on three,” I say, my voice rougher than I expect. “One... two... three.”

We try it once. Then again with a new grip. Nothing. He’s like a sandbag full of bad decisions.

“Are you engaging your core?” she asks.

“Yes, I’m engaging my core.” The longer this takes, the more pissed off I am. At myself for killing him. At myself for not regretting killing him. At Doug for being so fucking heavy. At Amy for being pragmatic. At the world for anything else I can think of.

“Don’t be pissy with me or I’m not going to help you.”

She pisses me off in the way that only a girl’s ride or die best friend can. I like it when she snaps back at me because I figure that means I piss her off in the same way and some demented part of me finds that very satisfying.

Probably the same demented part that just killed Doug.

“This is taking too long.” I drop the limbs I’m holding with a thud and look around for something to help us. “We need something that will move him.”

“We need a car,” Amy says.

“I don’t know how I’m going to salvage Mrs. Jenkins yard as it is—she’s got trampled grass, a broken paver, a missing gnome, and you want to add tire tracks to the mix?”

“Fine. What about a wheelbarrow?” Amy suggests.

“We can’t even get his fat ass off the ground, and you think we’re going to lift him into a wheelbarrow?”

“It’s no different from lifting him into a car,” she argues.

“We’re never getting a car back here, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Do you have a better idea?”