Page 14 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer (Summers in Seaside)

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?”

“No.” I say glumly.

“Okay, let’s take a step back and think logically.”

We sit on either side of the body, the damp from the grass seeps through the dry shorts I threw on after I called her. My ass feels soggy. I should have put on dry panties when I grabbed the shorts. Actually, all things considered I’m going to burn all these clothes when we are finished here.

“What about those appliance straps?”

I look at Amy quizzically. “Huh?”

“You know, like what the mover guys use with refrigerators and stuff,” she explains. “They go over your shoulders and help you lift with your legs or whatever.”

“What about them?”

“Do you have any?”

“No.” I scoff. “And he’s not shaped like a refrigerator even if he weighs as much as one. But I like where your head is at.” I rack my brain for anything I’ve ever used, besides a man, to move heavy things around and come up empty. How pathetic is that?

“Tell me I’m brilliant,” Amy says suddenly.

“You’re brilliant,” I parrot drily.

“Fucking right I am.” She stands and walks the few steps to the Jenkins paved patio and points to a very large potted plant sitting on a raised platform about three inches off the ground.

“Look, it’s on casters. Mrs. Jenkins must have more than one of those given her fondness for big plants.

We’ll use those to roll the big lug away. ”

“That could work!” I say, “What do we do, sit him up on it?”

“No way,” she says. “I say we space a few out in a row and just roll him over so he’s lying on top of them.

After as thorough an examination as we can manage with limited light from our cell phones and trying to make as little noise as possible, we find three relatively large ones and bring them back to where Doug lies. Amy lays them alongside his chest hips, and calves respectively.

“Now, we roll him onto them,” she says with flourish. We both crouch on one side and tentatively reach under body.

“Is it weird I feel like I’m violating him somehow, right now?” I ask, palming a handful of his ass.

“Samesies.” Amy nods.

We half lift half roll his body over and onto the dollies. I’m more than surprised when it actually works.

“Okay,” I tell Amy. “I didn’t mean it before, but I do now. You really are brilliant. Sorry I was sarcastic earlier.”

“That’s okay.” She beams and wipes at the beads of sweat collecting on her forehead. “I’m used to your chronic bitchiness by now, it’s part of your charm.”

I flip her off. Then realize that kind of proves her point so I follow that up with blowing her a kiss. She catches it in the air and throws it the ground and stomps on it.

I fucking love our friendship.

Sweat is dripping in rivulets down the back of my neck before a few minutes are up.

I wish I’d stopped to put my hair up earlier.

The night may be cool, but despite the addition of wheels, trying to roll two hundred and fifty plus pounds of unwieldy dead weight on three-inch wheels in wet grass is ridiculously hard.

We finally get him moving, with me pushing at one end and Amy pulling at the other - head down, arms straining, feet churning grass. It takes me ten feet to realize I don’t know where we’re going. “Wait,” I say. “Where are we taking him?”

“To your house,” Amy says like it’s obvious.

“What am I going to do with him at my house?” I hiss.

“Well, where else should we put him?” she asks.

“Fine,” I concede. “Except we’re not moving toward my house.” I gesture in the other direction.

She doesn’t stop. “I can’t turn, Elle! If I turn, I drop an arm. And if I drop an arm, I lose my momentum, and if I lose momentum, I lose my sanity. So, unless you want me sobbing on the lawn next to his elbow, just guide me like a human GPS!”

I bite my lip and pivot, trying to steer her backward through the uneven grass, the scent of soil and fertilizer thick in my nose.

We’re both wheezing now, slipping and grunting like a couple of out-of-shape grave robbers.

By the time we reach the gate, my arms are shaking, my back is on fire, and I can feel something wet and thick sliding into my shoe.

We drop his limbs with heavy thuds, both of us collapsing against the fence, panting like we just outran a SWAT team.

Amy stares down at Doug, then up at me. “You know what?” she pants. “Next time you kill someone, I’m hiring movers.”