“Just Addison?”
He nodded. I looked back at the desk. Something glinted and I bent closer. A smudged mirror, a rolled-up bill on top, and next to it, an orange prescription bottle. The Adderall.
Tyler stood watching me. “We crushed up some pills and snorted them.”
“Clean this all up. Bag it all. And anything else from last night.” I passed Tyler a trash bag I had brought from home. He picked up the bottle of pills. “Not that. Give it to me.”
I put them in a baggie and into my pocket. I unrolled the sleeping bag across the strip of floor between their beds and folded it open.
“You’re going to have to help with this part.”
I stood at the head of the bed, Tyler at the foot. We slipped our hands under Addison. Tyler looked past me, eyes on the ceiling.
“Lift.” Tyler’s arms shook. We lowered Addison to the floor. “Where’s his phone?”
“There.” Tyler pointed to the desk. I picked it up and stared at it in the flat of my palm.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I lowered the phone. “Is he right- or left-handed?”
“Left.”
I slid the phone into the left pocket of his jeans. I zipped the sleeping bag around him. There was a small opening at the top. I stopped, watching for some movement, some change that would not come. I pulled the bag up over his face and pulled the drawstring closed. We lifted again. Tyler seemed calmer this time, with Addison’s face hidden from view. He took the top half and I the bottom. I tucked his legs as we lowered him into the cart.
“Did you pack a pair of shoes for yourself?”
“Yes.”
“And the bag of trash?”
He passed it to me. I set the bag into the cart, nudged into a corner, beneath Addison’s feet. We stayed there for a while, long enough that Tyler finally asked, “What’s next?”
I looked up from the bin. Tyler’s face—frightened, waiting.
“Did you love him?”
“What?”
“Did you love Addison?”
He looked away, down at the floor, and mumbled his reply. Just my name—“Mark”—a softly whispered plea.
I’d thought we could haul the cart down the stairwell, but it was too heavy, the weight unwieldy. We would have to take the elevator. My heart raced as its doors opened to a small lobby, glass-fronted. But there was only us. We retraced our path to the car, less than a minute. I opened the trunk. We reached in and took hold. We had gotten a sense of the weight and positioned ourselves for leverage; it’s amazing, really, how quickly a body can learn to do a thing. We hoisted Addison up and into the trunk. He made a soft thud and the car sunk under his weight. I shut the trunk and grabbed the bag of trash.
“I’ll wait in the car. You take the bin back.”
“Can’t we just ditch it here?”
“The last thing we want is to be leaving evidence behind.”
“It’s just a cart.”
“But it’s not,” I said. “You have to do exactly as I say. That’s the only way this works.” Tyler agreed, wordlessly, and headed back. I watched until he disappeared and got in the car to wait.
Earlier in the room, when Tyler left for the basement, after I dressed Addison, I had thought of running. I pictured myself goingto my car, driving home, and getting into bed. I would pretend none of this had happened, that Tyler had never come to me. I would just let things unfold however they would.
But I didn’t run. The thought of Tyler returning to the room and finding me gone, realizing he’d been abandoned—the idea of Tyler going through this alone was more than I could bear. I thought that when Tyler got back to the car, I could tell him this story. So he would understand I had chosen to stay. Through all this, I would be with him. And I thought of the other things I might say. That when I picked up Addison’s phone from the desk, there had been two missed calls from his mother. That on our last night in New York, I had almost told Tyler I loved him. But I didn’t, because I was too scared he wouldn’t say it back. Now I wished I had said it anyway. And I hoped he had told Addison and that Addison had said the same to him. What were we protecting? What was there to lose? Everything, it seemed, and nothing.
