But when Tyler emerged from the dark and slid into the car, all I said was, “Ready?” and started the engine and pulled into the night.
I drove us to an enormous, forested park, forty minutes outside of Sawyer. I had been there once with Stephen last summer, our early days. I’d forgotten until Tyler mentioned it—I had asked him about places off-campus Sawyer students might hang out. There were clearings in the woods and he said they’d gather for small parties, usually a few times over a semester. In the fall when the weather was still good, at the end of spring. “It’s stupid,” he said, “just another place to get wasted.”
A small road ran along the eastern edge of the park and I followed it until we arrived at a parking lot. Tyler pointed. “Pull in here.” I cut my headlights and rolled forward. There were tenniscourts ahead. The tall towers of lights were out. We were well into the park, shielded from the road by the dark, enclosed on all sides by evergreen woods.
“Where are the trails?”
“They start behind the tennis courts, and go up that way.” He motioned deeper into the forest. “Now what?”
“We’ll get him out and take him that way.”
“We have to carry him?” I nodded, and he protested. “It’s wide at the start of the trails. You can drive up part of the way.”
“We can’t chance it.” I’d checked the weather. Temperatures were supposed to keep rising, and the next few days should bring more rain. I was hoping it would wash away any trace of us but I didn’t want to push our luck. “It’s bad enough there’ll be footprints. We don’t want to leave any tire tracks, too.”
“We could just put him here. We’re nowhere near campus.” A vibrato crack of desperation cut Tyler’s voice. I didn’t like it; I needed him calm.
“Tyler, we went through this.”
I gave him a moment and then opened my door and got out. He followed. The air was cold, we were well into the middle of the night, past one in the morning. If anyone was there, there would be no way to see them. We would move as quickly as we could and be done with it.
As I popped the truck, I had an absurd wish—that we would find it empty. It wasn’t, of course. The body was there, encased in the sleeping bag, just where we’d put it. We hauled it out and carried him past the courts toward the trailhead. The path ascended sharply, Addison weighty and burdensome in our arms. The outer fabric of the sleeping bag was a slick nylon and I had to dig in to keep it from slipping. I walked backward and Tyler navigated. Hispale face glowed against the dark of the woods. The path crested and continued up to the right. A smaller path forked to the left. Tyler nodded his head. “That way.”
We were deep in the park now, enclosed in a thicket of massive hemlocks blackened by the night. In their terrible reach, the trees blotted out the sky. As we moved in, I strained to listen and could hear the sound of it growing louder: the rushing waters of the river below. The path emptied onto a clearing and Tyler stopped. Remnants from past gatherings littered the ground, plastic trash bags weighted down with melted snow, a pile of cans and bottles.
“This is it.”
We lowered Addison and as the body touched the ground Tyler leapt back, as if surprised. We paused a minute, catching our breath, and then Tyler led me past some trees, to a smaller clearing. My arms ached in the absence of the body’s weight. We stood at the edge of an embankment, a sheer drop of twenty feet, maybe thirty, down to the river below.
Tyler leaned to look. The lines of his body stretched before me and then out of nowhere, in a flash, I thought: with just one, quick shove, all of this would be over, I’d be free. I swayed—a sudden rush of vertigo—and grabbed Tyler’s shoulder to steady myself. He jerked back, out of my hold, and I saw it in his eyes: He had been thinking it, too.
We returned to the sleeping bag and I unzipped it so we could take Addison out. I could feel Tyler at my side, watching. Stretched out before us, you could imagine Addison had simply lain down in the woods to rest. I heard a sound, some murmur and turned to look. Tyler held himself, weeping—soft moans, a plaintive cry. I waited a moment, then called him forward. We lifted Addison a final time. We carried him to the ledge. I rooted down, pressing myweight, and told Tyler to do the same. We were anchored in place, Addison hanging between us, like he’d passed out, like we were carrying him to bed.
“We need to make sure he clears it. Do you understand? We lift and throw on three.” Tyler nodded. With the early spring melt, the river was swollen, whiteheads rushing past. I counted, my voice low. “One … two …three—”
We swung Addison out over the edge and released him to the air. Tyler gasped and turned away but I stood watching. Addison blinked from view and then a crash sounded as he hit the water. He landed close to midstream, away from the shallow edges and any branches gathered there on which he might get snagged; we’d done well. In an instant, he was gone from view, riding the currents below.
We walked back to the clearing. If needed, I wanted a plausible story of how Addison had ended up in the river. A night partying in the woods, a slip and fall. And hopefully, if he was found, it would be after enough time had passed that decay would hide the fact that he was dead before he entered the water. I dragged his sleeping bag through a small opening between a tangle of growth. I took the bottle of Adderall from my pocket, opened the baggie, and tossed it. It landed on the bag with the quietest thud. I returned to Tyler and we left the way we came.
I drove back to campus, returning to the spot I parked in just a few hours ago. Those few hours a split in time: before and after. From the back seat, I grabbed a trash bag.
“Okay, get out of those clothes.”
Tyler wriggled in the passenger seat, pulling off each item and passing it to me. I placed the clothes in the garbage bag. I would do the same with my own when I got home, and then tomorrow, Iwould find somewhere to dispose of it all. When Tyler got down to his underwear, he stopped.
“Everything,” I said. I turned my face as he slid from them. I knew I was being overly cautious, but I wanted no trace left on us of where we’d been left. He passed the underwear to me and then his shoes and socks. He looked small in the seat, naked, hands pinched between his knees, waiting. “Go ahead and get dressed.”
When he was done, I reviewed our next steps. Tyler should clean the room thoroughly. In the morning, he was to text Addison’s phone, ask where he was. Students would be returning to the dorms. To those who knew Addison had stayed behind—the group from the ski trip, the RA—Tyler would mention that he hasn’t seen him. And then Monday he would talk to the RA again: He hasn’t heard from Addison and is getting worried. “That’s it. Don’t say anything more. And don’t put too much stress on it. Don’t act more worried than you should be.”
“Alright.” He sounded far away.
“You have to put all of this out of your mind. It’s the only way to get through these next days. You have to believe the story you tell—that Addison wasn’t here when you got back. And that’s it. And then you need to let me know as soon as you’re contacted by any administrators or the police—”
“Police?”
“There’s going to be an investigation. Addison is a missing person. Or he will be. That’s why we can’t stir up too much concern too quickly. Once things get going, that’s it. These first moments are the only ones we can control. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
