“We don’t have to attend the graduation ceremony. The school will mail our diplomas to the addresses they have on file. My parents will keep mine safe.”
“My mom will do the same with mine.” I agree. “So we drive west and then what?”
Jodie shrugs. “We’ll drive until we find somewhere interesting to stop, and we’ll keep an eye on the news to see what happens here. The further we are from here, the better.”
My eyes go to the bed for just a split second. I flinch at the sight of Tim’s lifeless, headless body. “Ok. Yeah, I’m in. Let me find the bathroom. I need to clean up.”
She stops me by stepping in my way. “Absolutely not. You’ve already touched the murder weapon and you have Tim’s blood all over you. In the off chance you didn’t do this, let’s avoid giving the cops any more evidence by spreading your DNA all over the place.”
Fuck. She’s right. I hadn’t thought about that. I’m glad at least one of us remembers the stuff we learned from the true crime documentaries and podcasts we love to binge on our nights in. “That’s true. But I slept with him. My DNA must be already in the room.”
Jodie agrees. “True. But you don’t have a criminal record. So the police won’t have anything to match your DNA with. And like every frat brother I know, Tim probably had regular hookups. Chances are that if you lost some hair, or you left some skin cells in the sheets, your genetic material isn’t the only one in the room.”
“Yuck,” I say with a shudder. “I hadn’t thought about that. Do you think Tim didn’t change his bedsheets between hookups?”
Jodie rolls her eyes. “Girl, some of these guys are pigs. That’s why we came here to get you laid; we knew it would be a sure thing. You might have not noticed last night since you were a woman on a mission, but Andy took the president of Zeta Theta Beta to his room shortly after we got here. They came back about an hour later and by the time you and Tim left, Andy had another girl in his room.”
Her tone is bitter and a little disgusted, but I detect the sadness in it. “Jo-Jo, Andy is an idiot. He didn’t deserve you.”
She’s been putting on a brave face after she found her boyfriend of two years in bed with another woman, but I know Jodie is still hurting.
“Yeah, whatever.” She shrugs, pretending to be fine. “It’s been three months; I’m over it. I’m over him. Look, we should really go. The more I think about, the better this sounds right now. We both need to get away from this place. You for obvious reasons, and me so I can stop hooking up with my ex’s frat brothers hoping to make him jealous.”
Oh. “You stayed here too last night.”
It isn’t a question. In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t noticed that Jodie is still in last night’s clothes. And she got here really quickly after I texted her.
“Yeah, I hooked up with Owen Smith. Andy can’t stand him; I hope he noticed. But we’ll have all the time in the world to talk about our disastrous love lives on the road. Let’s go.”
She walks across the room, opening the door to what looks like a closet.
“What are you doing?” I ask as she walks out with a purple bedsheet in her arms.
Jodie begins draping the sheet over the bed, covering Tim’s headless body. “Let’s cover him up. If anyone looked inside the room from the door, without coming all the way in, they might not notice all the blood splattered everywhere. They’ll see a bodyin bed covered by a sheet and think he’s still asleep. That might give us more time. Once his frat brothers see him, the whole campus will be swarming with cops. We need to leave before that happens, if we can.”
I help her drape the sheet over the bed. “Ok.”
Once we’re done, rather than going toward the door, Jodie returns to the closet.
“Put these on.” She hands me an oversized Gamma Delta Tau t-shirt and a beanie. “We can’t leave the house with blood all over our clothes.”
I notice that there’s blood on her dress too from hugging me. “Oh shit. I ruined your favorite dress. I’m so sorry.”
She covers herself up with a similar t-shirt and a baseball cap. “Don’t worry about it. I wore this dress on my last date with Andy. It was tainted anyway. Come on. Carry your shoes in your hand and act as normally as you can. If we look like two girls on their walk of shame after last night’s rager, no one will give us another look.”
Tears well in my eyes again. “I don’t know what I would have done without you, Jo-Jo.”
She’s holding a pillowcase as she collects the solo cups from Tim’s nightstand, my dress from last night, and the machete from the floor.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Just making sure we get a good head start by making things a little harder for the forensic team. We’ll take this stuff with us and leave it somewhere far, far away from here.”
I’m thankful that she can think clearly for both of us right now. “That’s right. I can’t wait to clean up.”
Jodie grabs my wrist, her tone more serious than I’ve ever heard it. “Neither of us is going to clean up in our apartment. Actually, you just stay in your car; you have way too much blood on you. I’ll take what we need. Luckily the apartment camefurnished, and we had already begun sending most of our things back to our parents. So we don’t have much left. We’ll be out of here in an hour at most. Hey Taryn, make sure you take your phone with you and make sure it’s turned off until we leave the state.”
We crack the door open to make sure that the coast is clear.
