Instead of passing me by, the truck comes to a stop. I drop my chin and keep walking.
“Young lady!”
My back tightens in a line. “What do you want?” I snap. I want to tell the security guard he should be hurrying before Demi gets away, but I don’t want him to know I’m the one who called. I don’t want to be used as a witness. I don’t want to be implicated at all.
His car door dings as he steps out. What the hell is he doing?
He hitches his belt. “We’re investigating a distress call.”
“I’m not distressed. I’m fine. Thank you.” I move quickly away from him. He steps in front of me, blocking my path. He is all belt, a sour expression. I am his bad day.
“I’d just like to see what’s in your pocket there, if that’s all right.”
Shit.
The metal cutters are still in my coat pocket.
DEMI
Murderer.
No one ever prepares you to deal with death. Death is a secret you keep until you die. It is the only thing that unites us all and yet we never, ever talk about it.
No one tells you how to get rid of a body.
In movies, they drag them across the floor, leaving behind a wide trail of blood. They shut them in trunks. They drive out to deserts, toss suitcases into rivers, call out teams of villains with attractive distorted features to do their dirty work. They leave evidence that no one finds, because there is a team to clear the set between locations. And the corpses are gorgeous, bruises and scars carefully applied by a team of artists to match an overall aesthetic: the magnificent, the haunting dead.
Demi looks alive. She looks asleep, even if her eyes are open in a thin white seam. It’s only when I touch her skin that I feel that unnatural chill. It feels like a mistake, like something I did. You’re the cold one. You’re making her cold.
I move my hand, searching for warmth: at the base of her neck, on the crown of her head, on her wrist beneath her jacket. I jump, having accidentally brushed her exposed stomach, a place I would never touch if she was alive. A place she wouldn’t want me to touch.
She’s dead. She’s dead, you idiot. Don’t act like you didn’t guess it.
I try to use my imagination but I don’t have one anymore. You have to have hope to have an imagination and I don’t have that; the last of it just dropped down through the floorboards.
All I have are the facts.
If I call the police, I will be blamed for something. It’s what police do, my dad always taught me. They wait for you to stick your head out, to show them where you are, and then they say, You’ll do, and they throw you in with the rest of the people who couldn’t keep quiet.
Never call the police. Dad bored that into my brain. Besides, the police can’t save her. They can hurt me.
And I can’t leave. Leaving would only make things worse. They would track me down. I don’t know this woman, but I know enough to know she’s rich, and rich women don’t die without someone being held accountable.
It’s not just that.
It’s the sandwiches in her fridge in their little plastic houses, the shoes in her closet curled on spike heels, the dappled light on the blood-colored rug in the designer living room.
I could go back out on the streets. I could run. I could probably get away, move to another state, another city. But there is food in the fridge. And no one knows Demi is dead. The woman upstairs thinks I am Demi.
I could stay for one day, just one day in this life—who would stop me? Who would blame me? I’m not taking anything that belongs to anyone else. She left her life behind. Who could blame me for picking it up?
All I want is one day. One.
I move her body out of the bathroom so I can pee. I drag her across the floor and leave her by the front door. I brush her hair out of her face, adjust her coat, because I am not such a monster as to leave her disheveled.
I flash back on my father in the supermarket, the scam he used to run, hiding steaks and salmon under newspaper in his basket. Every time I complained. Not once did I stop him. Was I responsible for not stopping him? Was I responsible for not stopping her?
I’m sorry. I mouth the words to her body. I try to ignore the joy. Her life is mine for one day.
I pee on a real toilet: a spotless flushing toilet. I feel like a human being instantly, despite everything. Despite the body in the living room. I am somebody now.
My eyes drift to the shower, to the shampoo and conditioner in liter-sized gold bottles, the sparkly bodywash, the rain forest showerhead.
I approach carefully, hold my breath. I turn on the shower.