“It’s enough time if we keep our heads.” She hesitated on a stone, then pushed off.
My heart boomed. I could feel her listening, waiting for me to add something. “We’re almost there now,” I murmured. “This is almost behind us.”
We climbed in silence, calves clenching, the ground sucking on our toes as we leaned against the pitch. My breath hitched from the hard work—the hard work and the horror.
It’d seemed easier in Cambodia. Or was that only in hindsight? I could remember scenes from that night, the hotel-room cleanup, the search for smooth stones to slip into his pockets. But I’d been numb, so numb. An abrupt cessation of feeling, like someone had switched off a lamp.
The real horror had come afterward, a cocoon of pain.
I froze and looked back toward the car. “Shouldn’t we have brought him with us?”
“What?” Kristen gave her head a little shake. “Em, we’ll find a spot and dig a hole. Then we’ll go back and get the backpack and everything. It’d be awkward to drag all that weight with us.”
“So we’re just leaving him in the trunk and making multiple trips back and forth? Isn’t that pushing our luck?”
“We’re almost at the rock. Let’s go.” She squeezed my arm, gently at first and then hard enough to bruise, to break the blood vessels underneath. “Let’s. Go.”
I power-sighed, then turned my flashlight back uphill.
The rock was farther off than it’d seemed from below; in the darkness, I could barely make out the car now, or the road that snaked below it. Kristen reached the boulder first and pressed her palm against it gratefully. It was about her height, as wide as it was tall.
I stood the shovel in front of me and nosed it into the earth. Sucked in a breath, then set a foot on top and leaned my weight into it. The blade plunged into the crumbly ground and I lost my balance before rocking back and gouging out a silty chunk. My lats tightened and a sliver needled into my palm. I poked at the wound, then hurried to catch up to Kristen, who’d already cleared a small hole.
Crunch, hiss. Crunch, hiss. Over and over, we rammed our shovels into the arid ground and slid the dry dirt into a growing mound. It was hard work, but rhythmic, like paddling a canoe. We huffed as we raised each clump of soil and groaned as we tipped it onto the pile.
In, then out. My arms began to shake. Pain branched out from my spine, along my back and shoulders. Blisters sprang up on my hands, then popped, sending stinging blood into the cracks of my palms.
Down, then to the side. Sweat slid beneath my breasts and along my tailbone. The muscles around my wrists burned like they’d been doused with acid, and the shovel trembled so hard I had to focus to keep the soil from scattering off the sides. Terror threatened to rise up through my ribs but I funneled it into my muscles instead, glutes and quads screaming as we dug, dug, dug.
The sky was changing. At first I thought I was imagining it, but when I shined the flashlight on my wristwatch—the small movement painful in my overworked arm—I saw it was true. The stars were dulling, like they were all on a dimmer switch. Morning was coming. Not soon, but not that long now.
“We need to dig faster,” I said, wheezing a bit. “We can’t be carrying anything up here when people are driving to work.”
“I think it’s deep enough.” She rested her palms on the shovel’s handle. “There’s room. Let’s do it. It’s never going to be perfect.”
Was it deep enough? Or would it leave the body right up against the surface, awaiting the dog or wind or flash flood that would break through the crust on top? A sudden breeze ruffled past, nuzzling my sweaty body with a blast of icy cold. There was no time. I dropped my shovel with a thud. She did the same and we trotted down to the road, our heels kicking up clods of dirt. My back and arms were on fire. I was going to be so sore.
It took Kristen a moment to find the key and another to locate the open-trunk button. The trunk flipped up instantly, cheerily, yawning wide and then sinking halfway back down.
Paolo was still in there, a freaky, Dalí-esque sight: a colossal tan backpack with legs growing out of it. A rumpled casserole of clothes surrounded his ankles and shoes, forcing the feet into an odd disco pose. Thoughts tumbled before I could stop them: Had Paolo liked to dance? Run? Rock climb up cliffs or tear down them on a mountain bike? What had given him those knobby calf muscles, the swollen quads? My stomach lurched and something hysterical somersaulted up through me. I pressed my hands on the bumper and the cold metal braced me.
“We’ll use the shower curtain again, yeah?” She peeled back its plastic corner. “Make sure all the clothes are here so we can carry everything at once.”
I nodded. My body was cramping up from the dig now; my back throbbed, my fingers had stiffened, and hot pain unfurled along my neck. Most of Paolo’s clothes were piled around his hairy legs, but a few items had slipped beyond the shower curtain, and I snatched them up and piled them on his lumpy knees.
This is a weird break from reality; you’re about to slip into an alternate timeline and wormhole back when it’s over. This is a project to be managed, a problem to be solved. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
I tugged my shirt cuff over my bloody palm and grabbed the shower curtain’s corners. My forearms screeched in pain, begging me not to lift him. I tried to take a deep breath and it split into an asthmatic cough.
“You okay?” Kristen asked, and I nodded. She met my eyes. “Good. On three.”
It hurts it hurts it hurts. Kristen led the way, shuffling backward, glancing over her shoulder like someone being followed. My arms gave out a quarter of the way up—hers too, the adrenaline unable to counter his weight—and we set him down and shook out our wrists. It was an eternity, perhaps thirty yards but the longest hike of my life, my whole body pulsing with pain, a giant bee sting. Kristen and I were unable to find a rhythm as we rushed and stopped short, like friends hauling a sofa up the stairs. When we reached the boulder, we were so eager and exhausted that we wobbled and tripped and nearly dropped him.
“Quickly, now.” I helped her lift the shower curtain and tip its contents into the pit; we scattered the clothes around, cramming them into the grave’s deepest edges. She picked up a shovel and I snatched mine from the grave’s edge. This part was even worse, my only thought a screeching, looping ow. We groaned as we buried him, our cries carnal and pathetic as we pushed our battered bodies to cooperate. When we’d finished, she smoothed the dirt with the back of her spade. It was a gently curved mound now, a bump in the night.
We hurried down the mountain as the edge of the sky turned cerulean. Near the road we picked up branches and rushed back up to the rock, sweeping at our scuffs and skids.
We tumbled into the car and slammed the doors. For a moment Kristen closed her eyes, her crown tipped against the headrest.
“Do you think it’ll look weird in the light?” I peered out the window. “Will the dirt be another color where we swept it?”
She was quiet for a very long time. “I don’t know what to tell you, Emily. There’s nothing else we can do.” Her hand shot out and turned on the ignition, and then we began the long drive back.