Page 65 of So Thirsty

I claw at my mouth, trying to get it out as fast as I can. I scrape my gums.

“Hey, hey,” Naomi says, taking my hands. “Stop.”

“I killed him. I killed him.” I keep saying it, so I understand that it’s true, that it happened. The repeated admission my immediate punishment for something I know I can never ever atone for.

“No, you didn’t. I did,” she says. “He followed me into the bathroom and waited for me outside the stall. He grabbed me by the hair and covered my mouth so I wouldn’t scream.”

She lets me go and reaches for the man, flips his hand over, showing me deep gashes. Bite marks.

“He saw a woman alone at a rest stop at night. He saw an opportunity,” she says. “He’s dead because he deserves to be dead. It’s not your fault. It’s not mine. It’s his.”

“Please don’t lie to me,” I say, sobbing into my knees. “Please.”

“I’m not lying!” she says. “Why would you even say that?”

“Because…”

“Because why?”

“Because you’re thirsty.”

She scoffs. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing.” I wipe my face. “Never mind.”

“You think I was the aggressor?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wow.” Her indignation doesn’t exonerate her, but it does make me feel worse. If she is lying, I’d rather believe the lie than live with the truth, if the truth is that we’re murderers.

“His last word was ‘cunt,’ ” she says, shaking her head. “Since when do you not trust me?”

Since last night, I think but don’t say. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead.”

“It does matter. It matters to me that you believe me.”

“I believe you,” I say, unconvincingly. “Now, what are we going to do?”

“Last time I had to dispose of a dead body, I had a vat of acid at the ready, so…”

I can’t tell if she’s sassing me, or if she can see how distraught I am and is trying to save me from a total spiral of despair by making me laugh. If it’s the latter, it fails.

“This is a crime. We’re criminals. We maybe could have gotten away with assaulting the porter, but this? How are we supposed to get away with murder?” I ask, standing. I don’t want to look at the body, but I can’t look away. We chewed so far into his neck.

“You’re the one who’s always listening to those podcasts and watching serial-killer documentaries. Pick up any hot tips?”

“Yeah. Don’t kill people.”

“Let’s just leave him. By the time anyone finds him, we’ll be long gone. And there’s nothing to connect us to him.” She steps back, looks around. “There are no cameras. It’s a rest stop in the fucking Finger Lakes.”

“There are cameras everywhere. There are trackers in our phones, our cars.”

“We stay on back roads. We ditch our phones. The car. We get new identities. Change our hair,” she says.

“You’re romanticizing.”

“So?” she asks, throwing her hands up. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Don’t you know me? That’s how I live, Sloane. How I survive.”