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I roll him over, but I can’t see blood anywhere apart from the wound on his forehead.
“Antony.” I shake his shoulders. “Wake up. Please, fuck, please wake up.”
Some dark, depraved god is smiling on me. One eye cracks open, and Antony peers up at me like for a moment he’s forgotten who I am. He wraps his arms around me and crushes me against his chest.
I shove him. “What are you doing?”
His body sags and he drops his grip on me. “Sorry, Claws. I just wanted to check you were alive. Ow.” He clutches his head. He’s moving so slowly. He might have a concussion. ”How did I get out of the car?”
“I’d blame the fake pizza delivery guy who came into the house and pointed a gun at George’s head.”
“Fuck. Wha—” Antony rolls forward, wincing. I place my hand on his chest and shove him back. “It’s sorted. All those knife skills you taught me came in handy. The little punk just learned that messing with an August gets you a severed carotid.”
Antony rubs his head. “It’s coming back to me. I was watching a delivery guy on a bike. He stopped outside and pulled a balaclava over his head. I thought that wasn’t normal pizza delivery behavior, so I tackled him.” Antony touched the back of his head and winced. “The little fucker got me good.”
“Can you get to the house? I’m calling Galen.”
“I’ll sort it. Don’t bother him.”
“We need him, Antony. I’m worried about George. She just watched me kill this guy. He’s bleeding out all over her kitchen.”
As I stagger into the house with Antony in tow, George whimpers, shuffling along the wall into a corner and pressing her face into her shoulder. She’s in the first stage of losing-your-shit – believing that if you can’t see the blood spurting like a water fountain from the dead guy’s neck, it’s not really happening.
I settle Antony into a chair and kneel down in front of her.
“George.” I slap her cheek, lightly, trying not to frighten her but needing to get her attention. “I know this is fucked-up, right? There’s a dead guy on your kitchen floor and I put him there. But I need you to listen to me. I’m going to get this cleaned up, and it’ll be like it never happened. But we need your help. Do you understand?”
She stares at me with those wide eyes.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you do anything freaky.” My voice has gone all high-pitched. I’ve never had to talk my friend through a cleaning before. “I need to know, do you have any tarps or dropcloths in the house? The kind you use for painting or yard work?”
George raises a shaking finger and points to a key hanging on the end of a set of hooks. “In the shed. Around the back.”
“Excellent. Thank you. I’m going to leave you here, but I’m just going to your shed. Nothing will happen to you. Anton— I mean, Mr. Jones is here – he’ll look after you while I’m gone.”
I grab the keys and head around to the small back yard. Instead of the usual patch of anemic-looking grass, George and her mom’s garden is crowded with raised beds bursting with vegetables. There are even fruit trees along the fence line. I open the shed and discover neat rows of gardening tools and a stack of folded tarps. I grab one off the top and carry it back to the house.
Antony and I roll the body in the tarp. We back Tiberius’ car into the garage so that we can drag the body into the trunk without George’s neighbors seeing. Antony collapses onto the passenger seat and calls Galen while I put my arms around George and hold her while she trembles.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry about all this.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever uttered those words in my life. But they fell from my lips too easily now, because I meant them.
Galen arrives a few minutes later, with Tiberius in the passenger seat. I open the kitchen door for them. Galen pushes past me and makes a beeline for Antony, while Tiberius hands me a pizza box and inspects the mess in the kitchen.
“I met the delivery guy in the driveway. I assume this is yours. He seemed keen to get rid of it when he saw me, didn’t even stick around for a tip.” Tiberius’ face has that effect on people. His bulk seems impossibly large in the small room, like he’s trapped in a dollhouse. He looms over us, studying George with curiosity.
Her lip trembles as she takes in Tiberius’ disfigured face. “Mr. Garcia,” she chokes out. “Are you here to kill me?”
“What? Fuck no.” I grab George’s shoulders. “That guy in the garage with Antony is Galen. He’s a doctor. Antony and Tiberius have been posing as teachers to protect me, and by extension you. They’ll make sure nothing else happens to us.”
“But what are they protecting me from? Who was that guy? Why does he want to kill me?”
“He doesn’t want to kill you. He wants to kill me,” I shrug, although I’m not so sure about that, either. “I promise I’ll tell you everything, but right now we need to get this cleaned up.”
George settles her head against my chest. “When I said you’d be good material for my podcast, I didn’t mean quite like this.”
“Hand me that bleach.”
