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As my jaw drops, Cam hands me the note that was lying on the table by the door.
Let’s see you get rid of this one.
The word chaosdoesn’t even begin to describe what’s going on behind the locked door of the bar. Cam panics, muttering something about how we’re twenty minutes away from having to open. He rushes to grab a piece of paper and a marker to make a sign.
Mali looks fucking terrified. She alternates between wanting to help Cam and worrying about Laiken. And she should be worried about her; I know I am. She’s in fucking shock.
We all know the last dead body she saw, and the events that transpired afterward. She didn’t exactly handle it well. The look on her face now mirrors the same one she had back then. I can’t help but fear she’s about to spiral right back into the mess she became then.
“What the fuck do I write?” Cam asks.
His hand is shaking, and his eyes are wide enough to look like he just did a whole batch of cocaine. If he writes this sign, someone is bound to think we’re off doing drugs somewhere. So, I walk over and take the marker from him.
Sorry, we’re closed due to a family emergency.
Short, simple, and just vague enough to work. I pass Cam the paper and he grabs the tape as he walks to the door, lifting the blinds only for a second so he can stick it to the inside of the window.
The sunlight shines in and lands the body. It shows just how pale he is. There’s a grayish tint to his skin. I don’t know how recently he was killed, but I’m guessing that since he’s not decomposing yet, it had to be pretty recent.
Laiken won’t look away from him. Hell, she’s barely even blinking. It looks like a fucked up Halloween decoration, and I know that if I don’t move it somewhere out of sight, she’s only going to get worse. But how the fuck do you move a dead body covered in dirt, without getting shit everywhere else and leaving us with more to clean up?
I rack my brain, trying to figure it out, until I get an idea. Rushing up the stairs, I open the closet and pull the tent we used to use for events out of the closet. Marc had asked me to keep it here, in case he wanted to put on another surfing competition. Needless to say, I don’t think he’s going to need it now.
I pull it out of the case and struggle to remove the canvas from the metal, but it finally comes free. This should be thick enough to hold whateverfluidscould leak out of the body and onto the floor.
Yeah, don’t worry. I vomited in my mouth, too.
Cam watches me curiously as I come back downstairs and start spread the canvas out on the floor. When it’s open enough to fit the body, I grab a couple pairs of gloves, putting my own on and tossing the others to Cam. With the heaviness in the air, I ask the same favor I thought I’d never need in my life, for the second time.
“Help me move him.”
He looks exactly how I feel as he sighs and comes over, cringing as he digs through the dirt to find the feet. On the count of three, we lift him. All of the blood has pooled to his back, gravity doing its job, and the worms and maggots fall off with the dirt as we carry him over to the tarp-like fabric.
“Okay,” I say, taking a breath. “Now let’s get him into the walk-in fridge. At least there, he’s out of sight, and it should stop this place from smelling like death until we can get rid of it.”
We each grab an end and lift, straining our backs as we carry all the dead weight through the bar and into the back. It’s a struggle to hold the fridge door open and carry the body into it, but we manage—neither one of us are willing to ask one of the girls for help anyway.
Once that’s dealt with, I go behind the bar and grab a few garbage bags along with the dustpan. We need to get this dirt out of here. Every last speck. There could be DNA on it. And besides, no one would understand how a bunch of dirt ended up in a baron the beach.
“What are you going to do? Just leave the body in the fridge forever?” Mali asks.
I roll my eyes. “No, but we can’t move it in broad daylight, now can we?”
Her eyes widen at my tone, and I stop everything to take a breath, trying to bring my blood pressure down enough to think clearly. Snapping at my friends right now isnotwhat we need.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I didn’t mean to snap.”
She shakes her head. “It’s fine. I get it. None of us want to be dealing with this.”
A sob rips through Laiken. Her hand flies up to her mouth as she tries to hold it in, but there’s no use. It forces its way out and breaks her down in the process. All of this is catching up to her, and she has spent so long being strong, but she can’t anymore.
“Lai,” Mali says sadly, trying to hold her.
I can’t focus on what I’m doing as I watch the girl that I love fall back to exactly how she was right before she left. Cam comes over and takes the dustpan from me.
“What?”
He nods toward Laiken. “Go to her.”
