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Fishnets.
Rhett
22
“This is bullshit,” Isaac complained as I drove through the woods, clearing a good five acres from the academy before I finally parked and shut off the car. “Father should’ve ordered someone else to handle this shit. We need to be there for Samurai.”
I sighed and got out, slamming the door behind me, and rounded over to the trunk, where Bethany Carver’s body was wrapped up tightly in white tarp. He wasn’t wrong. Father could’ve easily sent any other team to dispose of the body, but no. He left the dirty work up to me, Isaac, and Phantom.
“Let’s get this shit done,” Phantom snapped when he joined me as the trunk popped open, Isaac meeting us in the middle. “The sooner we do, the faster we can leave.”
“Are you sure it’s safe to bury her here?” I asked Phantom.
“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. Her parents are dead, grandparents too, and she was an only child. All the money she inherited from their deaths has been paying her way through the academy for the last two years now.”
Isaac nodded to that, looking pleased, but it was me who frowned at the information. “No aunts or uncles, anyone at all who would come looking?”
Phantom shook his head. “None I’m aware of. Nothing in her records listed any other contacts or immediate family members.”
This was good news, albeit I couldn’t help but feel remorseful, heartbroken even, for Bethany. I had a couple classes with her in the past. We were biology partners in ninth grade, and again last year when we shared English and were partnered to complete a ten-thousand-word book report overThe Ravenby Edgar Allan Poe.She was a nice girl. Quiet. Kept to herself and had never spoken to anyone unless she was spoken to first or forced to speak aloud in class. She'd never struck me for the suicidal type, but then again, I truly didn’t know a goddamn thing about her or her personal life, not until now.
“If anyone does come looking,” he continued, “there won’t be anything to find. I’ll make damn sure of it.”
“Come on,” demanded Isaac. “Phantom’s right. The faster we get this over with, the faster we can leave. I don’t want to miss Samara’s match.”
“She’s going last, right?” I asked as I helped my brothers lift the body out of the trunk.
“Yeah,” Phantom replied, after we’d deposited Bethany beside a random tree, the three of us rushing over to grab the shovels out the trunk. “She’s supposed to be.”
“How is that going to work, though?” I wondered. “We all saw the lineup. Bethany was Samara’s opponent.”
It grew quiet as we each planted our shovels into the earth, digging in and tossing the mounds of dirt beside us.
“I’m not sure,” said Phantom, grunting as he impaled his shovel even deeper through the soil. “More than likely Father will find a replacement.”
“Do you guys really believe Bethany killed herself?” asked Isaac.
“The knife was in her hand. There weren’t any bloody footprints, no signs of struggle, nothing.”
“That still doesn’t mean she wasn’t killed,” Isaac retorted.
“Do you think she was?” I asked as we continued to work, glancing over at him.
Isaac confidently bobbed his head. “I think it’s possible, yeah.”
“How so?” Phantom stabbed his shovel in the ground long enough to wipe away the sweat dotting over his forehead. I did the same, also needing a minute to rest, and scowled down at the work we’d completed so far.
Fuck.
We’d barely scratched the surface and still had an unbearably long way to go.
“It’s like Rhett said.” I lifted my head then, giving Isaac my full undivided attention. “Bethany was Samara’s opponent, and the only people who had access to the lineup were us, Father, Sharkey, and Prim.” Isaac paused then, sighing as he chewed fretfully on his bottom lip. “All I’m saying is that this doesn’t feel right. Bethany showed up tonight. She got dressed and was out there waiting outside that ring for her name to be called just like everyone else. Is it possible she really did crack under the pressure and decided to kill herself? Yes, of course it is. Me, however; I don’t think that’s what really happened. I think her death was premeditated.”
“What doyouthink?” Phantom asked, turning to me.
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging and honestly meaning it. It was a good theory—I’d give Isaac that much—and what he was saying did, in some ways, make sense. But I also knew my brother. After how he’d reacted when Samara was assaulted and after he’d learned the truth about her real connection to our father, part of me couldn’t help but feel like Isaac was searchingfor any little thing he could to provoke his madness. “I’m not saying Isaac’s right, but even if he is, we have no proof to back it up.”
I hated saying it but the hard, cold truth was that I wasn’t there when shit went down. None of us were. I’d just gotten off the phone with Jace when Father found and informed me about the fatal situation in the locker room. When I’d walked in, Prim, Isaac, and Phantom were standing over Bethany’s body. And like Phantom had previously stated, there were no footprints, signs of struggle, no nothing. Proving Bethany’s death wasn’t a suicide was next to impossible unless there was an eye-witness who could corroborate it. Last I heard and as far as my brothers knew, there wasn’t one.
