Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

BEFORE

TOM

I know exactly how to cut my father's throat. I have to say thanks to all those surgical textbooks I bought and read cover to cover. Soon enough, there are five pints of his blood all over my mother's rug. And then some.

My father dies right in front of me. All I can think as I watch the light go out of his eyes is that he deserves this. He will never beat my mother again. He will never terrorize our family ever again.

But a few seconds later, the relief that he is finally gone morphs into panic. I killed my father. I killed my father right in my living room . I sliced his jugular with a kitchen knife. There's no way I can argue this was an accident or even self-defense.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison.

Unless…

I scramble to my feet, my hands shaking. There's blood all over my jeans and my sneakers and my hands. There's so much on my hands. You don't realize how much five pints of blood is until it's all over your kitchen floor. I can't deal with this alone. It's too much.

And there's only one person I can call. There is one person who might help me out of this impossible situation.

I run my hands under hot water, trying to wash off the blood. The bar of soap turns pink as I scrub my hands with it, but after a lot of hot water, the soap turns back to white and my hands look normal again. It's more than I can say for my jeans and sneakers. Everything I'm wearing will have to be burned. But for now, I just need my hands clean enough to use my phone.

I select the first name from my list of contacts—the person I call the most. I stand in the kitchen, my head throbbing as the phone rings repeatedly on the other end of the line.

Pick up. Come on, buddy, I need you.

"Hello?" a familiar voice says.

"Slug," I choke out. "I need your help."

My best friend doesn't hesitate. "Sure. What do you need?"

"I…" I look over at my father's motionless body lying on the living room rug. "I did something really bad. Like, really bad."

A pause. "Okay. What's going on?"

"I can't tell you on the phone."

"I can't help you unless you tell me what's going on."

Can I actually trust Slug? My gut tells me I can. But what if he shows up here and freaks out? Still, I don't have any alternative. I can't deal with this situation by myself. "Could you borrow your parents' car and come over?"

"Sure. They already went to bed. They won't even know I'm gone."

He says it so cavalierly. Slug's parents are in their sixties—he was a not so happy accident—and they don't have the energy to deal with him. So he does pretty much whatever he wants and they don't care.

It's perfect.

Fifteen minutes later, Slug's parents' Oldsmobile pulls into our driveway. I watch from the window as he steps out, stretching his long legs for a moment before walking over to the front door. I yank open the door before he can hit the doorbell. Slug looks surprised, his skeletal wrist frozen in mid air.

"Get inside," I tell him.

"Jesus, Tom." He stumbles into the foyer before I can slam the door closed practically on his foot. He looks like he's going to say something more, but then he notices all the blood staining my T-shirt. His mouth falls open. "Tom…"

"I didn't have a choice," I say tightly, even though that's not true.

My heart is pounding as Slug pushes past me into the living room. It takes him all of half a second to notice my father lying dead on the rug. He inhales sharply, and I hold my own breath, waiting to see what he says. I've known Slug most of my life, and I trust him, but it's safe to say this falls out of the realm of the usual favors that a guy can ask of his best friend.

"So," Slug says slowly, "you finally killed that son of a bitch."

"It was an accident," I say lamely.

"Yeah, some accident. His throat is sliced open."

I run a shaking hand through my hair, which I now realize also has blood in it. Jesus Christ, there is blood everywhere . That's something you don't learn in the anatomy textbooks, that's for sure. I've spent the last fifteen minutes cleaning blood from the kitchen floor, and I've done a decent job, but I don't know what we're going to do about my mom's rug. We'll need some sort of extra-strength carpet cleaner, and I'm sure even then there will be traces left behind.

"You can't save the rug," Slug says, as if reading my mind. "We can wrap him in it."

"Wrap him?"

"When we get rid of the body." Slug flashes me an exasperated look. "Isn't that what you called me to help you with?"

I look at my best friend. His face is really greasy, like the surface of a pizza, and his forehead is suffering from a particularly severe acne attack. But the weirdest thing is how eerily calm he seems. I'm about to jump out of my skin, but Slug is cool as a cucumber.

"We'll wrap him up in the rug and put him in my trunk," Slug says. "Do you have any garbage bags I can line the trunk with?"

"Uh, sure."

When I don't budge, Slug lifts an eyebrow. "What are you waiting for? It's not like we've got forever to take care of this."

"Okay. How many do we need?"

"Six should do it."

How does he know the exact number of garbage bags he'll need to line the trunk of his car for a dead body? Or maybe I don't want to know the answer to that question.

After I bring him the garbage bags, I head upstairs to change my clothes. I don't know what exactly to do with my bloody T-shirt and jeans, but I'm not leaving the house wearing my father's blood.

I take a second to look in the bathroom mirror while I'm upstairs. Good thing I do, because there's a lot more blood on my face and hair than I would've guessed. Fortunately, the color of my hair is so dark you can't see it. I'll have to take a long shower after we're done dealing with this.

The skin of my face is extremely pale—like I'm half-dead—and there are dark purple rings under my eyes that look like bruises. I look like I've been awake since last week.

I put my phone on the dresser while I change clothes, and it buzzes while I'm in the bathroom. A text message. I hurry back to flip open the screen, and a message pops up from Daisy:

U need 2 watch this video!

I don't click on the video, which looks like it's something about a cat playing the piano. I'm not in the mood for cute animals right now. I'm not sure if I ever was, but definitely not now. I'm so far from being interested in cute animals, it's not even funny. I hate to ignore a text message from Daisy, but I can't bring myself to reply.

When I get back downstairs, Slug has managed to roll the carpet around my father's body. It's almost exactly the right length to cover him. Lucky.

Slug straightens up when he sees me, wiping his hands on his own pair of jeans. His jeans are too short—hand-me-downs from one of his older brothers. Slug is the only one of his siblings who is freakishly tall.

"I got my trunk covered with the garbage bags," he reports. "And I turned the car around so that the trunk is up against the garage door, but I couldn't back in because your dad's car is already in there. Anyway, we can just throw him right in there. Nobody will see."

"Right." It's hard not to be bothered by the fact that Slug is so good at this. And Slug isn't good at anything . Well, besides eating bugs.

"You okay, Tom?" He squints at me. "You're not going to start freaking out, are you?"

"I'm okay," I manage.

"Good." Slug eyes the large lump of carpet on the floor. "Because I can't lift him on my own. This is a two-person job."

Even for two of us, it's a struggle. Slug lifts one end and I lift the other, but my father was a big guy, and we're both grunting and trying our best not to drop him. Fortunately, Slug already has the trunk and the garage door open, so we make a beeline. As we get closer, I start to panic that the body isn't going to fit, but Slug doesn't seem worried, and sure enough, we manage to get it stuffed inside. As we slam the trunk closed, I fight a wave of nausea. I don't even know how we're going to get rid of this body. We have a long night ahead of us.

But suddenly, none of that matters anymore. Because when I look up from the trunk, I realize someone has been watching us. There is a figure standing on the sidewalk and they have seen our every move.

Oh Jesus, it's Alison.