Chapter 18

18

I have always wanted a sister. A sister would be into the same things I am. Beauty and fashion and the giddy excitement that comes with meeting a hot guy. A sister would commiserate with me about the hardships of breastfeeding or losing the baby weight. A sister would give a shit. Unfortunately, I only have a brother who lives several states away and never sends so much as a card on my birthday. When I met Meredith, I thought to myself, It’s okay that I didn’t grow up with a sister, because here is someone better than a sister . She is a soul twin: someone whose personality is on the exact same wavelength as mine. Someone who fits me like we’re two puzzle pieces, curving in and out to accommodate each other precisely. But we all know how that turned out. Life can’t help but be disappointing.

Maybe Meredith found it easy to betray me because she had a sister. A sister whom she was always taking for granted. A sister who is now on my front porch, nipping at my ankles like a bad-tempered terrier. As I stand here, listening to Clara rant about how I must know where Meredith is, a sense of exhaustion and defeat surges through me, and I just want to crumple up into a ball then and there, and wail at everyone to leave me the hell alone. I am so tired. I’ve just seen Ben kissing Liv at his open house, and the last thing I need is Clara making a scene.

I let the tears come, and Clara’s rant falters. “I’m sorry,” I sniffle. “I miss her so much, too, you must know that, right? She’s my best friend, and I—look at me, my life’s a mess without her. I’ve been texting her and calling her and she hasn’t replied to me. I think she’s blocked my number. So I don’t know what to tell you, Clara, okay? I’m sorry.” I shift my hold on Sabine to a position I know she finds uncomfortable, and just as I hoped, Sabine starts fussing. “Look, I have to go.”

Clara looks torn between sympathy and mistrust. “I’m going to report her missing.”

Dread uncoils deep inside me, but I’ve prepared myself for this eventuality. There was no way that Clara wasn’t going to report Meredith missing. I always knew that, at some point, Clara would report it. All I can do is wait and trust that I’ve cleaned up my tracks as well as anyone could. I meet her eyes and nod. “I think that’s probably for the best at this point.”

This gives Clara pause. She’s been expecting me to fight it. “You really haven’t spoken to her at all?” Her voice wobbles.

I shake my head, thanking the universe for the millionth time for the fact that Meredith hadn’t told Clara that I was going to be at her place that day. “I’m worried too. I think you’re right about reporting her missing.”

Clara nods. As she leaves, I call out, “Keep me updated?”

She waves and leaves. I take Sabine inside the house, and the moment the door closes behind me, I utter a huge sigh of relief. I’ve thrown Clara off my scent by telling her to call the cops. Hopefully, this means she’ll set her suspicions elsewhere. As I change Sabine’s diaper, I mentally go over all of the details that I’ve been so careful to take care of.

Yes, I killed my best friend. But I think it would be apt to say that she killed me first. Killed my trust, completely spat in the face of our friendship. She destroyed my heart, my soul twin who betrayed me. That day, when I finally did it, I gave her so many chances to come clean. If she had, I wouldn’t have gone through with it. I would at least have known that she felt remorse for trying to fuck me over.

We met as fledgling influencers. She watched me struggle to grow my following. She was there the times I had sobbed and said I would never make it—that there was no place in the industry for me. She was the one who nudged me to keep going, the one who propped me up. And now, to turn around and try to destroy that?

When I realized what Mer was doing with Elea’s iPad, I went from anger, to disbelief, to a whole different realm entirely. It was like I walked into a stark, white room filled with nothing but a tiny, high-pitched sound. A room of cold, quiet, murderous rage. It was this rage that had driven me to begin my planning. To prepare Mer’s grave; to line up everything that would lead to her disappearance. When I poured various powdered drugs into the champagne bottle, I was calm—so calm. And when the drugs entered her system and brought her down, I gazed down at my best friend, lying there on the floor, her eyes blinking at different rates and one hand twitching, and I knew that there was no going back. Then I’d picked up one of her cushions and brought it down onto her face, and that was when the grief struck. I’d planned every step so well, thought long and hard about how I was going to do it, but when the time came to actually do the deed, I found it a million times harder than expected. Still, I went through with it, because I’m not a quitter.

I cleaned up well. It was simple, actually. As a momfluencer, I’m very good at deep cleaning. There’s an art to it. I knew all the right kinds of chemicals to use that wouldn’t leave a harsh antiseptic smell in the air. I knew to go down on my hands and knees and scour every corner, even under the cabinets. Wipe down everything I might’ve touched but not every surface; there still needs to be Mer’s prints here and there. Then I washed up all the glasses that we’d used, dried them, and put them back in the cupboards before taking the empty bottles of alcohol out.

The trickiest part was getting Mer’s body into her car. I took care to wrap her up in a blanket before lifting her up. It wasn’t easy. Like every momfluencer worth her salt, Mer was skinny, but so was I, and I staggered about as I tried to heave her up over my shoulder. I nearly fell a couple of times, but finally managed to find my balance, swearing under my breath the whole time. By then, it was already dark. Outside, I kept to the shadows, my ears pricked for any neighbors who might be watching. But if they were, they’d see a redhead with glasses on. When I got to the car, I dumped Mer inside the back seat. I was panting hard by then. I retrieved my duffel bag from inside Mer’s apartment. It contained a spade, water bottles, and a change of clothes. I took out Mer’s phone and sent a message to Clara.

I need a fucking break. I’m going to check myself into a retreat for a few weeks. I know you won’t truly understand, but I need to do this to replenish my soul. Love you, sis, and tell Luca Mommy loves him and will be back with so many presents and all the kisses!

Then I turned it off before Clara could send a reply, took out the SIM card, and snapped it in half. I had turned my own phone off to avoid any GPS tracking earlier on, before coming to Mer’s. Then I was off to the desert. The desert I’d told Mer, so many years ago, was surely filled with dead bodies. I still remember, even now, the haunted look on Mer’s face when I’d let my mask slip. When I showed her a glimpse of the darkness lurking underneath. She really should’ve known better than to cross me.

I can’t describe, even now, the feeling of driving deep into the emptiness of the desert with the dead body of my best friend in the back seat of the car. Like I said, thinking about it is one thing. Actually doing it, and knowing that it is done and that there is no going back, is a whole other thing. A couple of times, the oppressive emptiness almost got to me, and I considered driving away and never coming back myself. I wailed as I drove, keening my sorrow into the starry sky. My best friend was dead, and I had to bury her. I pounded at the steering wheel and sobbed and sobbed. My tears burned endless trails down my cheeks.

I’d prepared so hard for this. I’d driven out here a couple of times in the past few weeks to dig. I had to go deep. I wouldn’t make the rookie mistake of digging too shallow a grave. But when I veered off the freeway toward the hole I’d dug, I saw tire tracks in the dirt. My chest squeezed, my instincts rearing up, and I turned around and drove away. My insides churned. The hole I’d dug, the grave I’d so carefully prepared for Mer, had been found. Maybe I could dig another hole at a different spot? The desert was vast. I dismissed the idea quickly. When I’d dug the original hole, I’d been taken aback by how difficult a task it was. How backbreaking. It had taken me hours to go about four feet down. I’d had to come back a second time to go deeper. I didn’t have the luxury of time now, not with Mer’s body in the back seat. I would only manage a shallow grave.

Think, Aspen. Do not panic.

I took a map out of my duffel bag. It wasn’t like I could do a Google search. Less than twenty miles away from where I was, there was a lake. I could get rid of both the body and the car there. Right. I could do that. I got back on the road and navigated my way to the lake. By the time I got there, it was eight thirty p.m. It was pitch-dark out here. I checked to make sure no one was about, then I dragged Mer’s body out of the back seat and shoved it into the driver’s seat. The sight of her face brought a new wave of tears, hot and furious. I tried my best to stifle my sobs as I aimed the steering wheel at the large body of water and set the car to D. I had no idea what to expect; it wasn’t like I’d done this before, but once I let go of the brake pedal with the shovel, the car rolled forward so fast that the shovel was almost wrenched out of my hands. I only had enough time to jerk it out of the window.

“Wait—” I said, knowing that it was futile. I hadn’t even said goodbye , I thought stupidly, as the car trundled down the bank and into the water. There was hardly a splash. It kept going and going at a steady speed. What if it stopped now, halfway into the water? But before the thought could take root, the car was completely submerged. Bubbles popped on the surface. I stood there for some time—I wasn’t entirely sure how long—then I shook myself. I had a long trek home. I hadn’t planned on leaving Mer’s car out here. I was going to bury her out here, drive back to the city, and leave her car with the keys inside. In a city like LA, her car would be snatched off the streets, repainted, and sold within twenty-four hours. But now, I had no such luxury. It wasn’t like I could call an Uber to pick me up all the way out here. No, I had to walk back to the city. I checked my watch. It was only nine p.m. I could do this.

I went at what I thought was a sensible pace—brisk but steady. Still, by the time I made it to the nearest city, every joint in my body was screaming; it felt like my bones were scraping against one another. I stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom. I washed my face and refilled my water bottle, then styled my hair the way Meredith used to do hers before pulling a cap over it. Outside, I found a trash can and threw the spade in there, after wiping it down. I took a burner cell from my bag and ordered a cab to take me to the next city. I didn’t speak to the driver and kept my head low the entire ride. I tipped him generously, but not so much that he’d remember me. Then I ordered another cab to take me closer to home. Two more cabs, and I was finally back at Mer’s place. I stumbled back to my car and drove home, numb with exhaustion. I crept into the nursery and curled up next to Sabine’s crib.

In the morning, her soft waking-up snuffles woke me, and I hurried into the bathroom, where I stripped off my clothes and took a scalding hot shower. When Ben woke up, he found me in the kitchen, prodding at a fluffy cheese-and-ham omelet. He suspected nothing.

I spent the rest of the day going through every little detail, searching for possibilities that might expose me. What if one of her neighbors had seen me arriving at her house or leaving it? No, I tell myself. I’d worn a wig and put on tinted glasses and applied my makeup a different way. But what if someone saw me in the desert? Unlikely, but still. So many what-ifs. I could only assure myself that I had done everything possible to clean up my tracks. After dropping the twins off at school, I came home, opened up my social media accounts, and almost had a heart attack. There was a new post from Mer. A video of her morning routine, posted at seven a.m. this morning. I choked so hard on my coffee that I had to thump myself on the chest. It took a while for me to realize what had happened: like every influencer worth her salt, Mer had scheduled posts in advance. Of course. So fucking obvious. I forced myself to calm down. And once I did, I realized this would work in my favor. I remembered, then, how Mer had taught me to schedule posts at least one month in advance. This meant that it would be at least a month before her viewers even realized she was gone.

Except now my month’s grace is up. And Clara, who’s been going crazy this whole time because Mer’s left Luca with her without prior warning, is going to report Mer missing. My world is about to get blown up.