flipflop_diva

“Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.” A tall, lanky boy in a blue windbreaker shook his head back and forth, fear and desperation on his face.

The boy next to him, in a camo-colored hoodie, just rolled his eyes. “Pull it together, Mason,” he hissed.

“Pull it together?” Mason’s voice was high-pitched and shaky. “Someone knows. Someone saw us!”

“It’s a shovel,” the camo boy said sternly. He now turned to the third boy, dressed in jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt with a huge picture of Iron Man on it. “Tell him Dusty.”

Dusty looked hesitant. “I don’t know,” he said. He let his eyes scan all around them. They were standing in the middle of a deserted plot of land, nothing to be seen but overgrown weeds and a few dying trees in the distance.

It was nearing midnight, and the moon on this night was just a pale sliver. The wind was rushing through the weeds and the dying trees, making a sort of squealing sound. It was enough to give one the shivers.

In front of the boys was a hole, the dirt that had once filled it in piles all around it.

“Urghhh.” The camo boy groaned and threw up his hands. “So what? We forgot the shovel last night. If someone found it, who cares? They’re never going to know.”

“We dug a hole!” Mason was still panicked, and it showed in the echo of his voice and the paleness of his face. “There’s only possible thing we could need a hole for!”

“No!” The camo boy crossed the divide between him and Mason and grabbed the other boy by the shoulders, his fingers digging in. “They don’t know. And we are not going to tell anyone. Don’t look suspicious and no one will ever know.”

“And if they are suspicious already?” Mason whispered.

“Then play dumb,” the camo boy said. He glared at Mason, and then at Dusty for good effect. “You both are good at that.”

--

All things considered, the three boys should have gotten away with it. For amateurs, they had been surprisingly competent for the most part.

They had spent afternoons, under the guise of a study group, plotting how best to do it — sneak into the old house in the dead of night, find what they needed and get out. The hole had been a backup plan, in case they ran into trouble.

Dusty leaving the shovel there instead of taking it home had been the first mistake, but not a deal breaker. They had simply used their hands to scoop the dirt back into the hole. Then the camo boy — Richard — had taken them back to his empty house, his parents being off at some fancy party, to thoroughly wash off all the dirt before heading back to their own houses.

Mason and Dusty had both successfully gotten back into their respective bedrooms and the texts between the boys that night were gleeful. “We did it!” “No one saw.” “In a few days, we’ll dig it up and then we’ll be home free.”

But what Mason, Dusty and Richard didn’t count on — nor account for — was Madison, Dusty’s two-year-younger sister.

“You weren’t home last night,” she said to him over breakfast. “Where were you?”

If Dusty had been thinking, he would have realized his sister simply meant he hadn’t shown up for dinner, which he hadn’t, because he’d told his parents he was having pizza at Richard’s, which he was.

Instead his eyes widened and he stared at her.

“What? Why …. I was … Nowhere. I wasn’t anywhere.”

Madison frowned. “Uhhh, your chair was pretty empty at dinner.”

Dusty’s face both lost all color and also burned hot. “Oh, um, yeah, that. Pizza,” he stammered.

Madison now raised her eyebrows. “Uh huh,” she said. She leaned over. “Where were you really, Dustin Winthrop?”

“Nowhere.”

“With Richard and Mason?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Madison nodded to herself. “With Richard and Mason then.”

“What? I said no!”

Madison smiled at him, the type of smile only a cocky baby sister can smile. “Sure you did,” she said.

--

“They know. They all know,” Dusty moaned later that day as the boys ate their lunches amidst all their classmates. “They keep staring.”

“They don’t know, and they aren’t staring,” Richard said quickly. “Stop being dramatic or people will know.”

“I’m not being dramatic,” Dusty said.

But as if the universe were trying to argue with him, just then another boy appeared, a short muscular one with dark hair.

“Heard you guys were out all night getting high,” he said. “Mad props.”

“What?” Dusty said. “No … we … no … we weren’t out.”

“Go away,” Richard told the boy.

The boy shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, and walked away.

Richard glared at Dusty. “Pull it together, man.”

--

Dusty did not in fact pull it together.

“So what did you really do last night?” Madison asked when he got home.

“Nothing,” he answered.

“Were you drinking?”

“What? No!”

“Getting high?”

“No!”

“Burying a dead body?”

Dusty froze. It took him too long to answer. “Why would you … I mean … of course not … why would … do I look …. No?”

“Oh my god!” his sister stared at him. “What were you doing last night, Dustin Winthrop?”

“Nothing! And don’t tell anyone!”

--

“Why does your sister’s Instagram post say the three of us were burying a dead body two nights ago?”

Richard shoved his phone under Dusty’s nose the next morning. Dusty’s eyes widened as he read it.

“No, no, no, no,” he mumbled.

Someone smacked him on the arm. Mason. “And I thought I was the one freaking out! What did you do, Dustin?”

“Nothing, nothing, she’s just crazy!”

“Is she though?” Mason said. Dusty buried his head in his hands.

--

Madison wouldn’t listen.

“We weren’t burying a dead body!” he tried, over and over again, as his sister kept inching farther away from him on the couch, a knife in her hand.

“Can you put that down?” he finally shouted.

Madison glanced down. “I might need to defend myself.”

“We didn’t kill anyone!”

“I don’t know,” she said. “There are lots of rumors at school. That you guys snuck out. That you were spotted in that old deserted mansion. That you were in the middle of a field digging a hole.”

“You started those rumors! And how did you know all that?”

“So it is true!”

“No!”

“You didn’t sneak out?”

“We didn’t have to sneak out. We were there for dinner.”

“You didn’t go into that deserted old mansion?”

“You and I have gone into that mansion, Maddie.”

“So that’s a yes.”

“Fine. We went into the mansion.”

“And you dug a hole?”

“How would you even know that?”

Madison shrugged. “A friend of a friend of a friend.”

“What if we did dig it?”

“You put a dead body in it.”

“No!”

“No?” Madison peered at her brother.

“No!”

“No?”

“No! We put comic books in it!”

“You put …. what?”

“Comic books.” Dusty groaned and flopped back against the couch cushions. “We found a secret room in the mansion. And we found comic books. A box of them. So we kept them. But if we told anyone …”

“If you told anyone, no one would care.”

“They would care.”

“So you buried them because ….?”

“I don’t know.” Dustin shrugged. “It made sense at the time. Mom would ask questions if I brought home too many, so we thought this way we could sneak them out a few at a time and no one would know.”

“You’re an idiot,” Madison said.

“I know. Don’t tell anyone.”

--

“You’re an idiot, Dustin Winthrop.” Richard threw his phone into Dusty’s lap the next morning at school. Dusty picked it up.

His eyes widened as he read.

“CONFIRMED: Dusty Winthrop, Richard Vane and Mason McConnell killed a man last weekend for his comic books!”

Above his sister’s comment, with the 672 likes, was a photo. Of a hole that looked way too familiar. And an empty cardboard box.

Dusty looked up at his friends, his face pale.

“Shit,” he said.

“Yeah,” Richard said. “Now everyone knows.”

“Yeah,” Mason piped up. “Everyone now thinks we’re murderers. And the worse part.” He shook his head in dismay. “We don’t even have any comic books to read to feel better.”

“Shit,” Dusty said again, and the three boys drifted into silence. And that was the end of that.

Fiction.

This was written for Week 16 of