Allison just hated having to sneak around with Brandon though. She enjoyed being with him, and he made her feel pretty. Every time she went back home to pretend he wasn’t a part of her life, though, she felt empty. She just wanted these last two years of high school to be over so she could do whatever she wanted. She even thought about going to college in Lubbock, or even further away, just so she could feel like she had some freedom for once. Yet, she dreaded the idea of being away from him.
Allison watched Brandon fix his hair in the mirror and make sure he wiped off all her lip gloss from his lips and neck. This big, stupid boy, she thought. The love of her life, if she were allowed to have a life. His shaggy walnut hair and big blue eyes and chiseled face. He was so handsome. Two of his best friends went down to Austin for spring break, but he stayed here, which she was glad for. She couldn’t stand the idea of going a whole week without spending time with him.
“So maybe tomorrow night you can come through the window,” she said, almost a question.
“Yeah, babe. I’ll see what I can do. I’ve got baseball drills in the morning and then I’ve gotta help my dad at the store, but I can make time for you tomorrow night.”
“Hey, have you thought about where you’re going next year?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m gonna stay at SFU. They offered me that good baseball scholarship, so I’m going to take it. It means I can stay close to you. Then maybe you can come after next year?”
Stephen F. Austin University, located in Nacogdoches, was just an hour’s drive away from their small town of Henderson. Allison knew she could handle that. He could come home on the weekends when he wasn’t playing, and she’d be able to drive to Nacogdoches to watch him play.
“I’d like that, a lot.” Even though SFU wasn’t her first choice, Allison knew she was willing to make the sacrifice to stay with Brandon. She really wanted to go to Baylor or Texas A&M. Her best friend Amilyn got accepted to A&M next year. The thought that she’d be all alone hit her all of a sudden. Her boyfriend and best friend would both be off to college while she had to stay for one more year before her own graduation.
She supposed Brandon could see the sadness in her eyes. “Are you sure?” he asked her. “Doesn’t look like you like it very much.”
“I do, I’m just worried about next year since you’ll be gone.”
“Don’t worry, babe. I’ll be back in town as often as possible.” He smiled at her and kissed her on the nose.
Brandon’s reassurance didn’t sit well in her stomach, but she smiled nonetheless. “I should be getting home soon. I don’t want to be gone too long.”
Brandon reached for the ignition, but something stopped him from turning the key. A puzzled look flashed across his face and he cocked his ear. “Did you hear that?” he asked Allison.
“Did I hear what?” Allison tried to listen. She ran the palm of her hand over the fogged windshield to clear a section of the glass so that she could see through. She hoped they hadn’t been found by the police, and she hoped doubly that it wasn’t Tyler Washington’s father. Just as their sons, Tyler and Lucas, John Washington and Bobby were close friends, and it wouldn’t take long for Mr. Washington to tell her stepdad about this secret midnight rendezvous at Yates Park. She’d be grounded for the rest of the school year, she was sure. Allison squinted her eyes to adjust to the dark and saw movement across the street from the park.
“Babe, look!” she said, pointing
Brandon rapidly cleared a spot in the windshield for himself and peered out.
There, across the street from the park, was a row of such houses. The paneling on several was chipped and dilapidated. A car sat in front of one of the homes, an older black Ford sedan. Somehow it looked to not belong in the neighborhood to Allison. Something seemed...off. She quickly realized that the black Ford was running, but its lights were dark. And the trunk was open.
The source of the sound wasn’t necessarily coming from the car, however. Both Allison and Brandon looked on in horror as they watched a person, a man, load a large package in the opened trunk of the Ford. Despite the darkness, it was apparent to Allison that the package was a body wrapped in a black trash bag.
The man then shut the trunk lid quietly, opened the driver’s door, got in the car and drove away. The two teenagers watched as his tail lights faded off for a few blocks toward the south end of town.
“Oh my god, Brandon. What just happened?” Allison asked in a hyperventilated whisper. “Was that a body?!” Her voice cut the quiet between them and all awareness rushed back into Brandon’s brain.
“I don’t know babe. Just calm down.”
“Calm down?! Brandon, that guy just loaded a body in the back of that car!” Her voice was loud now, terror raising it to a near scream.
Brandon took the girl’s hand in his own. She was trembling profusely. Her breath out of rhythm and heavy as he stroked her fingers in an attempt to get her to relax. “We don’t know that,” he said in a half-attempt to reassure her. “But we need to get out of here. If someone else saw, that means the cops will be here soon.”
“Are you sure he’s gone?” Allison wiped her hands on the rest of the fogged windows to remove the condensation. Peering out through the windshield and the door window, she didn’t notice anyone else roused in the neighborhood or around the park, at least not anyone who would be immediately apparent.
“Yeah babe, I think he’s gone. C’mon, let’s get out of here,” Brandon said.
Brandon turned the ignition, the matte black Challenger roaring to life. Allison’s house was only a few blocks away across Kilgore Drive, but she sat in complete silence the entire ride. Her almond eyes framed in long lashes, the mascara all rubbed off, stared at the porch lights of the houses as they drove past. Brandon held her hand as he drove, occasionally releasing it to shift gears.
When they arrived to her neighborhood, Brandon parked across the street and two houses down. Allison gave Brandon a quick kiss on the lips. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
She got of the car and hurriedly jogged back to her house. All she wanted to do was crawl back through her window, wrap up under her bedsheets and forget this night happened.
CHAPTER THREE
Saturday March 15 | 1:54am
THE BOYS IN the treehouse sat in the darkness, afraid to turn the LED lantern back on. There wasn’t a sound in the woods, no more rustling of leaves or of shoes on the dirt. Lucas could still hear the sound of the man’s shovel stabbing into the earth in his mind’s ear. He couldn’t stop thinking about what he and his friends had just witnessed, however none of them could bring themselves to speak.
Finally, Tyler broke the silence with a whisper, “I think we’re okay now, guys. I haven’t heard anything in almost,” he illuminated the hands on his Timex watch, “fifteen minutes.”
Elijah spoke up as well, his voice cracking, prepubescent and fearful, “I want to go home, guys.”
Lucas did as well, but he didn’t know what to do. He knew that he couldn’t tell his parents about the hideout, in fear of their reaction to their secret. They’d make him and his friends tear it down. He may even not be allowed to hang out with them anymore. “I think we should get our stuff and get out of here,” he said.
Elijah said, “Yeah, let’s pack up. We can go to my house. We can go through the backdoor through the garage. My mom should be asleep, and she won’t hear us if we’re quiet.”
Tyler nodded in agreement, grabbing his backpack. “We can’t have any evidence that we were out here. Our parents will kill us.”
“Don’t say that, man,” Lucas said. “Somebody really is dead out there!”
“You know what I mean!” Tyler said. “No one can know this is our treehouse. The cops will probably be out here in the morning and will want to question anyone who saw what we saw. And I don’t know about you guys, but I know for a fact my parents will ground me for forever if they knew we were out here.”
Tyler reached f
or the lantern. Turning the LED light back on, the treehouse suddenly bathed in a light glow. All three boys quickly packed up everything they could that looked like personal property into their backpacks. All the trash from their sodas, candy and other food they threw into a grocery store plastic sack and Elijah chucked it into his blue Champion backpack.
Lucas looked at the Avengers poster, sighed and ripped it from the nails he’d hammered in earlier in the night. He rolled the poster up and shoved it into his own backpack. He took account of all his belongings, his phone, external battery pack and asthma inhaler.
The boys gave the treehouse one last look-over to make sure they got it all. “It has to look like no one has been here recently,” Tyler said. Lucas thought they did a good job of clearing everything out. The floor and walls were completely empty. At one time, Lucas thought it would be cool to paint the interior of the fort, but for now it was brown, bare wood.
Elijah opened the trap door and peered out to the ground below. No boogeyman waited for them at the base of the tree. “Okay guys, let’s go,” he said. He looked at the rope ladder they’d built to get in and out but decided to leave it coiled to the side. “We can jump down.”
First Elijah and then Lucas shimmied through the trapdoor on the floor and jumped to the ground. Tyler went last, throwing down the backpacks to his friends before jumping down himself. Lucas handed Tyler’s backpack to him when he reached the ground and he swung it over his shoulders.
The three boys trekked back through the trees, refraining from using the lantern in fear of being noticed, for several hundred yards until they reached the long fence line of their neighborhood that separated the houses and yards from the woods. Elijah’s house was just on the next street beyond the houses that butted up against the trees.
Sweat dripped down Lucas’s forehead and he didn’t know if it was from the strenuous walk for from the stress and anxiety he was feeling in his gut. Nonetheless it felt cold with the nighttime air hitting his face. The boys crossed the block to the street where Elijah lived, watching for any cars or other activity in the area. The neighborhood was quiet and dark. There were cars parked out in front of some houses, but everything was dark and lifeless. Porch lights helped illuminate the sidewalks as they made their way to Elijah’s house.
They reached their destination, going through the alley to Elijah’s backyard. Climbing as quietly as possible over the chain link fence that separated yard from alley, they helped toss bags and backpacks until each of them made it over the barrier. Elijah pulled out a key hanging from a chain around his neck and unlocked the door that led into the garage from the backyard. Lucas, the last one in, shut it as slowly as he could in order to not make any sound. The door creaked, but he didn’t think it was loud enough for Elijah’s mother to hear if she were asleep. Once they were in the garage, Elijah did the same with the door leading into the house.
The door opened up into a utility room, with a washer and dryer, and the kitchen was just beyond through a doorless entrance. A light above the kitchen sink illuminated the kitchen, the white appliances illuminated from the it. The light, and the house itself, made Lucas feel safe. He noticed his breathing, which had been heavy and hurried, had calmed down to normal.
The three boys entered Elijah’s bedroom and deposited their backpacks on the floor. “My mom has to work in the morning. We’ll tell her we came back here to play XBox. I don’t think she’ll mind if you guys stay for a little while,” Elijah said in a half-whisper.
He didn’t think his mom was awake, and he’d certainly not want to disturb her now. He sat on the edge of his bed, a messy full-sized unit with a blue comforter and sheets crumpled at the foot. A basket of clothes overflowing was at the foot of the bed. Elijah pulled his shoes off and tossed them beside the clothes basket.
“My parents already think I’m here,” Tyler said, removing his shoes as well.
“Yeah, and I’ll just text my dad in the morning. I’ll tell him I came over here with Tyler,” said Lucas.
Lucas sat on a blue bean bag chair on the ground, its faux-leather surface cracked with age and wear. Tyler was in the chair at the computer desk, his feet stretched out in front of him.
“Well, this is definitely not how I thought our first night in the fort would go,” Elijah said. He fell backward onto the mattress, his head hitting a Spider-man pillow. “I wonder if we’ll ever get to go back.”
“We’ll get to go back,” Tyler said. “Once the cops get everything figured out. It’ll probably be a couple of days but think about this. It’s just like a movie; someone goes missing, right? So, they’re gonna do a search party, and they’ll have, like, body-sniffing dogs. So, they’ll find the body, catch the bad guy, and things will go back to normal.”
“You’re right,” Lucas said, reclining back onto the beanbag. “We’ve just gotta stay quiet for a few days and it’ll all be back to normal.” Lucas’s words ended with a yawn. Now that they were in a house, away from the woods and safe, exhaustion started weighing on his eyelids.
As he closed his eyes, Lucas couldn’t get the sound the shovel out of his head. The sound it made as it tore into the ground, slicing the dirt, looped in his mind.
And the way the bag that the body was in sounded as it hit the bottom of the newly-dug hole. The heavy thud. He shook it out of his mind. He wanted to forget it, hoping that in the morning, things would begin to go back to normal.
As he fell asleep, he chanted in his head silently like a mantra, Things will go back to normal.
CHAPTER FOUR
Saturday March 15 | 10:34am
A PUDDLE OF drool formed in the corner of Lucas’s mouth and he wiped it off as he rustled awake. His blonde hair was disheveled, with one chunk matted to the side of his face while in the back a cowlick stood straight up. He slept hard and dreamless on the beanbag chair. He sat up to see Elijah still soundly asleep on his bed. Tyler was on the floor with his pillow and sleeping bag that he had brought from the treehouse as his bedding.
Reaching for his backpack, Lucas pulled his phone out to check the time. The iPhone 5, a hand-me-down from his older sister, read 10:35am. He had no missed texts from his parents, which was good. He unlocked the device and opened the messaging app. He thumbed out a quick text to his dad. Good morning dad. I’m at Elijah’s with Elijah and Tyler. Just wanted to let you know. He made sure the ringer was on and put the device back in his bag.
There was a knock at the bedroom door. “Elijah, mijo, are you home?” Elijah’s mom opened the door. As it opened, she fumbled with her long dark hair, wrapping it in a ponytail. “Oh, goodness,” she said, startled to see all three boys in there, “I didn’t know you boys were here!”
Elijah sat up on his bed and rubbed his eyes, “Sorry, mom. Yeah. We came in last night. We wanted to play Fortnite on the Xbox. I didn’t want to wake you up when we came in, so we tried to stay quiet.”
Tyler also woke up, stretching and yawning. “Hi, Ms. Reyes,” Tyler said. “I hope you don’t mind us being here.”
“Oh, not at all,” she said. She pulled her car keys from the front pocket of her nurse’s scrubs and gave her attention to Elijah. “I have to go to work, mijo. There’s stuff for lunch in the fridge. Make sure your sister brushes her teeth. I’ll be home at seven. I love you.”
“I love you, mom,” Elijah said. “Is it okay if Lucas and Tyler stay over for a little while? We’re going to have a Fortnite tournament.”
She smiled, “Yes, as long as you stay here with your sister, I don’t mind.” With that, she shut the door and left.
Lucas ran his hands through his hair, trying to tame the wildness. His mouth felt dry and he reached into his backpack where he still had a bottle of water. Lucas twisted the cap off the Ozarka bottle and took an excessive gulp. The room temperature water felt good on his dry throat.
“Can I have a drink of that?” Tyler asked. Lucas handed it over to his friend. Tyler also took a large swig from the bottle. “Man,” Tyler said, shaking
his head and blinking his eyes, forcing himself fully awake. “I don’t know about you guys, but I slept like a rock.”
Both Lucas and Elijah agreed. Once the adrenaline rush ran its course, coupled with the late-night hike back through the woods and the neighborhood, sleep came easy and heavy. However, the events of the night were still fresh in their minds and imaginations.
“What are we going to do now, guys?” Lucas asked. “I mean, are we really just going to wait around and hope the police or somebody finds that body?”
“Here’s what I think,” Tyler said, sitting up and sliding out of his sleeping bag on the floor. “We can stay quiet for a little while. Besides, we don’t actually know that it was a body. It could have been something else. Maybe a dead dog.”
Elijah cut him off, “I don’t know, man. That would have been a really big dog.”
Lucas nodded his head, “Yeah, who buries a dog in the middle of the night, and in the woods?”
“What I’m saying is,” said Tyler, “we don’t one hundred percent know. So, I say we stay quiet for a little while. I don’t want any of us to get in trouble or get grounded. But, if we hear something about a missing person, we can always call the cops but not tell them who we are. My dad says he gets anonymous tips all the time about stuff.”
Lucas nodded in agreement. “You’re right. We can watch the news, see if there’s anything on Facebook about somebody missing. If there is, we make a call to the cops.”
“Did either of you guys see what he looked like?” asked Elijah.
Lucas shook his head. “Not really well. I could tell that he was big though.” Lucas kept playing the whole ordeal in his head, racking his brain for any other details. All he could remember, however, was the dark shape of a man digging that hole by the fallen tree trunk. The way the man worked quickly and methodically.
The Treehouse Page 2
