We Don't Know

TW: murder, gore

The world comes to a stop.

One. Two. Three.

I count as everything moves in slow motion around me.

Four. Five. Six.

I can hear my heart beating in my chest at an unusual speed.

Seven. Eight. Nine.

What have I done?

I can hear my name being called, but it seems to be coming from so far away, like I'm underwater.

"Gabby."

Am I drowning?

"Gabby!"

Ten.

"Come with us right now!"

I don't have time to nod, or agree, or do anything before I'm being pulled away by the arm.

My eyes dart around the room as we pass by drunk partygoers, their heads tilted back laughing at probably nothing. Some are dancing, some are embraced in each other's arms making out. Some are drinking, smoking.

Everyone is doing what people normally do at parties.

Except for us.

Because of me. Because of what I did.

The heavy bass of the music fill my ears slowly as I start to become aware of my surroundings again.

We're at the party, Bethany's party.

It finally registers with me that people are around but thankfully nobody is paying us any attention.

I quickly look down at my hands and gasp. They start shaking.

Paul takes notice of my reaction as I stop walking, he's still grabbing onto my arm and he squeezes to the point where it's supposed to hurt but I feel nothing, I'm numb.

"Keep walking, quickly."

I do. I walk, but I don't look up, I don't know where we're going, where Paul is taking me. I keep stating at my hands and let him guide me through the crowd.

My hands, they're red. Bloody.

Finally we stop. I look up to see that we're in the bathroom upstairs, the music is barely heard anymore and Kayleen and Thomas are there too. Arms crossed. Thomas looks sick, like he's about ready to hurl and Kayleen is biting her nails and shaking her leg up and down in nervousness.

"I need to wash off." I speak for the first time since it happened. Since I-

"Good idea." Thomas says walking hurriedly towards the sink and turning on the tap.

It's cold and the water gathering in the sink immediately turns red before going down the drain. I turn off the tap once I'm done. There's red stains everywhere in the pristine, white sink.

I look down once again and I'm shocked to see my hands are still red.

"Its- it's still there, it's still red."

Paul walks over and hesitates before touching me. But he does. He takes me by the shoulders and gives me a tentative smile.

"Wash them again Gabby. Again and again until it's not."

His expression is soft, his tone calm, but he's angry. I know it, I can feel it. I can see it in his eyes.

I nod and do as told.

I scrub and scrub and scrub. My fingers turn wrinkly from being wet for so long but I keep going because Paul said so. Because the red is not gone yet.

Midway through my hand washing I hear the door open, Bethany walks inside and closes it behind her and turns on the lock.

"Where is she?" Kayleen asks walking over to Bethany. "Did you leave her downstairs like that, are you crazy?"

"I couldn't carry her all the way up here by myself now could I?" Bethany hisses through her gritted teeth. She's angry too, they all are. "Relax, I locked the back door leading to the pool."

"People are gonna find a way out there soon Beth, there's a pool, everyone is drunk and some idiot is gonna go out there to jump in the freaking water." Paul says.

"They're gonna find her." I say. My eyes widen as I realise what that could mean. "I have to help her, oh God what have I done? I have to help her."

"Gabby calm down."

"They're gonna find her."

"Nobody's gonna find her." Bethany says as if it's final. Not up for discussion.

If Bethany said nobody is gonna find Miriam then nobody is.

I nod, unconvinced, but I lie to myself that she's right. I choose to believe her because I can't afford to believe otherwise. I cling to the ridiculous idea that we can get away with this, that I can get away with this.

"Baby, is the red gone?" Paul asks.

I look down and my hands look normal. Almost normal, there's still some pinkish hue left.

Kayleen grabs my hands and walks me over to the sink again. She forcefully holds my hands under the spray of water. Reaching down into the small cabinet under the sink she comes back up with a bottle of bleach and dumps a generous amount on my hands. It smells, but I say nothing, I let her do it. I tell myself it's smart.

Bleach gets rid of blood doesn't it? I think it does. It'll get rid of any evidence that I had Miriam's blood on my hands.

You're gonna have her blood on your hands forever Gabby.

"Okay I have a plan. This is what we do." Thomas says heaving a sigh.

And we do what he says.

We start by heading back downstairs after locking the bathroom door after we leave.

Act normal, I tell myself. It's what Thomas told us to do. Thomas knows best, he's so smart, and he's always right.

I hold Paul's hand like I always do at parties, that's normal.

I look around at the familiar faces, nobody is actually looking at us and that's good.

"But we know they see us." Thomas had said. "If anybody asks questions, we need people to witness us partying like normal."

Like I said, Thomas is smart.

Paul pulls me into the crowd of dancing partygoers once we make it to the living room. He's smiling, acting flirty and dancing. His hands are all over me and he tries to get me to move my hips, my hands, anything. To get me to dance too. I stick out like a sore thumb in a crowd of dancing sweaty bodies moving perfectly to the rythm of the music.

"We don't want people remembering any of us acting weird or strange. Or absent."

So I dance. I start by wrapping my arms around Paul's neck and move my body slowly in his arms. For a second I almost feel normal again, like I did at the beginning of the night. Before I ruined everything.

"There's Daniella." He says. Not what I expected him to say to me at all.

"Some people saw us, Daniella Stratman for example. If the police question people from the party, question her, and she says we disappeared upstairs to never be seen again, we're screwed."

So we make sure Daniella Stratman sees us, we dance towards her direction slowly and discreetly until we accidentally of course, bump into her. Daniella smiles when Paul apologises and bingo, I think. She sees us here, at the party having fun. Dancing, partying, being us.

Gabby and Paul. Paul and Gabby.

I move a bit closer to him, grab the back of his neck and comb my fingers through the tiny hairs that are sticking to his sweaty neck. I inch closer to his face. My eyes water when he flinches away first before masking his face back to its neutral expression. I look into his eyes.

"I didn't mean to hurt her." I say.

His eyes bore into mine, countless expressions flitting across his face and yet I can't, for the life of me, read a single one of them.

"Just like I didn't mean to hurt you." He says.

I'm taken aback. "But you did."

This time around Paul does give me a genuine smile. His left hand that's wrapped around my waist tightens a bit more as he pulls me closer to his body. His right hand cups the left side of my cheek then his fingers disappear into my hair until his hand is cupping thr back of my skull.

"So did you."

His jaw is tense when the says it, his eyes glassy, his teeth are gritted and it makes me wonder if they're gonna chip at the ends from how hard he's grinding them. His eyebows are furrowed and he looks as if he's desperate for something.

He's devastated, hurt, angry, as if I've disappointed him. Betrayed him.

I guess I have.

I'm pulled back to reality when the crowd around us starts cheering loudly. I jump then look to where everyone else is and I see Kayleen standing on top of a table, teasing the gathering crowd by pretending she's going to take off her top. Everyone's focus at the party is on her now.

My eyes immediately dart across the room where the kitchen can be seen from where we are. The crowd gathered there join the rest in cheering on Kayleen, leaving the kitchen empty.

"We need a distraction." Thomas had said.

"Leave it to me." Kayleen had replied.

Once the coast is clear Thomas and Bethany make sure no one is looking then they open the sliding doors and disappear outisde. I wait, heart in my throat until they reappear again, with an unconscious Miriam between them. Each of her arms around Thomas and Bethany's shoulders respectively.

For anyone it looks like she's had too much to drink and passed out. But she's not.

She's dead.

Thomas and Bethany quickly start carrying her upstairs, their position gives me the oppurtunity to see the proof that she's not a passed out drunk. But I knew that already.

Her blonde hair at the back of her head is smeared with something red. No, not something. Blood. Hers.

An open gash can be seen, still oozing out more blood.

My breath comes out in a whoosh and I gasp, my heart thuds in my chest as someone diverts my attention elsewhere. It's Kayleen. She's grabbed onto my arm and is pulling me to join her on the table.

Her smile is daring, and malicious. You got us into this mess.

I smile and let her tug me up on the table.

"Dance or go to jail." She hisses through her teeth.

Kayleen is scary, so I do what she says.

I notice from the corner of my eye that Thomas and Bethany are back.

"Tanner Schilling noticed us going upstairs too. We should be seen after that. If the police hear that the five us disappeared upstairs and never came down. They have their suspects."

So that's why the two of them are now profusely apologising to Tanner. I missed the part where Bethany was supposed to spill a drink on him but from the big stain on Tanner's shirt it's clear she went through with it. My eyes follow them as Bethany leads Tanner upstairs after she offers to give him another shirt. One of her brother's.

Just like planned.

"Someone else besides us has to go upstairs, so there will be proof that nothing weird was up here."

Kayleen hastily but not suspiciously puts an end to our show, boos and protests are heard but I ignore them as she promises another one at the next party. I let Paul carry me down and lead me to the stairs.

The crowd disperses as everyone gets over it pretty quickly and go back to doing their own thing. We head upstairs as Kayleen remains downstairs with Thomas until it's their time to come upstairs again.

"Paul."

"Shh."

"Again I am so so sorry." I hear Bethany say as she and Tanner round the corner.

Paul quickly presses me against the wall and kisses me.

"Whao." I hear Tanner laugh before I open my eyes and see him smirking at us. "Couldn't wait till you got to the bedroom huh?"

"Sorry man." Paul chuckles so casually.

I notice Tanner has a different shirt on than the one he was wearing. This one is stainless, that part of the plan worked.

I feel my face flush and Tanner must notice it too because he smirks again and walks past us. But what he doesn't know is that it's not from embarrassment of being caught making out with my boyfriend. It's from the utter horror that the door he's standing next to has a dead body in it.

Miriam.

And I'm responsible for it happening.

We wait until Tanner is gone before Bethany unlocks the door to the bathroom and we walk in.

My stomach churns at the sight I see.

Miriam's lifeless body is dumped into the pristine white bathtub at the far end of the bathroom.

I look down at my hands.

They're clean. But they're not really.

The door opens and in walk Thomas and Kayleen.

"What do we do now? Paul asks.

"We call the police. We panic, we make a scene as if we just found her here like this."

"It's obvious she's been moved. We didn't have enough time to clean out the backyard and get rid of the rock. And we won't have enough time between all these people leaving and the police arriving." Bethany says in a rush.

"That's not our problem, whoever killed her moved her."

My eyes snap up towards Thomas's as everyone's heads turn to stare at me.

"Not you." He corrects.

"Yes me." I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. "I killed her, not whoever."

Kayleen walks towards me and slaps me across the face. The sound echoes in the bathroom. Bethany gasps. Paul yells what the hell. Thomas remains as calm as ever.

"We are in this mess because of you. You go down we go down with you, do you understand me? So shut your mouth and get your shit together. We don't know who killed Miriam."

"For fuck's sake Kay." Paul hurries over and cups my stinging cheek. There's a handprint of the size of Kayleen's hand by now I'm sure. Red and blotchy and tiny. But it hurts.

Not as much as Miriam hurt when you hit her over the head with a rock Gabby.

I shake my head to get rid of the thought.

"What about DNA?" Paul asks.

"We're friends, we're at a party, we all touched her, as did a lot of other people."

"What if someone saw us carry her upstairs?" Bethany asks.

"No one did. Everyone was busy watching Kayleen." Paul explains with a confident nod. "And Gabby." He adds.

"The rock?" This is from Kayleen.

Thomas pauses. For the first time he's not so quick to come up with a solution.

"We dump it, in the river, it'll take the police weeks, maybe months to figure out the murder weapon. And after that the same amount of time probably, to find it. If they do that is. And by then hopefully all DNA traces will be gone. Besides the river is filled with a million random rocks, they can't test all of it."

"Yeah, yeah they can't." Bethany sighs, almost relieved.

"But dump it when?" Kayleen asks.

"One of us has to leave early." Thomas says.

"We will." Paul says taking my hand in his. "It's smart to get Gabby out of here. Tanner saw us making out in the hall outside anyways we'll tell the police we wanted to go home to be alone so we left early."

"That'll work."

My heart starts pounding again.

I look at my hands.

They're shaking but they're clean.

They're clean but they're not.

I take a deep and bite my tongue.

Nobody is asking me what I think of this. But then again I don't suppose I would know what to say.

This is all my fault, but I can't fix it.

"So we agree, Paul and Gabby leave early. They dump the rock and go home together. Make noise let one of your parents catch you sneaking in you'll get grounded but it's better than prison."

Kayleen hands over the rock to Paul and he takes it with a towel and throws it in my purse.

"Then the rest of us will go back downstairs, we try to act normal again. We drink, we dance."

"People are gonna talk, they're gonna mention how nobody saw Miriam at the party all that much." Kayleen points out.

"And they're obviously going to know this isn't where she died. They're gonna ask questions about how she was moved up here, and by who." Bethany says.

"We don't know." Thomas shrugs like it's true.

"You should feel more guilty." I blurt out before I can stop myself.

Paul blinks at me like he can't possibly believe I'm doing this right now.

But I don't continue.

"What it they ask us, me, who killed Miriam, Thomas, what then?"

"You don't know."

"But if they-"

"You don't know." He repeats.

I'm shaking, my fingers are grabbing at each other. My knees are about to give out from under me.

I'm going to pass out.

"Thomas."

"Gabby, you don't know a thing!" He yells.

I'm counting again.

One. Two. Three.

The room is small, four walls, a metal table and two chairs.

I'm seated across from detective Duncan. A fortysomething year old woman with red curly hair. She's wearing a brown pantsuit that does not go well with her hair at all. But I don't tell her that.

Four. Five. Six.

"...if you don't talk."

I catch the end of her sentence. But even if I had heard the entire thing I'm pretty confident it wouldn't have made a difference.

Thomas and my mother on the phone, already advised me to not say a word until my lawyer arrived.

Seven. Eight. Nine.

I have a lawyer. Everything is going to be fine.

A calm washes over me suddenly. What was I so afraid of?

"Gabby, who killed Miriam Forrester?"

I look up at her and smile.

"You don't know."

Ten.

"I don't know."