Page 105 of Ardently Yours

I take a breath.

“She did what?!” I roar.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Charlotte

Sometime in the Dead of Night

Ipark my borrowedvehicle behind the theater, grab the shovel from the bed of Dad’s truck, and unlock the side door to the scene shop. Gritting my teeth at the sight of Rochelle’s Ford Ranger parked inside, I make my way toward the costume shop and the basement door.

I knew where she’d be when I got to her place and she wasn’t home.

All the lights are on, but since there are no windows in this part of the building, it doesn’t matter.

The second I open the basement door, I can hear the sound of music playing, digging, and swearing.

“I told you not to do this. Plan B sucks. I could have come up with something to get RealFreedom to call it off,” I shout down the stairs.

The digging stops momentarily, then I hear thesshickof her shovel forcefully entering dirt once more. “I don't know how you did it as long as you managed, but I can’t, Charlotte. These people are insane. He’s going in the ground somewhere no one will decide they need to renovate. Ever,” she calls up.

I take my last gulp of fresh air and tromp down the metal stairs. I enter to find Rochelle knee-deep in dirt and digging. A silver boom box sits on a bookshelf propped against the wall. The basement is otherwise empty, other than some plywood and rope, since the clean up after the flooding last winter.

“You brought music? Really?”

She swipes a muddy forearm across her brow. “Do you remember how long it took us to put him in the ground? I needed something to pass the time. Besides, it’s creepy down here in the silence,” she says.

“So you choseDragulaby Rob Zombie to keep you from getting wigged out?” I ask incredulously.

“It seemed appropriate. I made a ‘Dig Up Polford’ mixtape to psych me up,” she says as the song switches toBohemian Rhapsody.

I take a deep breath and jump in the hole with her. Freddie Mercury croons to his mama about killing a man, and I dig.

It’s a lot faster going than when we put the corpse here in the first place. The dirt isn’t packed nearly as firmly as it was that night. The ground isn’t frozen, and I’m not recovering from childbirth or having to take breaks to nurse a newborn.

My shovel hits bone within half an hour. Rochelle and I grimace at each other, then keep going.

Only after she’s climbed out, and I’m looking up at her as I stand squished next to the rolled up backdrop, do I ask theobvious question. “Did you have a plan for how we were getting the body out of the hole? I can’t lift this thing over my head to you.”

She nods and first slides down a six-foot piece of plywood, then tosses down a coil of rope. “We tie it to the board,

and I’ll rig a pulley system. We can handle it as long as it stays wrapped up.”

Highway to Hellstarts on the boom box. “The music was a good idea.”

She climbs back into the grave with me. “I know, right? It’s easier to disassociate from what we’re actually doing with it playing.”

“Plus—” We bend and the two of us begin the process of wedging the board under his body. “—anytime we start to freak out, all we have to do is sing along,” I say.

“Totally. Is this how we convince ourselves we’re badass bitches, instead of idiots?” she asks.

“Speak for yourself. I’m dead certain we’re dumb as this dirt right now.”

We’re singing along to AC/DC in our valiant attempt to pay as little attention to the actual disgusting nature of what we’re doing as possible when the door to the basement opens. That has to be why the first sound we hear is the ring of shoes on the metal stairs.

Rochelle and I freeze and stare, wide-eyed, in horror.

“Who’s there?” I call.

---