Page 19 of I Did Something Bad
The clock at the top of the screen says 1:45P.M.Fuck fuck fuck. “No!” I say, jumping up and running into the bathroom for a quick pee while simultaneously putting my hair up into a tight ballerina bun. “Be right there, give me five,” I say, and use my elbow to end the call.
“Afternoon,” Tyler says when I enter the backseat exactly five minutes later.
“Good afternoon,” I say with my biggest, brightest, it-is-a-good-afternoon smile. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good,” he says.
“Good.” I nod.
“You?”
“Yep,” I say. It’s not even the right answer, but I can’t be bothered to amend it, and he lets it go.
The rest of the ride is undiluted silence, the kind that suddenly makes you aware of your own breathing pattern. Although Yan is in the driver’s seat just a few feet away, the black opaque rolled-up partition makes it feel like Tyler and I are blocked out from the rest of the world. I know we should be using this alone time to get our stories straight as planned, but he’s giving me the grace of waiting for me to bring it up first, and as hard as I try, I can’t bring myself to even think about last night without wanting to vomit again.It’s okay,I reason. We’ll talk about it during one of the breaks.
“Ready?” I ask as we pull into the lot.
Reminding myself that my job is still on the line here, I envision myself taking everything from the Before and shoving it into a large, airtight, opaque container. Weirdly, it works. I can already feel thatpart of my brain shutting down, the lights dimming to complete darkness.
“Khin,” he says while Yan parks the car. “We should talk—”
“Tyler!” The door swings open and Yasmin, the director, is standing there, a small army of people with headsets around their necks and clipboards in their hands on standby right behind her. I only had a brief chat with her yesterday, but I like Yasmin. She’s a few years older than me, talks quickly and efficiently like someone who doesn’t have the time for small talk, and although she has a string of highly acclaimed indie flicks under her belt, this is her first big blockbuster. “Afternoon! Hi, Khin!” she says, leaning over to wave at me.
“Hey, Yasmin,” I say, hopping out of my own door that Yan is holding open. I take the two seconds while I round the back of the car to gather myself.
But my conviction that I can get through today in a composed, professional manner is shot to pieces when Yasmin says, “Tyler, we have… a situation.” Her eyes dance over to me toward the end of the sentence to imply that I, too, am included in this “we.”
“What’s up?” Tyler asks.
Yasmin sucks in her cheeks. “There’s… police. Inside.” She nods back at the set which, from the outside, looks like an unassuming giant container amidst the colony of trailers. Crew members carrying long ladders and large circular reflectors enter and exit the container through one semipermanently open door. Extras pulling up the hems of their hta meins and pa soes are shuffling about, presumably not running so that they don’t sweat through their long-sleeved tops; I’m assuming they’re going to be in the background of one of the first scenes of the day, which is a lavish dinner soirée at the house of Princess of Fictional Country’s Ambassador.
I stare at them, all these human beings doing their jobs and going about their day, but the longer I stare—and I can’tstopstaring, in factI’m incapable of doing anything else, even blinking—the more those individuals blur into one multicolored kaleidoscopic haze. One of my last few functioning brain cells is aware that I’m having the kind of out-of-body experience that I’ve only ever heard people talk about.My chest shouldn’t feel this tight,I think. Do I want to cry? Sit down? Run away? I don’t know. I don’t know how to do… anything.
The police are here. And they must be here because the body’s turned up; it’s the sole logical explanation. Buthow? In less than twelve hours?
“Oh?” Tyler’s voice flicks some sort of switch, and, albeit with great effort, I turn both my head and attention toward him. “Is there a permit problem?” he asks, eyebrows raising in surprise.
“Not… exactly.” Yasmin draws out every word. “Apparently there was… a situation… last night. In… the park.”
As though someone’s called “Action!” Tyler looks baffled, brows furrowing, chin tilting slightly to the side. I, on the other hand, can feel the backs of my thighs start to sweat inside my jeans. “Let me guess.” He rolls his eyes. “Noise complaint from the neighbors.”
Yasmin gives a short, nervous laugh. “No, no noise complaint. More like… a body.”
Okay, now the undersides of my boobs are sweating.
Tyler, however, frowns more, never one to break character. “A body?” he asks. “What do you mean a… body?”
Yasmin makes meaningless gestures in the air with her hands. “This morning, some people were fishing in the lake and it would appear that they discovered… a body. Like… a human body.”
“Oh my god, that’s awful,” he says, jaw dropping.
“Yes, terrible. They’re still trying to figure out who it is. Poor man didn’t have any ID on him. All they know is that he’s a foreigner. A white man in his forties, probably.”
“Holy shit! And you said the police werehere?”
“Mm-hmm,” Yasmin says, the apprehension returning in her voice.
“Do they think one of us saw something?”
