iii. her crying
mom | reese

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"Truth," Ember said, biting her lower lip as she smiled.

"Okay," Toni said and smiled menacingly. She sucked on her lollipop, looked up her bedroom ceiling and then popped her lips. As she did so, a faint scent of lemon touched the tip of my nose, coming from the lollipop she had been sucking on for the past fifteen minutes. I hugged my knees closer to my chest. 

This was two years before Ember had died from stab wounds in that cemetery's old, storage room.

"If I happen to murder someone," Toni began to say, her eyes squinting a little, the yellow light of her bedroom tinting our skin, "would you help me get rid of the body?"

Ember laughed cheerily and slapped Toni's arm. Her hair was still long and curly, looking healthy and beautiful as always. "No!" She put a strand of her hair behind her ears with the same soft, gentle smile on her rosy lips.  "Maybe depends on who you murdered though."

"If it's Sadie?"

"I'd immediately call the police. I like Sadie!"

"What if it was Reese that I murdered?" Toni said with a teasing smirk.

"I'd help you hide her," Ember said, and they laughed together and I laughed too, the three of us sharing amusement as if my hypothetical corpse was the biggest joke of all. While they were not looking, I took my chance to sneakily throw the scalp smelling pillows straight to their faces, with crinkled eyes and mouths stretching into a wide  grin.

It's ironic because two years later, it was Ember's body that we were trying to hide.

"What if they question us?" Toni asked. It's been thirty minutes since we hid the corpse in her basement. "What would we say?"

"What? We would . . . we would lie of course." We were at the kitchen floor, our backs behind the cabinets, cans of beer in front of us, our legs stretched. We were both still in shock, but I tried to think. "First, delete the text message she sent you. Her message should be safe, because her phone should've been inside the storage room. Then . . . do you still have that photo of us in the pub a few weeks ago? Post it right now."

"What? Why?"

"What do you mean why? Are you simply stupid or what, Toni? So people would think we're somewhere else and we wouldn't be suspected."

She didn't take my loud yell very lightly. Suddenly Toni's worried faced scrunched up into a deep, angry frown. "Don't yell at me!"

"Then stop being stupid!"

"I wouldn't have to do this if it weren't for your idea!" she said and slammed the kitchen floor so hard my can of beer fell over. "I'm doing you a fucking favor and if you won't stop talking to me like that I'm gonna tell the police about Ember and I would let your fucking grandma die!"

Toni's face was ridiculously red with fury. She was fuming and I admit that she scared me for a little bit that I had to take a step back. I calmed down. Ignoring her heated words, I rose to my feet, grabbed some cloth, and wiped the spilled beer on the floor. She then stood up, too, and went over to the sink to wash her face. For a couple of minutes we were both silent, nothing but the grimy feeling of the cloth in my head and the cold water on her face. It hasn't even been an hour yet, and we were already fighting.

"I didn't mean that," Toni said, breaking the silence. Both of her hands were on the cold, dirty sink. She was not looking at me.

"I know. You're not stupid either. Sorry."

"I care for your grandma." I wondered if that was a lie. "I'm sorry for saying what I said."

"I know you do." I was not exactly sure.

"I just wish we have another way."

"It's just for one week. Please."

"Still . . ."

She sat in front of me, and she was crying. I had the urge to cry as well but I couldn't, because it would be silly, two girls crying on the kitchen with their dead best friend's corpse lying in the basement just somewhere, so I just hugged Toni and allowed her to cry on my shoulders instead.

"I will miss her, Reese," she told me. "So bad."

I knew that it hurt Toni when I told her about the story we would tell the police if we ever get questioned, but I continued anyway. We would tell them that we went to the pub, got drunk, and slept in her house. We would say that we hadn't heard from Ember that day but she'd been telling us about the creep that lived near the cemetery.

"Reese. What the hell?" she said, stopping me mid-sentence. "That man is innocent. He just got out of prison after ten years because he was wrongly accused of murder. Are you seriously going to ruin his life again?"

"Who could've done it? I'm pretty sure that's him. He lives near the cemetery, he has criminal records, what else do we need?"

"It just doesn't feel right," she said, tightening her grip on her arms.

"It doesn't matter!" I said. I thought that she was being too kind and unreasonable; did Ember possess her or something? "If we accused him, we would be free from being suspected, right?"

"But he isn't the murderer. He can't be! He was proven innocent when—"

"God, Toni, just — just stick with me, okay? If he's lucky, he would get away with this. We just need to accuse someone."

It just made the most sense, no? Choose the closest culprit and take the attention away from us -- we were saving ourselves, which we must. For the sake of me, of my grandmother. It made the most sense.

Toni didn't agree, but she said fine. After that, I remember sleeping on her couch that midnight. When I awoke the next morning, I found Toni crying in the basement, holding Ember's cold hand.

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On Sunday, Ember's parents called us four times in the morning, twice in the afternoon, and once in the evening. Toni and I also went to them and pretended to ask around, knowing full well that their daughter's body was in Toni's basement. That night, Toni cried again, and I could feel her slowly blaming me for what was happening, for things she had to do for the sake of me and my grandmother. She didn't say anything though.

When Monday arrived and Ember Sage was finally declared missing, a search began. The school buzzed with whispered conversations and anxious glances. News of her disappearance had spread like wildfire and it was as though a dark shadow cast over our once familiar hallways. At school, a few cops even took us from class to question us, and I was really glad that Toni and I talked about the narrative we would share with them — a carefully crafted story that would shield our involvement. 

"We didn't hear from her that Saturday," I said, the cop pretending to take notes in front of me. We were in an empty classroom. "But the day before that, she did tell us about this man who kept on following her. He lives by the cemetery, as far as I know. Would that help?"

The cop who was interviewing me just thought he received valuable information, so he thanked me and told me to go back to my classroom. When I did, I met Sadie, our other friend, and told me that the whole thing was crazy.

"We should look for her!" Sadie said as we walked down the echoing hallways. "She can't just disappear, you know? Without telling us, or her parents."

I let out a sigh. "You think I didn't think of that? If I had any idea where she is, I'd be out there in a heartbeat, looking for her. But I don't."

"But I do—"

"Christ. Shut up, Sadie. There's a search happening already. Whatever your idea is, trust me, they've already thought of it. You're not as smart as you think you are."

Sadie playfully laughed as I rolled my eyes. "But well, yes, of course I am," she said. 

I chortled and put my arm around her bony shoulders. Sadie smelled of paper and sandwiches, and her hair was tied up in a high ponytail as always. While she was not very close with Ember the way Toni and I were, she was still good friends with her. But sometimes I feel like she could be a psychopath -- because why was she there treating the whole Missing Ember a crime game to be solved, a mystery to be analyzed? Why wasn't she sad, or scared, or anxious? For a moment I felt a light suspicion towards her.

"I wonder where she could be . . ." Sadie said.

"I'm worrying, too."

"If she isn't found by tomorrow, I'd search for her myself."

But Ember Sage wouldn't be found the next day and the next. Back then, the initial hope of finding her alive began to wane, and the whispers of a possible kidnapping grew louder.

The police scoured the remains of the burned-down storage house, questioned the man who lived nearby, and combed through the wooded areas surrounding our town, and yet, their efforts yielded no evidence of Ember. At school, the air was thick with suspense and fear. If our schoolmates were thinking that she was already dead, nobody said it out loud, as if doing so would solidify that grim reality. 

And then, just as I was expecting, on Wednesday, Ember's mother visited the radio station of the town to say that whoever would find Ember Sage would be given fifty-thousand pesos as a reward money.

I was angry; my grandmother needed a hundred thousand.

Sitting by my grandmother's bedside, her frail hand grasped in mine, I listened to Ember's mother's plea echo through the radio waves."Please. If you can hear this . . . please return my dear daughter . . ."

I held my grandmother's hand tighter and took a deep breath.

"No," I said. "Not yet."

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