Watty's 2021 Shortlist Selection
Kennedy Abrams is everything anyone would ever want to be at Clemson University: smart, funny, gorgeous, and friends with everyone. Rebecca Eaves is quieter, less social, and just trying to scrape by with her 16 cred...
She lost track of how long she had been sitting in her car by the third time that 'Truth Hurts' by Lizzo played on the radio.
She sat in her car for a long while, thinking about a lot of things. Things that she didn't think she would have to think about...ever. How Kennedy had seemed too good to be true at the beginning of their admittedly short-lived friendship. How Rebecca had idolized everything Kennedy did for the duration of their friendship. How Kennedy had invited Rebecca along to do everything with her, and yet she had somehow thought it wouldn't be an issue to just...get rid of her. Like it was nothing. Like Rebecca was nothing.
She thought about how she had been so excited to become a part of Kennedy's 'world.' She thought about how that world had turned out to be cheating and lying and...killing. She had watched Kennedy kill a man, and she was the only witness. In Rebecca's car. When there were two people who knew what happened and one of them owned the car...that one looked guilty. And Rebecca was sure that Kennedy had ways of making her look even more guilty than she already would, if things got out.
She was stuck. Rebecca Eaves, for the first time in her life of limited friends and cautious maneuvers, always ensuring that she was doing everything in the safest way possible, was stuck. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. She was going to run out of money eventually, without the account as her financial backing. She was going to have to be done with the friends that Kennedy had brought into her life. She was going to have to be done with everything that had anything to do with Kennedy. Because Rebecca knew Kennedy. And she knew the other girl would ensure that their lives never touched again. If she could help it.
Rebecca's first instinct was to run to a newspaper. Or...it was 2020. Run to an online magazine or a blog. Blog? Maybe. Run to some sort of publication and tell her story. Tell everything; tell them about the fake account, how Kennedy bought its initial followers, how Rebecca had been the driving force behind it at the beginning, how Kennedy had kicked her out, how everything had gone down. Would she tell them about Hank Wilcox? Maybe. She wasn't sure. She knew that she could, though.
But Kennedy's threat loomed in the back of her mind, making Rebecca realize that she was completely and utterly powerless in this situation. She had no way of helping herself. She was backed into a corner, and she had been backed into it, seemingly in small increments over a prolonged period of time, by someone she had considered a close friend.
The beginning of 'Truth Hurts' started playing for a fourth time and Rebecca buckled herself into her seat. She put the car in drive. She forced everything about Kennedy Abrams and the life that had almost been her own out of her mind. She pulled out of her parking space and out of the warehouse's still-empty parking lot. She saw Kennedy's car as she left. Sitting in its parking space, spotless, never having been the vehicle that killed a man.
Rebecca wanted to hit it. She wanted nothing more than to drive right into the back of it and total the stupid car. She wanted to grow muscles the size of boulders and throw it off of the side of a bridge. She wanted to do something to hurt Kennedy.
But she didn't. She drove out of the parking lot and onto the main road, putting her sunglasses on carefully as she pulled onto the freeway a few minutes later.
Ten minutes of driving passed without Rebecca thinking too much about her anger. She drove in silence, not allowing herself to become upset. She didn't want to risk an accident. She still had her life...at least.
Ten more minutes passed quietly. Then ten more. Then ten more.
Fifty-eight minutes into her drive home, Rebecca looked through her rearview mirror to find the one sight she always dreaded: flashing lights.
She glanced at her speedometer and rolled her eyes; she was going seven miles over the speed limit. On the freeway. She hated cops who pulled her over for something as small as that. And with the morning she had already had, it seemed altogether quite unnecessary.
Rebecca pulled over to the side of the road and waited until the officer came up to her window.
"License and registration."
Rebecca handed the documents over and waited silently while the officer looked at them. She was surprised when he handed them back within thirty seconds and tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention.
"I'm going to need you to come down to the station with me."
Rebecca raised her eyebrows.
"May I ask why?" She inquired, tucking her registration back into the glove compartment. "I wasn't even speeding that much."
"It's not the speeding." The officer replied, "I have a colleague who wants to ask you a few questions."
Rebecca resisted the urge to roll her eyes and ask about the legality of such a request.
"I don't know where the station is in this town." She replied. She wasn't honestly 100% sure of what town she was even in; she was pretty sure she was in South Carolina, and not North Carolina, but again, not 100% sure on anything.
"You can follow my car." The officer replied, "You're not in trouble, ma'am. Don't be worried."
That sounds like something that should most definitely make me worry, Rebecca thought to herself as she rolled her window back up and the cop went back to his car. She waited until he had pulled out in front of her and followed him, pulling off of the freeway and down to the main road. She followed him until they reached the Greensboro Police Station, upon which she was escorted out of her car by two different cops.
She wasn't worried, which in and of itself worried her. She was being taken into a police station. She was about to be interrogated—or, 'asked some questions'—by an officer she didn't know, in a town she didn't live in, and she wasn't the least bit worried. Just slightly annoyed by the inconvenience this would be to the rest of her day.
And people say that 'white privilege' isn't a thing.
Rebecca was led to an interrogation room inside the station and asked to take a seat before the two officers left the room. She waited for seven and a half minutes before another man walked in, dressed in a plaid shirt and wrinkled khaki pants, closing the door behind him.
He took a seat across from Rebecca and leaned back slightly, looking over her. Something about his gait looked familiar, but she ignored it.
"Hi, Rebecca." The man smiled slightly, "My name's Leo Lutz, and I'm a private investigator from Florida."
Three things made Rebecca's heartrate speed up after that sentence:
1. The words 'private investigator.'
2. The word 'Florida.'
3. The fact that she recognized his voice. She didn't know how, but Rebecca Eaves was absolutely positive that she recognized this man's voice.
"Nice to meet you." She swallowed uncomfortably, "Why am I here?"
Leo shrugged slightly, cocking his head to the side as if nothing in the world brought him more joy than this.
"Rebecca, what can you tell me about Hank Wilcox?"
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