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...
Rebecca had laid in bed for three hours after waking up on Sunday morning at 7:12, unable to fall back asleep. She had two missed calls when she woke up: one from Lyla with another voicemail attached, and one from her mother. She had ignored both of them; neither one was from someone she wanted to talk to. Rebecca wanted a missed call from Kennedy. She wanted Kennedy to call her or show up at her doorstep, say that everything was a joke, and that she didn't mean to kick Rebecca out of the account. That the two of them could be friends again. Because as stupid and sad as it sounded, Rebecca wanted her old life back.
The life where she could be someone important. The life where she felt like someone important, where no one was trying to use her as a scapegoat in a crime, where she had a secret famous Instagram account, where she could be someone she had never been before.
But there was no call from Kennedy.
So, Rebecca had laid in her bed for three hours, staring at her ceiling, until her phone rang at 10:04 with a call from Leo Lutz.
"I want to talk in person." Rebecca said without a greeting, "I don't want you to be recording anything without me knowing."
"No problem at all." Leo replied, "I can be at the Clemson PD in five minutes."
Rebecca took a deep breath.
"Alright. I'll meet you there in twenty."
She hung up without waiting for a response and got out of bed slowly, walking over to her bathroom and turning on the faucet to wash her face. She felt like she was in some sort of terrible movie, where the protagonist got into trouble at every turn, and she couldn't do anything about it.
Rebecca got into her car thirteen minutes after hanging up the phone with Leo and drove to the Clemson Police Department. She walked in and was greeted by a uniformed officer who directed her to an interrogation room where Leo was already waiting for her.
"I'm glad that you decided to meet with me." Leo greeted Rebecca as she sat down in the seat across from him, "It was the right decision, I promise."
Rebecca nodded silently and leaned back in her seat, recoiling from the idea of what she was about to do. She didn't want to betray Kennedy. But she knew that Kennedy would jump at the chance to do this exact same thing to Rebecca. That still didn't make it much easier.
"Alright. I'm ready."
"Can I record this conversation?" Leo asked, pulling out his phone and setting it face up on the table in front of the two, "Just so that when I tell my superiors your story, it doesn't seem fabricated by myself."
Rebecca nodded.
"Yeah. That's fine." She replied, staring at the phone as if it had personally hurt her at some point in her life, "Also, before we start...I want to be sure that I won't be implicated in this at all. I want immunity, or whatever people call it in the real world."
Leo nodded eagerly.
"I will speak to the police about it. I'm sure we can make that happen."
"I want that on the record." Rebecca said, gesturing towards Leo's phone on the table, "I want to be sure that I'm not going to have any sort of repercussions from this."
Leo hit a button on his phone and it started recording.
"I will speak to the police about getting you, Rebecca Eaves, immunity for telling us the story of what happened to Hank Wilcox."
Rebecca nodded her satisfaction with that promise and leaned back in her seat slightly, taking four deep breaths before launching into her story.
"Kennedy Abrams murdered Hank Wilcox in a hit-and-run accident at the end of September 2020. I, Rebecca Eaves, was witness to the hit-and-run, and it occurred in my car that Kennedy was driving. We were driving home from the beach, and I thought we would get lost going back to the Airbnb. Kennedy promised that she didn't need a GPS, and went down a back road that I didn't recognize."
She felt terrible, recounting the story. It felt dirty, it felt awful. But she knew she was finally doing the right thing—something she should have done months ago, but had been convinced against doing.
"We—she hit Mr. Wilcox on that back road. Kennedy stopped the car and got out. She seemed confused and scared at first, but then controlled and calm...collected. I wanted to call the police, but she told me not to, and that we would be in more trouble than it was worth, since it was just an accident. She told me that I would be in more trouble than her, because it was my car, and she could just tell the police that I had hit him instead of her. So I didn't call the police.
"We went to a car wash, Kennedy still driving. She told me to keep scrolling through social media like normal, so I did, while she washed my car off. We went back to the Airbnb, showered, went to bed, and the next morning, I woke up to Kennedy and my car gone. She came back and told me that she had fixed my car completely, so we were in the clear for the accident. We went back home to Clemson after that. I drove."
Leo nodded.
"I'm going to ask you a few questions now, if that's alright."
Rebecca nodded silently.
The next thirty minutes were spent with Leo asking Rebecca question after question, inquiring about little things that Rebecca could hardly remember about that night, along with reasoning behind why she didn't come forward before Leo contacted her. Rebecca's answers were always the same: she didn't know how to come forward, since they had left Hank in the street, and she was worried about Kennedy retaliating against her by convincing law enforcement that Rebecca had been the one behind the wheel.
"Thank you for your time, Rebecca." Leo smiled slightly after he had finished his questioning and stopped the recording on his phone, "I know this must have been difficult for you to do, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. You're free to go; I'll let you know if we need anything else from you. But I wouldn't be expecting a call anytime soon."
Rebecca nodded and stood up.
"Okay."
She said that one word and walked out of the police department, at 11:09 AM on Sunday, November 15, 2020, her chest finally beating at a normal pace for the first time in two months.
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