Still My Turn

“There comes a moment, after the vomit and before the hardware store, when you realise your life’s gone fully off-script.”

As we followed the winding road that snaked its way alongside the river, each bend seemed to wind tighter around my nerves. The further we got from Uncle Lance’s house—and that humiliating, vomit-smeared moment—the more I’d expected to feel relief. But it never came. Instead, a persistent unease gnawed at the edges of my mind. Two more deliveries. Two more reminders that we were actors in a farcical cover-up. The truck’s tyres grumbled over the uneven bitumen, a sound that matched the quiet churn of dread in my gut.

The only faint comfort I could cling to was the sense that my stomach was, by now, thoroughly emptied. Surely it couldn’t betray me again.

"Would you stop that already!" Beatrix snapped suddenly, cutting through the silence like a blade.

My head jerked up. I hadn’t even realised I was still wringing my hands in my lap, thumbs twiddling anxiously, fingers pulling at each other like tangled yarn.

"Sorry," I muttered, the word small and weak. I pressed my hands together, willing them to be still. "I'm just a bit anxious."

"I know! I've been watching your hands fidget for the last ten minutes!" Her tone was sharp, exasperated—though whether at me, the situation, or herself, I wasn’t sure.

I let out a long, shaky sigh, the air burning slightly on its way out. "Do you think it'll actually make any difference?" The question had been festering inside me for a while, and it finally clawed its way out.

Beatrix gave a brief glance in my direction. "What do you mean?"

I leaned forward, elbows braced on my knees, eyes fixed on the scuffed toes of my shoes. "Well, I mean, if these people are finding their packages outside their front door, what are they going to tell the police?"

"Huh?"

"I mean if nobody actually sees Joel, then there will still be no evidence that Joel actually made the deliveries," I said, the words rushing out faster now. "So really, this whole exercise doesn't get us in the clear at all."

My voice cracked with frustration. The thought of the police somehow finding my DNA on the packages—my sweat, a stray hair, or God forbid, vomit—made my empty stomach twist again. What if this whole thing was pointless? Just a performance for an audience that had already written us off as guilty?

The silence that followed was unnatural. Thick. Wrong.

Beatrix didn’t scoff. She didn’t roll her eyes. She didn’t say I was being ridiculous or dramatic or stupid. That was the scariest part.

Please say something biting, I thought. Please tell me I’m overthinking. That I’m wrong.

"Hopefully, it will keep them distracted," Beatrix said at last. Her voice was flat. Calm. Too calm.

I turned my head to look at her, stunned. Distracted? That was it? That was all she had to offer?

"Distracted," I echoed under my breath, turning my face towards the window, the cold glass pressing against my temple. My breath fogged a small oval on the glass. We’re screwed.

True to her now well-established sense of caution, Beatrix slowed the truck and brought it to a stop well before our destination—maybe a hundred metres out. The stretch of houses ahead shimmered under the midday sun, oblivious to the moral rot we were carting around with us.

"Can you do this one?" I asked, my voice little more than a hopeful squeak. It was a plea in disguise, one last effort to hand over the task.

"No," Beatrix shot back, her tone leaving no room for debate. "Look. All you have to do is leave it on their front doorstep and come straight back. I'll be here waiting for you."

I opened the door with more force than necessary, the creak and slam echoing my internal protest. "I still don't think it'll matter," I grumbled, leaping down to the pavement with an ungraceful thud. My words were hollow, worn thin by the weight of repetition.

"Hey," Beatrix called, drawing my attention once more.

I turned, my expression heavy with a pout, like a child dreading the dentist.

"Either way. Delivering these packages is better than us being stuck with them."

Her logic was sound—annoyingly so. But it didn’t ease the coil of unease tightening in my chest.

I trudged to the back of the truck, dragging my feet as though the act alone might stall the inevitable. Beatrix’s words buzzed around in my head, bouncing off every wall but refusing to settle. She was right, technically. But being right didn’t make any of this feel less wrong.

We’re still screwed, I told myself, grabbing the handle to swing the back door open. Each step toward the next delivery was one more thread binding me to a future I hadn’t signed up for.

"Last one," Beatrix announced, her voice laced with an audible sigh of relief. A faint smile flickered across her face, as though the end of this morbid charade might absolve us of the horrors we’d been part of.

"Thank God for that," I muttered, the words escaping me like air from a leaking tyre. I yanked the seatbelt across my body and clicked it into place with an oddly satisfying snap. It felt like the only thing in my life right now that clicked with any certainty. The thought that this ordeal might finally be drawing to a close brought a flicker of light into an otherwise dark and tangled mess of a day.

"You haven't enjoyed playing delivery girl then?" Beatrix teased, the corner of her mouth curling in amusement.

I turned slowly to glare at her. The nerve. How could she even frame this as a joke? Had she forgotten the blood, the body, the vomit, the panic? My look said everything I didn’t have the energy to voice.

"So that's a no," she concluded with a smug chuckle, shaking her head and refocusing on the road.

"Just drive," I said, my tone low and drained. Even the act of speaking felt like it cost more than I had left to give.

The engine hummed beneath us as the truck trundled forward, and the tyres hummed a soft lullaby against the bitumen. Outside, the scenery rolled past in a flurry of blurred colours—greens and greys and the occasional flash of metal—but it all felt distant, like watching the world through a fogged-up pane of glass.

I sat motionless, every muscle tense beneath a facade of stillness. My hands were tightly clasped in my lap, my knuckles white against the frayed fabric of my jeans. My eyes stared, unseeing, out of the window. I didn’t care what we passed—houses, hills, people. Nothing felt real anymore.

"You'd better send Luke a message and let him know that we're almost done," Beatrix said, breaking the silence. She nudged my thigh with her knuckles, not unkindly, just enough to bring me back from wherever I’d drifted.

I blinked, slow and dazed, and reached for my phone with mechanical detachment. I typed the message quickly, without reading it twice, and dropped the phone back into the console. "Done," I murmured, resuming my silent watch of the world outside.

The sudden buzz of my phone made me flinch. I fumbled it back into my hand and answered automatically.

"Hey, Luke. What's up?" I said, my voice raw with fatigue.

"Hey, Gladys. I forgot to ask you earlier. Can you and Beatrix please collect me a large supply of shelving?" Luke’s voice sounded far too casual, as if we weren’t in the middle of cleaning up after a catastrophe.

"In our truck?" I asked, unable to keep the flat incredulity out of my voice.

"Yes. That's probably the best idea," he said, like it was obvious.

I paused, my brain clunking through the implications. "I don't have any more money to spare, Luke. I have the next mortgage payment coming out in a few days."

"Don't worry. I have money," Beatrix called out, her tone surprisingly assertive and matter-of-fact.

I turned to her, narrowing my eyes in suspicion. "How do you have money?" The words came out more accusing than I meant them to.

"Never mind that," she snapped back, brushing me off. "Let's just get this shit done."

Shrugging, I lifted the phone again. "Yeah, Luke. Beatrix has money. She'll pay for it."

"Anything else?" Beatrix added, already bracing herself for more nonsense, her voice resigned.

"I also need you to print me some simple instructions for pouring a slab of concrete for a shed," Luke said, as though it was a perfectly rational addition to our ever-growing to-do list.

"Huh?" I said, squinting out the windscreen like the words might start to make more sense in writing. My brain felt sluggish, like it was wading through custard.

"Gladys!" Beatrix snapped, sharper this time. "The hardware store will be able to give us something. We'll ask them while we're there getting the shelving."

"Oh yeah," I said flatly, tapping the call off without another word.

"You're not going to say goodbye?" Beatrix asked, laughing softly, clearly amused at how vacant I had become.

"Huh?" I muttered again, staring blankly ahead before realising the social misstep. "Oh. Sorry, Luke," I called pointlessly to the now-silent phone.

"Gee, you sure you have the volume loud enough?" Beatrix teased, turning the mockery dial up a notch. Her voice was exaggeratedly loud, brimming with playful sarcasm.

I rolled my eyes, my pout returning full force as I turned my head to the window again. The reflection staring back at me in the glass looked pale and hollowed, like a watered-down version of myself. "You're such a bitch sometimes," I mumbled, low enough that I almost hoped she wouldn’t hear.

"What was that?" asked Beatrix, tone sharp but still playful.

"Nothing," I replied, my voice devoid of any spirit. I didn’t bother to turn my head. Outside, the trees blurred by, offering no answers and no solace—just motion. We were moving forward, technically, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were going absolutely nowhere.