Hot Girl Summer

*warning: eating disorders, murder, gross descriptions*

Hiding her body is supposed to be the easy part.

It’s not supposed to smell or look like that until the third or fourth day. An unprecedented heat wave trapping our small Texas town in a deadly sauna probably has something to do with it. In hindsight, it seems obvious that keeping my car in a poorly ventilated garage on the hottest day of the year would turn it into a boiling crockpot.

Fuck global warming.

The smell is unbearable—a sickly, pungent odor that seeps into your nostrils and coats the back of your tongue. As soon as I open the trunk, a cloud of flies rushes past me, and I reflexively gasp—and inhale a mouthful of them. Choking and dry heaving, I swat furiously around me until finally emptying my guts onto the concrete floor. Everything in me wants to give up, but I force myself to get back to it before it’s too late.

Heat strokes and a record-high death toll won’t stop my family from hosting the biggest barbecue of the entire summer where everyone in the community gathers in our backyard each year for grilled burgers, cold beer, and a spit-roasted pig. It’s supposed to mark a celebratory end to the summer, and I still think I can make the best of it. Unfortunately for my situation, it starts in three hours, with only one before my dad and best friends arrive to set up.

Burying my nose in my sleeve, I pull the tarp off and can’t keep myself from gagging again. The bloated, gooey corpse is melting in a pinkish-brown puddle that’s somewhat curdled like spoiled milk. The flesh has gone yellowish blue and is covered in rotting blisters where more flies nest. Her cheeks are gaunt, and her blank eyes bulge from sunken sockets with worms wriggling around them.

Ugh. I can’t freaking do this.

I’m supposed to be lounging by the poolside with my girls, holding a mocktail with a tiny tiki umbrella and reminiscing about our hot girl summer—not dragging a dead body to the bathtub on a tarp.

Ironically, the only thing this bitch’s diet of Ozempic and mints has ever done for her is make it easier to heave her one-hundred pound ass into the tub. Heroin chic was supposed to have died with low rise jeans and the Y2K whale tail.

Now what?

Ice. I rush to the garage for the cooler meant for party drinks and dump the pounds of ice into the tub. Just as I finish lighting a bunch of candles and soaking the house in air freshener, the doorbell chimes. My two best friends greet me with hugs and chatter, and we easily picked up conversations we left off on last time. We’re all gathering in the kitchen to start prepping side dishes when one of them makes a sound of disgust.

“Girl, you need to lay off the kombucha. You’re making the rest of us suffer.”

I try to laugh it off with them, but internally, I’m freaking out. Trying to mask it is yet another dumb mistake. I slip away to the bathroom to add incense to the toxic concoction of scents in the hopes it’ll make the decay less recognizable.

When I turn around, I realize Jess is standing in the doorway, just staring at the tub with a frozen scream of terror, seemingly too in shock to move or say anything.

“Please, don’t scream,” I beg. “I can explain everything.”

Britt appears behind her, and that’s when I know it’s too late to get out of this. “Holy shit. What the hell is that?”

“Please, you guys. Just go. Go and pretend you didn’t even see me.”

They’ll say no, I’m sure—they’ve always been good people—but I have to at least try.

They look at each other. Then back to the body. Then to me.

“We only have a couple hours,” Britt says, much calmer than I expect.

“Someone will notice the smell for sure,” Jess says shakily, seeming to not be entirely convinced. She sighs. “I can sneak out and ditch her phone in the middle of a field, but I’m not touching it.”

My heart swells with happiness, and it strikes me how incredibly lucky I am to have the support system I’ve needed to get through this trying year. After a new rise in body shaming and eating disorders, we have needed each other to stay healthy and strong. And most importantly, not relapsing. This bitch was trying to shame us and keep us in the past when we’ve worked so hard to overcome society’s pressures on women, and frankly, her death indirectly saves lives. This is supposed to be our hot girl summer. Contrary to some, it isn’t about reaching some arbitrary standard on what is considered “hot”. It’s about being your best self and loving your body and reaching healthy goals.

She didn’t get that.

“Dad is supposed to pick up the pig,” I say as inspiration strikes. “I’ll go instead, and we can take the body to the waste and say the meat went bad.”

Without any better ideas, they help me roll it back up. It takes both Britt and me to haul it onto the bed of the truck. Jess takes the backroad so no one sees, and as far as everyone will know, she never even left. We return with a fresh pig, the butcher having bought our story, and no one the wiser.

I don’t consider, however, that of course the butcher would come to the cookout.

He came every year.

Britt, Jess, and I all look at each other, panic unmasked on all of our faces. Over an hour in, the hog has almost finished roasting, and I’m chewing dryly on a burger while I wait for the inevitable—getting caught. The smell of freshly smoked barbecue should be delightful, but I can still smell the body, as if it clung to my sinuses.

When the butcher finally comes up to my dad, he immediately starts talking shop, blowing the lid off my secret with a short conversation.

“The roast smells damn good. Shame the last one went bad. Good thing you sent your daughter before I closed up, eh?”

Dad looks at him strangely, and I know it’s because he’s fully aware there was no meat that went bad. His eyes turn to me. My breath is lodged in my throat, and I wait for him to figure it out and haul me to the police station. After a long moment, he just turns back to the grill without another word. He has always said he’d have my back no matter what, and once again, I thank my lucky stars for that care.

My girls and I lounge by the pool, reveling in the freedom of being confident in ourselves and our bodies at last, getting into the true spirit of a hot girl summer.

Finally, the past is buried—well, incinerated.

I sigh contentedly and sip my Piña Colada, a little too giddy over the tiny pink umbrella.