Babysitter | Calum Hood

20

Prom was coming up and you could just smell the desperation for the perfect date in the hallways of this trashy high school. Girls were speaking of their makeup and praying to the Lord that no one has the same dress as them, boys were booking hotel rooms hoping to score later that night, and I was writing out Ashton's gravestone as Luke taped out Ash's body shape with bright yellow tape.

We were at the front of the school, at the bottom of the steps hoping that the girl Ashton wanted to ask to prom wouldn't see the process of their future date's supposed death. While I continued to write on a gray piece of construction paper stapled to a piece of rounded cardboard, Luke kept attempting to punch Ashton in the dick if he kept squirming whenever he tried to tape out his left side.

"I'm ticklish. Stop touching me there you idiot," Ashton seethed, writhing away from Luke touch the third time the blond tried to tape down his body frame. Frankly, it was even worse when I had to trace out his body for Anatomy class. He would just keep moving away and giggling when all I wanted to do was take the pencil and pierce it through my heart mercilessly.

Luke groaned out loud, taking a strip of duct tape before placing it on Ashton's mouth so that every word was muffled. "Don't move or you'll mess up the whole thing because we both know that we have to finish taping it out before she comes out of Maths in ten minutes," Luke threatened. Ash sighed before accepting his fate and tried to lie as still as possible.

Luke tried to tape out Ashton's side one more time, but as soon as the piece of tape was touching the same air as Ashton's torso, he was a giggling mess again. His laughter was muffled but Luke threw the roll of duct tape at his best friend's crotch and crawled away to me, defeated.

"Let me write. If I have to deal with that mess of laughter one more time, I'll be the one dead and you'll still be writing on gravestones, except it'll be for me," Luke whined, shining his blue eyes at me to plead.

As I continued to write on the epitaph with a Sharpie marker, I shook my head. "I'm done touching that vermin after I had to trace him for a project. You do it," I said, starting to color in the RIP written in block letters at the top.

"Kendall, please," he begged, dragging out the second word for what felt like an eternity.

Glancing at his big, blue eyes slightly, I already fell for his trap. After I slapped Luke viciously with the piece of cardboard in my hands, I crawled over to Ashton and swiftly pulled off the tape smothering his mouth. He cried in pain, but I told him to shut up and calm down or I'm going to leave him here to fend for himself. Luke wouldn't be much help if I was gone.

Finally, after five more minutes of Ashton chuckling and chortling and Luke coloring in the letters I wrote on the board, our masterpiece was done. All we had to do was wait for her to come out into the courtyard for lunch to see Ashton's "corpse" clutching onto a bouquet of roses with a gravestone that read RIP.

The bell rang and Luke scrambled to join the crowd so he could get to P.E. Meanwhile, Ashton stared at me with wide eyes and lifted his head off the ground a bit.

"Fuck, Ken. I'm nervous," he said.

"Shut up, and act dead you imbecile."

His head of curly hair fell back, eyes closing, and mouth open slightly. He really did look dead with the pale makeup we stole from Luke's mom. When I saw the familiar girl named Brielle standing in front of the crowd that was forming, my eyes immediately looked to find the blue haired girl that would surely look upset watching this play out.

Just as I thought, Lindsay stood towards the middle of the crowd, arms crossed and lips pursed. Poor girl.

When a big enough crowd was formed, I smoothed out my black dress and pretended to wipe a tear away. "Here lies Ashton Irwin," I announced as I waved my hand towards his general direction. "He was just dying to go to prom."