Page 10 of In the Air Tonight

I start the car and pull onto the street. I probably shouldn’t be driving, but I have to get out of here before someone sees me and starts asking questions. I drive slowly, which I once heard my dad say is a red flag to cops looking for drunk drivers. I’d rather think about things my dad says than about what happened in the woods.

I shift in the seat and realize my clothes are wet. Is it blood or… I can’t. I just can’t.

For the first time ever, I’m thankful my dad is away more than he’s home. Getting by my mom won’t be a problem. That wouldn’t be the case with him.

I’m still shaking and nauseated as I make my way across the bridge to Hope and take the exit that leads to the split-level house my parents bought when we moved here last June so my mom could be closer to her aging parents. That seems like a long time ago after a hellish year at Hope High School with kids who hated me on sight.

I worked at my cousin’s restaurant last summer with Houston Rafferty, which is the only reason I was invited to his party in the first place. I shouldn’t have gone. I knew that before I went, but I refuse to hide from the assholes at school.

As I imagine myself accusing Ryder Elliott of rape, a powerful wave of nausea has me pulling off the road and leaning out to vomit. Bile burns my throat as I retch violently. I want it to stop so I can get out of there before I attract attention from the police. That’s the last thing I need.

No one can ever know about this, or my life here will be even more horrific than it already is. With my dad being a high-ranking naval officer, I’m used to being the new kid in school. It’s never been as hard as it is here. The other kids took an immediate, visceral dislike to me on the first day of my junior year, and that was it. My life has been a nightmare ever since.

Houston is one of the only true friends I’ve made here. He tells me all the time to ignore the assholes and keep being awesome. That’s easy for him to say. No one has ever been shitty to him in his entire life. He treats me the same way he does his little sister, Austin, which I appreciate. But since he’s been in college in Boston almost the whole time I’ve lived here, he isn’t much help to me at school.

I want so badly to tell him what happened with Ryder, but I can’t. Houston’s father is the LE chief of police. If I tell Houston, he’ll tell his father, and everyone will know.

No one can ever know, or my living hell will become even more so.

I pull into the driveway at the house. I never refer to it as “home,” because it doesn’t feel like that. It’s just another in a long string of houses that’ve provided shelter for however long we’ve lived in a given place. After I turn off the car, I sit for a long time trying to get myself together before I go inside.

My mom is usually passed out by now, having consumed at least two bottles of wine since the afternoon. Normally her drinking disgusts me. Tonight, I’m thankful for it. I enter through a side door that leads to the garage and then the kitchen. I tiptoe past the living room where she’s asleep on the sofa and head upstairs, going straight to the shower across the hall from my room. As I strip off my clothes, I’m alarmed by how much blood there is, mixed in with other fluid that makes me shudder.

What if I get pregnant?

That possibility has me vomiting again in dry heaves until there’s nothing left in my stomach.

I throw my clothes into the bathtub and step into the shower.

Hot water has never felt so good as I scrub my body from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, wincing at the pain between my legs when soap meets abused flesh. And then I’m sobbing again. I slide down the wall to sit in the tub as the water continues to rain down on me, washing away some of the horror.

I’m hardly naïve after living in ten different places in my first seventeen years, but I never thought something like this would happen to me. I’m careful. Street smart. Aware. My dad has made sure of it. I keep going back to Ryder asking if he could talk to me about Louisa. She was in my English class before she had to leave school. I thought she was very sweet, and I had the feeling she liked me, too.

Her kindness stood out to me because everyone else was a jerk.

I had no reason to be afraid of Ryder.

Sure, he’d been flirtatious with me in the past, but all the boys are. That’s why the girls hate me so much, not that I do anything to encourage the boys. My boyfriend, Kane, is currently living in Spain. We met when our families were stationed together in Jacksonville, Florida, for four years, the longest I’ve lived anywhere.

We’ve been a couple since we were in seventh grade, which sounds bonkers, I know. But our bond was deep and immediate, and has stayed that way, even with an ocean between us.

He questioned the wisdom of me going to Houston’s party, which was sure to be attended by the same kids who’ve made me an outcast. He knows Houston is my one good friend here, and I didn’t want to miss his party because of the assholes. I should’ve listened to Kane.

I wrap my arms around my knees and drop my head to rest on my forearm.

Kane…

He was supposed to have been my first, my only. I’ve known for years that he’s the love of my life and vice versa. Yes, we’re young, and we’ve heard all the detractors advise us not to get our hopes up about each other. But when you know, you know.

How will I ever tell him about this?

I’m still in the shower quite a while later when the hot water starts to run out. The cold water is like a slap to the face that gets me up and moving again. I notice a pink tinge in the water where I was sitting and shiver from the cold as well as the trauma.

Even though it’s still warm outside and my dad hates paying for air conditioning, I get dressed in my coziest sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt before I crawl into bed, pulling the covers up and over my head. If I could, I’d stay here forever.

No one can ever know about this. Even in the midst of the shock, I know that much for certain. Ryder Elliott is the king of Hope High School. I could scream from the rooftops about whathe did to me, but no one would believe me. They’ve known him forever. Most of them went to preschool together. Their parents were high school classmates.

I’m an outsider in every possible way.

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