Page 32 of In the Air Tonight

I look him dead in the eyes. “Not even Louisa.”

“Not even Louisa.”

“You can’t have another weak moment where you feel the need to unburden yourself. As far as we’re concerned, nothing happened. She’s lying. The girls at school hate her, so she decided to get even with all of us by accusing one of the most popular guys of the worst possible thing. No one will believe her. They’ll believe you. Theyknowyou.”

As I speak, he nods like a bobble head, hanging on my every word.

“Tell me you understand what you have to do.”

“I have to say she’s lying. That nothing happened.”

“You must never, ever,everdeviate from that story.”

He looks me in the eye as we form this unholy alliance. “I won’t.”

“If you need to talk, you come to me. Only me.”

“Only you.”

I reach out my hand to him. He clasps it and holds it tightly as we lock eyes.

Whatever happens next, we’re in it together.

Chapter 7

Blaise

NOW

I drive with single-minded determination in a pricey rental car that put a serious dent in my always-tight budget. Whatever. It was the fastest way to get to Rhode Island, and I’ll need a car when I get there anyway. People have asked me, upon hearing I’m from the smallest state, if we need cars to get around there. It’s notthatsmall.

Thinking about trivial things like that helps to keep me from obsessing about where I’m going and what I plan to do when I get there.

Through Rye, New York, into Connecticut, past Greenwich, Norwich, Stanford, New Haven and New London, I get more anxious with every minute and every mile that goes by.

I haven’t driven in a long time. Normally, I enjoy it. Nothing about this trip is normal or enjoyable.

I cross the state line into Rhode Island at two o’clock and press the accelerator, anxious to get where I’m going before it’s too late. I don’t want to have to wait another day.

One more day is too many. It’s already been too long. I can’t take this for another second, not another hour or another night or another morning.

It has to happen today.

Before I lose my nerve.

Again.

I almost did it once before, a couple of months after it happened, when I feared I might have some sort of serious breakdown if I didn’t do the right thing immediately.

I’d planned to go to the Land’s End Police the next day and tell the truth, to hell with the consequences. I’d resigned myself to becoming a pariah in my own life. Anything, I thought, was better than the purgatory I was stuck in while the kids I grew up with called Neisy every foul name under the sun to discredit her.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

And then Louisa died, and I couldn’t do it.

I told myself I was staying quiet for her, for Louisa. I was honoring her memory with my silence, but that was bullshit.

The only person I was protecting was myself.

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