Dead To You

50. what he really is

A few minutes later, I spotted the taupe brick monument sign on the corner of the lawn near the entrance of the police station parking lot, a solar light planted amongst wilting purple hydrangea flowers illuminating the words Fairview Police Department in big, bold letters above an enlarged badge. I held my breath as Ethan parked beneath a crabapple tree near the front steps of the station, beside an idling patrol car, and watched as the car that had been pursuing us since we left the game drove passed the police station parking lot and down the road, not exhaling until the scarlet taillights faded into the darkness. 

Then, after we sat there quietly for a moment, I moaned, "I should've got the license plate."

"I think there was a U or maybe an O in there somewhere," Bronwyn offered.

"We should probably wait a few minutes, right? Make sure they don't circle around or something?" I asked, to which Ethan nodded before turning off the engine, a soft sigh whistling from his nose as he cast a quick look over the console at Bronwyn. 

I glanced down at my hands, attempting to push aside the thought that their shared looks were somehow about me—like how they had to leave the game early because of me, drive all throughout town because a quarterback or his mistress were following me, listen to obsessive and outlandish theories from the backseat about a murder that definitely didn't happen—and turned my phone back on, bringing the picture back on my camera roll and staring at the red glint in Blane's pupils, caught as they roamed in my direction. 

I really didn't know that much about Blane Harding aside from the fact that he and Bridgette had been dating off and on for the last year, his dad was a former football player who played a couple seasons for the Bills in the 2000s, and that he made out with Thea Foster tonight in the dugout behind the field, who was most likely the girl he cheated on Bridgette with sometime before her album was released in the spring. 

That, and he dropped a beer bottle on my head at the party, which I never technically saw him leave, although it wasn't like I saw him after it started raining and I inadvertently almost hit Bridgette with my car as I tried to leave myself, but the only reason that happened was because Bridgette was trying to walk home, or at least somewhere else. If she had driven her own car that night, then why would she walk home? I mean, it wasn't totally unfeasible—I did it, after all—but it still left a sour taste in my mouth as I remembered how incredulous Noel sounded when he realized I walked from his house to bluffs, like it was completely stupid of me, which meant it also would've been completely stupid of her.

So, she probably came with someone.

Someone, who for whatever reason, she didn't want to leave with.

Someone who left the party without her, even after she went back.

That person had to have been Blane—although, it occurred to me a moment later that Noel was also at the party and could've been her ride that night, another person I never saw leaving the bluffs, but I couldn't quite convince myself that he could be involved with Bridgette's disappearance, I mean, it was Noel—and it did seem as if their relationship was still a bit tumultuous, their first breakup chronicled in a series of a viral pop songs that had been trending since the first single was released that February, and the argument they had before AP English indicted that Blane was still bitter about the light Bridgette had painted, or sang, him in. 

Thea was there at the party, even got into a confrontation earlier in the night with Bridgette, and if she saw them together, could Blane have panicked and did something to Bridgette to prevent her from further damaging his social status? He definitely made it apparent tonight that he didn't want his relationship with Thea public.