Blank Confession Read Free

which was bolted to the floor. Rawls sat back and looked at his watch: 5:09. It didn’t matter. This time he was going to wait for the kid to speak, no matter how long it took.
    It took two minutes and thirteen seconds. The kid flopped the ring back and forth: Clank. Clank. Clank.
    â€œIt’s kind of a long story,” the kid said.
    â€œYou want something to drink? A soda?”
    â€œNo thanks.” He was back to playing with the ring. “I just—” Clank. Clank. He took a deep breath. “You ever kill anybody?” he asked.
    Rawls said, “No, I never killed anybody.”
    â€œYou’d feel bad if you did, though. Right?” The kid looked up. Once again, Rawls perceived something steely and sharp behind the curtain.
    â€œI suppose it would depend on the circumstances,” Rawls said.
    The kid took that in, nodded.
    â€œWhy don’t you tell me what happened,” said Rawls.
    The kid said, “Okay. I just moved here, and—”
    â€œFrom where?” Rawls interrupted him.
    â€œI was in Louisville for a while.”
    â€œYou get in trouble in Louisville?”
    â€œDo you want me to tell you what happened or not?”
    Rawls sat back in his chair and peeked at his watch: 5:14. If he couldn’t wrap this up in half an hour, he’d have to call home and tell his wife to eat dinner without him.
    â€œGo ahead,” he said with a sigh. “Take your time.”

4. MIKEY
    I am not a guy who sticks his nose in anybody else’s business, and I certainly did not want to get on the wrong side of Jon Brande, so I figured I’d hang on to his bag of whatever, give it back to him after school, and be done with it. I should have known better.
    Several weeks earlier, a junior named Leon Sullivan OD’d on something—the rumor mill said it was ecstasy mixed with LSD but, knowing Leon, it could have been anything. He had climbed onto the top of the school in the middle of the day and announced his intention to fly. It took two fire trucks and half a dozen cops to drag him off that roof. Leon never came back to school. I heard his parents sent him to some boarding school for druggies.
    I happened to know that Leon got the stuff—whatever it was—from Jon, but Leon never told anybody, so why should I? I may have a big mouth but I’m not suicidal.
    Anyway, after Leon’s monumental freak-out, the antidrug task force moved into high gear. We had special educational visits from narcotics detectives, antidrug movies, a big display in the front lobby with all sorts of drug information pamphlets and brochures, and even an antidrug “rally” in the gym, which was basically anondenominational invocation by the youth pastor from Trinity Lutheran, and a stupendously lame exhibition by the cheerleading squad. Then came an invitation for all of us to come forward and pledge to remain drug free during our tender high school years. Out of the twelve hundred students at the rally, I think they got maybe thirty pledges, two of whom were hard-core stoners who goofed their way through the entire pledge. I’m pretty sure they were high at the time. There probably would have been more pledgers, but it was last period and the bell rang and the gym emptied in about one minute flat.
    Jon thought the whole thing was hilarious. As the primary supplier to the local stoner population, he knew exactly how many students were using drugs, and how much they were using, and how many of them were unlikely to quit using, no matter how many rallies and pledges and invocations they were exposed to. His customer base was well-established and recession-proof. The only thing that could seriously mess it up would be if he got arrested and thrown in jail.
    I should make it clear here and now that I was not one of Jon’s customers. I’d tried marijuana once with Marie, but I didn’t like it much. Besides, that stuff is expensive.
    Also—don’t