Trip plucked the beer out of the water and popped the top. He took a long sip and then passed the can to Will. “I took the plea deal,” he said, looking out over the valley. “I went in today and talked to the DA. It’s done.”

“Do Mom and Dad know?” Will asked, and Trip shook his head no. Will’s heart sank. He’d known that Trip was probably going to do time, but until this moment, part of him still hoped that somehow they were all going to make it out of this. That the lawyer they were struggling to pay was going to have some kind of magic answer.

“I tried to protect you,” Will said quietly. “I never said anything to the police.”

“I know,” Trip said. “But it’s not your job to protect me. I shouldn’t have asked you to.”

“Do you think I should plead too?” Will asked.

“Nope,” Trip said. “You just sit tight. They’re going to drop the charges against you.”

Will stared at Trip for a moment, thinking that he heard him wrong. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “Why would they do that? They know I was there. They’re charging me as the organizer.”

“I admitted everything,” Trip said, still not looking at him. “I told them that I bought the booze and that I tossed the garage door opener in the back of your truck. I said I put out the word about the party. I told them that you were a good kid, that you were only there to pick me up. That anything else they heard was just kids at school who were jealous of your success. I told them you were covering for your fuckup older brother. That you were afraid I was going to jail.”

Will was stunned. “And they believed you?”

Trip shrugged. “I don’t know if they believed me, but they liked my story a hell of a lot better than any of the stories they’d come up with. Think about it. In their version, they’re going after a high school athlete, a soon-to-be Princeton man, who only broke the windows to save a girl from being raped. Nobody likes that story. Now, in my version, they’ve got a well-known area lowlife who led a bunch of nice kids astray by buying them booze and luring them into an empty house for a party. That’s a good story. That’s a story that doesn’t scare off their campaign donors and golf buddies.”

Will was quiet for a long time. He couldn’t reconcile all of the thoughts that were racing through his head: hope and disbelief; fear that Trip was telling him the truth, and also that he wasn’t.

“Thank you,” he finally said. “I can’t believe you did this for me. But I wish you’d said something first.”