Please Don't Tell Part 19

We've only been here an hour and a half. "Ten minutes," I say. I want to listen to Adam sing. I drink all the nail polish. It's bad enough to distract me from how awkward this is.

And then.

Suddenly.

I am very.

Very.

Drunk.

"Joy?"

"Mmmyessss?" She drapes her arm around me. She drank hers, too.

"This is a s.h.i.+tty party," I whisper.

And suddenly both of us are laughing so hard we're not making a sound. Mouths open. Tears. Nothing has ever been this hilarious.

"I shaved my knees for this," she gasps.

Kennedy-Sarah have vanished. Ben is still pa.s.sed out. Everyone else? When did they leave? Time's choppy, minutes disconnected from each other instead of moving along in a chain like normal. The ceiling spins. Ca.s.sius says something I don't catch. He sounds worried.

Suddenly: a man! In the bas.e.m.e.nt. Wobbling. Wearing sweatpants. s.h.i.+rtless. Do all middle-aged men look like that?

"Adam?" he says.

Joy and I are frozen. Shoulders pressed together. Will he call the cops? Do we run? I'm still giggling.

Adam throws down his guitar. Snarls, "What do you want?"

"You got my rum?" he slurs.

Adam shoves a mostly empty bottle toward him. "Jesus, Dad, get the f.u.c.k out."

His father sways. Looks at us. "Nice," he hiccups before stumbling upstairs.

Joy keels over with a noise like air escaping a tire. We're bent double. Dying.

Adam, glaring at us. Especially me. I stop laughing, which sucks because I notice how nauseous I am.

Then, Adam and Ca.s.sius: in the corner. Talking. Adam gestures at Joy. Ca.s.sius shakes his head. Then, then, then, both of them: taking shot after shot from a new bottle. Weird that they're best friends. They're so different. Do they tell each other their secrets? What are boy friends.h.i.+ps like? Do I even know what girl friends.h.i.+ps are like?

Joy's standing up. Swaying. "I have a speshul announcement to make. Speshul Joy announcement, everyone. Listen up. You!" She's pointing at Ca.s.sius, who puts his empty shot gla.s.s on the foosball table. He looks at the carpet. Joy doesn't lower her finger. "You. Are f.u.c.king. Attractive."

"There it is!" Adam hoots. "Yes! Ca.s.sius, my man." Ca.s.sius forces a smile, steals a glance at me. Holds it a little too long. Adam moves next to me. Tucking me under his arm, just like the night on the middle school field. My face hurts. I'm grinning too hard.

"You," he says in a low voice only I can hear, "are f.u.c.king attractive."

"You," I whisper, terrified, "are f.u.c.king attractive."

"Is that a suggestion?" he says, confusingly. Then: two more gla.s.ses in his hands. Full. One for me.

Ca.s.sius hunches on the carpet near us. I want to break him open. Like I broke open. Show him it's possible to be more. It's so much better this way. Everyone's playing the game except him.

"Drink!" Joy shouts.

"My sister really likes you," I tell Ca.s.sius, the stupid words spilling out of me. "Give her a chance. She's really, really great. She's really, really, really great."

Things fade out. Back in.

I'm tired of being this drunk.

"Really, really, really, really great," Adam mimics.

The walls blur and Joy is whispering in Ca.s.sius's ear and his brows are knitting together, he's determinedly talking back, determinedly smiling back. Her hair's loose, a huge shape. Adam turns the TV off.

Joy's crawling over Ca.s.sius hungrily. He's taking off her s.h.i.+rt. Kissing her neck. She runs her hands all over his back. He's looking at me over her shoulder, his eyes a mixture of confusion, desire, and resentment. I don't know if those things are for her or me. For a second, I think he's going to call out to me, but then Joy swings in front of him, her hair a pendulum, and says something that dissolves into laughter. She's so happy. I want Ca.s.sius to make her happy. But not so happy she leaves me behind.

Adam's warm breath in my ear: "Let's give them some privacy."

I start to say "Joy-" but Adam guides me to the stairs. I can't do stairs, so he carries me up them.

His bedroom's full of musician stuff. Posters: Bob Dylan. Jim Morrison. Guitars, sound equipment. One window, facing away from the trees, away from the quarry.

He puts on some music.

Time rolls in and out, like the tide. I'm on his bed. His face is close. No one has ever been this close to me. His chin's stubbly. He didn't shave for tonight.

"Are you okay?" I say it so badly. I ruin it.

"Of course I'm okay." He's kissing me. It's wet, slimy, I can't catch up with what's happening. This is supposed to feel different. Anxiety crawls all over my body.

I push him away. "I just mean . . . you seem sad, sometimes."

"I think about a lot of things." He trails his fingers down the side of my neck.

"You can talk to me about the things." My voice s.h.i.+vers in the dark. "I think about things, too."

"You see, Grace? You understand me." He slides his hands under the hem of my s.h.i.+rt. No. He'll feel how fat I am. "That's why I like you. Because you're smart. Not like other girls. Not like your sister."

My s.h.i.+rt's off. I hold it to my body.

"Why not? You're so pretty."

"No." I can't arrange myself the way I did for Ca.s.sius. He's not giving me the chance.

"Yes. You are." He peels my s.h.i.+rt away. Peels my hands away. "You're way hotter than your sister. You're so beautiful."

He says it like the end of a story. I want him to feel like he makes me feel beautiful.

"You inspire me. I'm going to write a song about you," he says. "Just relax. Your sister's relaxed."

I just have to enjoy it.

A normal girl would enjoy it.

"You said I was 'f.u.c.king attractive,' remember?"

I don't feel right. This is a mistake.

"I really need this, Grace. Come on. Just do what your sister's doing downstairs."

I'm not her. I'm me. I'm trapped in being me.

"You're not gonna get this chance again."

Come upstairs, Joy. Look at me, please, look over here. See me for once. You never see me. You never look past what's in front of you.

He turns up the music.

I don't want to be in this skin anymore, I don't want to be anywhere anymore. I am disappearing. Everything is slapping together in waves. I can't breathe. Where's my sister?

Him: holding me down.

He keeps talking, saying it: "This isn't so bad, is it? I knew you'd like it. I knew you needed this, too."

THIRTEEN.

October 20 Joy ALL I CAN DO IS SIT ON THE EDGE OF PRESTON'S bed while he puts the DVD in his computer. My muscles feel atrophied, like I'll never be able to lift anything heavier than a paper clip.

"Did you watch it last night after we got off the phone?" he asks.

I shake my head. "My laptop doesn't have a DVD drive."

A grainy black-and-white video starts, text in the corner dating it years ago. It looks like it's from a security camera. At first, the street it shows is empty. Then a police car pulls a Toyota over to the curb. A man gets out.

"That's Officer Roseby," says Preston, startled.

A woman gets out of the Toyota. They argue briefly. I can't hear what they're saying.

Then Roseby slaps her to the ground, pulls her back to his car by her hair. He shoves her in the back and the video ends. My mouth goes dry.

"Jesus Christ." Pres leans away from the computer, as far back as he can. "How does he still have a job?"

I bend my pinkie the wrong direction until the pain clears my head. It's funny, all the little ways you can hurt yourself without anybody noticing.

"Maybe they just gave him a citation. I don't recognize the street. Maybe it was before he moved here." Preston's muttering to himself. "Or maybe n.o.body ever saw this. In which case, how'd the blackmailer get ahold of it?"

I move my numb tongue. "We don't know how he got the photos of Princ.i.p.al Eastman, either."

He flinches the way he always does when the photos come up. I overheard him in the hall today, asking if anyone knew how Savannah Somerset was doing. I think he does it for the same reason I bend my pinkie back and dig my thumbnail into my wrist.

"Let me see the note again," he says.

I pa.s.s it to him. I don't look at it. I read it last night over and over again. At this point I don't even understand it-it's all gibberish.

Joy Morris- We've shown everyone the truth about one man at your school already. It's time to do it again.

This week, Officer Roseby will be giving a lecture in the auditorium at your school. Enclosed please find a DVD. Your job is to replace the DVD that he will be using in his presentation with this one.

If you don't do this, or if you tell anyone, I will go to the police and tell them that you killed Adam Gordon.

"It's definitely someone who goes to our school." Preston says. "Otherwise why would they know or care about the people who work there?"

"Maybe it's a staff member." I say it so he thinks I'm trying.

"That doesn't fit with everything else. It's got to be somebody who went to the party, somebody who doesn't like you and knew you hated Adam-remember how we figured all this out?"

I raise my shoulders and lower them.

"Joy?"

"I just keep thinking . . . What's the point? It's never going to be over." I wrap the tail of my backpack strap around my forefinger until it turns purple. "I keep thinking-everybody has secrets. And the blackmailer apparently knows all of them, and he's not going to stop until I make sure everybody else knows them, too."

"Maybe this is the last time," he says unconvincingly.

"How did this happen to me, Pres?"

"You're going through a lot of stress. But I'm here for you," he says like a therapist. He pops the DVD out. The video player window closes, and in the second before he shuts the screen, I notice the t.i.tle of the article he had up. "How to Help a Friend Going Through a Difficult Time."

Oh, Preston.

I am going to pull myself together.

"This one won't be too hard," he says. "Remember when my mom gave that mental health presentation in the auditorium? She showed a video, too. They have the tech person set up the DVD player and the projector, then they store it in the downstairs supply closet near the auditorium. The presentations are always right after lunch, so they'll set up the stuff beforehand. We can swap the DVDs during lunch."

"I don't know . . ." Pulling. Myself. Together.

"I understand why you didn't want to put the photos up," he says. "But don't you think people deserve to know about this? He shouldn't be hanging around a school."