Please Don't Tell Part 21

FOURTEEN.

August 7 Grace JOY STARTS GETTING UP AT NOON. THEN two. Then three. She eats only Saltines. She lifts weights in the exercise room until four a.m., straining every muscle in her body. Her room turns into a garbage can. She leaves the house only once to buy us both Plan B.

Mom and Dad have always whispered about her. Now they whisper more. She's going through a phase. They dissolve their own worry for their own sakes. n.o.body whispers about me. Which is good, because I don't need to be whispered about.

One day Joy walks back from Preston's house in the rain. Her orange s.h.i.+rt's dark with water, a rust color, like dried blood. Her socks are sponges on my floor. Her hair tangling around her neck in wet ropes, like a noose, she asks: "Are you mad at me?"

I put my arms around her. I feel like a machine.

She wants to go to the police. She wants to go back to his house and kill him.

"I know you're mad at me," she repeats. "I can tell you're mad at me."

I'd never be mad at her. I'm not avoiding her because I'm mad at her. She just makes me tired.

She pulls me into the bathroom while Mom and Dad talk about colleges downstairs. She's full of thunder. "We need to tell somebody. I can't do this silence. You can't."

Why do I have to be the one to make her feel better? Nothing even happened to her.

Did anything even happen to me?

Five hours of sleep. Four hours of studying. Two hours of exercise. Three hours of self-improvement reading. If I don't go over six hundred calories a day, I won't have bad dreams. If I can do my makeup in under two hours, she'll stop asking if I'm mad at her.

I build little pyres out of my emotions and burn them. I am clean.

She comes to my room at night and whispers, even though I pretend I'm asleep: "Just let me do something. Let me go to his house. I'll . . . I'll . . . You're not being normal about this."

I'm not normal. I'm stronger than normal people. It's my head. I'm in control of it.

She's not in control of anything. Why did I ever want to be like her?

She comes to me outside, when I'm sitting on the porch, tying and untying one shoe.

"Are you sure you're not mad at me?"

"Yes," I tell her. But my voice is different now. I can't tell if she's not listening or if I didn't speak.

Time slips in and out, like it did when I was drunk, but I'm not drunk now. Whole days pa.s.s without me noticing. Everything is dry and clear and flat. And far away. Joy feels very far away.

She comes to me in the exercise room when I'm sweating off breakfast. "We can't just pretend like it didn't happen."

"Yes we can." If I don't call it anything, it isn't anything. "Nothing even happened."

"That's not what you said the night it-"

"I don't know what I said. Leave it alone, Joy."

She whispers to me in the bathroom, when I'm flossing too hard, cutting my gums. "Mom and Dad ask me to do the dishes and I'm screaming the truth at them in my head. We need to tell."

"Please don't tell," I say, my mouth full of blood. "Promise me you won't tell. If you tell, I'll hate you forever."

After that, she stops asking if I'm mad at her.

That night, I dream I'm in a crowd and everyone's wearing Adam's face. I'm called into Princ.i.p.al Eastman's office, and Eastman is wearing Adam's face. I walk into Joy's room in the middle of the night and she's wearing his face.

He's astral projecting into my head. This dark-haired, guitar-playing person . . .

All my old fantasies transform. It's me who finds his body at the bottom of the quarry. He comes to me with his problems and I bash his brains in with a rock. I'm in a crowd of people wearing his face, and I set off a bomb, blowing them all apart.

Dream: I stick a knife between his ribs. I feel it go in.

I don't want to be someone who dreams about this.

It's fine. It will go away. I'm stronger than this. I'm better than normal people.

FIFTEEN.

October 23 Joy AS KIDS, GRACE AND I SPENT A LOT OF TIME at the elementary school playground, on the wooden s.h.i.+p with the fake wheel. I'd steer us over oceans, away from pirates. I'd climb to the top of the jungle gym and she'd wait below me, face screwed up in fear, arms out to catch me if I fell, even though she wasn't big enough. Even though she knew I'd bring her down with me.

"Sorry I didn't reply to your texts." November's sitting on the swing next to me. School's been out for an hour now. The sky's cloudy, rain threatening. The wind scatters dead leaves underneath the jungle gym.

I'm the one to say it for once: "Are you okay?"

"I hate him, I hate him, I hate him." She says it like she's tearing off chunks of something inside her chest and throwing them into a fire. "The department's put him on unpaid leave. He was already in trouble, the way he went around asking unauthorized questions about Adam dying. He punched a hole in the bas.e.m.e.nt wall."

"Are you okay, though?"

"That woman in the video sued my dad, back in NYC. But the security video from the street camera disappeared. That's why the chief suggested he apply for jobs in upstate New York instead of straight-out firing him." The swing chain's pinching her fingers. "I just don't understand who found it."

I twist my swing and then I let go, spinning. The playground blurs. "Are people giving you s.h.i.+t at school?"

"Most of the time, people forget he's my dad. We're not exactly color matched," she says sarcastically. "Besides, I am known for not caring and that means people tend to return the favor."

"But you're okay?"

"Whoever it was who did it, however they found the recording, I'm grateful to them. My dad's a bad person."

I'm quiet.

"Next month I'm eighteen, then I'll be in full control of my inheritance from my mom. Gonna sublet an apartment, graduate at Stanwick. I applied to NYU. So did Ca.s.sius, I guess."

"He moved out yesterday," I say. "I watched the U-Haul pull down the end of our street. Will you miss him?"

"We were temporary friends. Sometimes you gotta be friends with somebody because they need someone, not because the two of you have anything in common."

My head hurts. "I'm here if you ever need someone."

"You don't wanna hear my garbage. I want you to keep looking up to me." She grins briefly.

There's something special about being liked by someone who hates almost everyone else.

"It's easier than you think, not looking up to someone anymore. All it takes is you seeing their cracks. I used to look up to my dad." She pushes off the ground, swings high. Her voice whooshes past me. "My mom was smart, rich, pretty. I know my grandpa's mind was blown when she picked him. All the people in the world, and she goes for a white cop? Jesus."

"Jesus," I echo, thinking about people we're not supposed to like, thinking of Levi.

"Mom saw the best in everybody. She looked at people like they were better versions of themselves, and it made them want to be better. She was like you." She smiles at me for a second. "Maybe he used to be different. You get trained to see other people as screwups, rule breakers, and you forget how to treat them like they're human. Sometimes I'm glad my mom died before she could see what he turned into."

I shut my eyes. "I'm so sorry, Nov."

"It's one thing to say you hate your dad. Everyone's dad is an a.s.shole sometimes. But it's different to realize you're never going to wake up one morning and have a dad who isn't an a.s.shole, and that you're going to be one of those people who never talks to their dad as an adult, and when he dies someday, you'll only find out because the hospital digs up your name in some phone book. . . ."

I jump off my swing, hug her. She's got bird bones. The feel of human skin on mine starts to bring back far-off fireworks of that night with Ca.s.sius. My nerve endings reroute straight to it now.

"I'm sorry," November says. Her forehead's on my collarbone. "I don't want to be this way to you."

"You're not any bad thing to me," I say, but she's already gathering the calm back on her face like she's tying up her hair.

"When you're a kid, the people you're stuck living with, it's a lottery. If they're a.s.sholes, too bad. There's nothing you can do until you turn eighteen."

"Parenthood is weird," I agree. "It's like, here, have this small person, do whatever you want to it until it's a bigger person, we don't care."

"I think that's why we end up being each other's parents. We're the only ones who know what it's like." She hops off the swing, lightly punches my shoulder. "That's why it's my job to look after you."

I have to tell her about the blackmail. I can't spend my life not telling people things because I'm afraid they'll stop liking me.

But my phone buzzes first. It's Levi.

there is an absolutely terrible zombie movie playing tonight. sounds like a great excuse to sit awkwardly next to each other for a couple hours and get blushy every time our arms touch. you in?

I completely forgot that we were going to see a movie.

But I can't go when all of this is happening. That would be insane.

November grabs my phone.

"Hey!"

"I reserve the right to know who's texting my friend and making her turn that shade of red." She skims it. Her eyebrows fly up. "Levi? As in the new kid Levi? As in Adam Gordon's half brother?"

"He's tutoring me in American History. It's nothing."

"Yeah, I'm sure your American History homework was to go watch a s.h.i.+tty movie and 'get blushy.'" Her knuckles tighten on the phone. "What's he want with you?"

"He's nothing like Adam. At all. He didn't even know Adam." I'm babbling. "He's just new. We're temporary friends, like you and Ca.s.sius. He'll make better friends soon."

"Better friends?" November repeats, and starts laughing so hard she doubles over.

"What?"

"You're not good at much, you know that?" she splutters. "You're s.h.i.+t at grades, you're way too aggressive at sports-remember when you tried to join the soccer team and kicked the goalie in the face? You suck at art, your fas.h.i.+on sense blows. . . ."

"That's what I meant." I stick out my tongue at her. "He'll find better friends."

"That's why I'm laughing." She flicks my hair affectionately. "You are the best friend. That's the one thing you're good at. I've never met anybody who obsesses over doing right by her friends as much as you."

I tense. "Don't say that."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm actually a selfish b.i.t.c.h," I say lightly.

She bursts out laughing again. "You're cheering me up."

I smile, but my heart is pounding. "Everything I do is selfish. I do nice things just to feel better about myself. I'd probably throw somebody in a shark tank so I could be the one to pull them out. Best friend ever."

"I know you're kidding. But there's a good and a selfish reason for everything, and the fact that the selfish reason exists doesn't cancel out the good reason." She rolls her eyes. "Senior wisdom from November Roseby. So are you gonna go hang with the new kid at the movie theater or what?"

"You'd let me?"

"What do you mean let you? I'm not your babysitter." She snorts. "If I am, I'm a cool babysitter with a radical taste in music."

"I just meant . . . you didn't like Adam."

"I of all people understand that people aren't clones of their family members. In fact, I think people tend to swing the complete opposite way. So by that logic, Levi's a saint."

"I won't hang out with him if it makes you uncomfortable."

"You're ridiculous. I am not an a.s.shole." She hands my phone back. "Plus, you've been stressed, even if you won't talk to me about it. It's okay to take a break to do something that makes you happy."

"I don't want to go off and see a movie when you're b.u.mmed."

"I'll get over it. You can be happy. It's not cheating. Go to the movies or I'm going to be p.i.s.sed at you."

"But-"

"Go. Leave. I'm not saying another word to you."