Please Don't Tell Part 28

"Okay," I say. "I'll let you do something."

We spend hours in my room, figuring it out. Mostly she seems relieved I'm talking to her again. We take precautions-we google how to defend, kill, hurt, like we googled how to have s.e.x. There are parts of the body that are shortcuts to death, too.

"It's not like we're actually, you know . . . planning on killing him," she says for the hundredth time, hesitating before saying it like she can't believe how it sounds. "This is all just self-defense stuff we need to know in case anything goes wrong when we confront him."

"Right. Yeah."

There are thoughts I have these days that I can't acknowledge, because if I do I get so scared I can't move.

Like: Joy's not like November. She's not just talk. She wants to hurt him. She would've hurt him in the grocery store if I hadn't stopped her.

Like: She won't be able to confront him without hurting him.

Like: I want her to hurt him.

"We'll say we have evidence, pictures proving that . . . he did what he did," she says. "And we'll . . . .we'll tell him that if he doesn't do what we say, we'll go to the police. We'll tell him that he has to drop out of Stanwick High and move out of town. Go live with his mom. Somewhere not here."

I pull my hair over my shoulder, twist a strand around my thumb.

"I'll say it. You don't have to talk." She's on my bed, hugging my pillow. She has a gauzy look. Is her skin getting thinner, too? "You don't even have to be there."

"I'm not letting you go alone."

"Let me do this for you, Grace." She chews her lip. "To make up for . . ."

She doesn't finish the sentence, and I pretend she didn't start it.

There's no way she'd be able to talk to him without tearing him apart. She's always defended me. She punched Ben Stockholm for making fun of my watercolors in third grade. She's stronger than Adam. She lifts weights, she's angrier, she hits hard.

And I want to see it.

"You can't go alone, and you can't talk to him where other people are listening," I say. "I have to go with you."

"I don't want you anywhere near him." She shakes her head. "His birthday party on September thirtieth. I'll do it then. It'll be loud, people'll be drunk-I won't be alone with him, but n.o.body'll be listening." She gulps. "It's just-that's a month away I'll have to see him at school."

"You can do it." I lean forward. "Every time you see him, just remember that we have a plan. We'll go to his birthday party together-"

"No!"

She's shouting. We both look toward the door, but Mom and Dad are downstairs.

"I'm sorry," Joy whispers. Her cheekbones are sharper, the bags under her eyes deeper. "I don't want you there. I don't trust myself to protect you anymore."

"I trust you," I say.

I do trust her. I know she'll be able to do what I want, even if I haven't told her what that is. We're twins. She has to know.

She rests her head in her hands. We've always drawn from the same energy source. When she's strong, I'm weak. When I'm strong . . . "I don't feel old enough for this," she says quietly.

We're old enough for boys to take us upstairs. We're old enough for their fathers to look at us and say nice.

"It'll work," I say. It won't work. He'll laugh in our faces.

And that will make Joy mad.

"This'll fix things for you?" she asks. "You won't be mad at me anymore?"

I get up from my desk, sit down next to her, and hug her. It's dangerous, hugging her with my skin so thin. It feels like she's going to poke holes through me. Bleed me dry. I tense up. She tenses, too. Our barriers are too high to allow for whatever is supposed to pa.s.s between people during a hug.

I let her go. She looks like she's about to cry. I don't feel anything. And the best part about not feeling anything is not feeling guilt.

School starts. It feels like the first September in our whole lives that Mom doesn't drop Joy and me off together. No-there was fifth grade, when Joy had the flu and missed the first two days of school. In the halls without her, I felt defenseless. I wonder if she feels the same way now.

I make her promise not to do anything to him. I want to be there when she snaps. I picture it: she'll break his nose, knock him down, kick him in the face. And I'll see that the person haunting me is nothing more than one more bully for my sister to protect me from.

And then I'll be fine. I'll go back to school, I'll get back on track, I'll go to college, and everything will go back to the way it was before this summer. I'll be worth something again.

A month slides by. Joy gets thinner. I get thinner and fatter and thinner and fatter again. My weight is the only way I keep track of time now.

The day of his birthday, he has thirty-seven well-wishers on his Facebook wall by the time I wake up. I spend hours getting ready. I put on makeup so thick it cracks. Makeup is important. If you do it the same way every day, people will start thinking it's how you look. But you can never slip up or they'll realize the truth.

Joy is late coming home. Mom and Dad are at work. I'm alone on my bed, watching the sky change from blue to gray. The shadows in my room lengthen. Where is she?

Finally the door downstairs opens. I hear her drop her bag, clatter up the stairs. She looks terrible when she comes in. Like a drowning person.

"Sorry," she says. "I was at Preston's."

When is she going to learn that she doesn't need anyone besides me?

"It's fine," I tell her. "Go get your outfit together."

But she doesn't move from my doorway.

She looked the exact same way on our thirteenth birthday. We'd been planning to get ice cream and go to the movies with Mom and Dad, like we did every year. But she got invited to some water park. She wanted to go, she'd said. She just really really wanted to go.

But she came with me, in the end. In the end, she always does what's right for me.

"I can't do this," she chokes. "I can't confront him, I can't blackmail him with evidence we don't even have. I'm afraid, Grace."

I force calm into my voice. "He won't do anything. Not at his birthday party. There will be people around."

"I'm not afraid of him."

Of course she's not. She's stronger than him. She would have fought him off.

"I'll be okay," I say. "I keep telling you, I feel fine. This is mostly for you. You're the one who kept saying you needed to do something."

"I know." She wraps a hank of hair around her fist hard."You're . . . you're strong, Grace. I always thought I was the . . . You handled all this fine from the beginning. I thought you just wouldn't tell me, but you've always been fine. You don't need me."

She gives me this hopeless look and it kills me. She's wrong. I need her tonight. But I can't tell her-it sounds manipulative. I'm hoping you'll snap and beat the s.h.i.+t out of him. Maybe even kill him. I want to watch.

It is manipulative. I'm manipulating her.

"I'm scaring myself," she cries. "I've only been able to avoid him at school because I keep thinking, he doesn't know. He doesn't know what's coming. That I'm going to hurt him, that I'm going to . . ."

She gasps and covers her face with one arm.

"I think if I talk to him face-to-face I'll kill him," she says into her sleeve. "I think I'll really try to. I can feel it, this tingling when he's around, like this pressure gauge inside me going up, and if it gets full . . . I don't want to know what happens if it gets full. I don't want to know what I'm capable of."

There's something battering on my s.h.i.+elds. Guilt.

You wanted to point her at him like a weapon and set her off. You didn't think about what it would do to her.

But there's so much else behind that guilt. So many awful things churning in the dark. If I turn on the light, if I let it in . . .

"I don't like myself anymore, Grace," she says in a wispy voice. "I always thought everything I did was for you. And that's a good way to like yourself, to think you're doing everything for someone else. But you don't need me to do anything to him. You're setting up this plan, going to all this trouble, because you care about me. Because you think I need it."

Don't feel it. If I feel the guilt, I'm lost.

"You're looking out for me." She lets go of her hair. "You always do . . . I want to hurt him to make myself feel better, that's all. I think that's what I wanted all along. I never thought our plan would work. I just wanted a chance, a reason to blow up at him. For my own sake. I couldn't let you be okay."

I'm going to break. If I tell her the truth, if I tell her not to go to the party and beg her to know that she's not selfish, that she's beautiful and good . . .

She thinks I'm a better person than I am. A perfect person. I can't destroy her version of me. That girl deserves to live. Joy deserves that sister. And maybe somewhere there's a version of the universe where that sister does the right thing. I wish her well. I hope she's happy.

"You're right," I say out loud. "All of this was for you. I don't need it."

She nods. Her eyes are red. I battle a wave of sickness.

"You need this," I say. "I want you to be okay, Joy. That's why we're still going to go to the party. You have to get this out of your system before it messes you up."

She wraps her arms around herself. "I'm already messed up."

"You won't be if you get this chance." I have to step carefully. Weigh everything I say. "If you talk to him . . . You need to see that he's just a pathetic person. That he doesn't matter. Then you can get on with your life."

"What if I attack him? What if I really kill him?"

"So what?" I mutter.

She stares at me.

I backtrack. "You won't. I know you. Everybody has those thoughts. It's natural. People say it: I'll kill him. But n.o.body actually does it. Not normal people, and you're a normal person, Joy."

"I don't feel normal."

"That's okay," I insist. "I know you and I know that you are. We'll go ahead with our plan. We'll confront him, get out your anger, and then we'll leave. You'll feel better. You won't hurt him."

She will.

"I think I would hate myself forever if I did." She s.h.i.+vers. "Knowing how selfish it was."

n.o.body realizes how much emotions cloud you until they're gone. Being empty makes you clear-eyed. You can see other people for what they are. Their emotions, how they're like arrows, pinging them down a little path that they aren't even aware of. If you can see someone's path, you can alter it. Cheat the maze, set up new corners, a new path, the one you want them to be on. A talent I'm discovering.

Is this something he could do? Did he set up a little path that led me to his bedroom?

No. I'm nothing like him. I'll only use this power once. So everything can go back to the way it was. I'll make it up to her.

She's wavering. Everything's still going to happen exactly how I want it to.

"No," she says suddenly, startling me. "I'm not doing this. You've done enough for me, Grace. I'm not making you do anything for me ever again."

Wait. No. "I want you to-"

"I have to do what's best for you for once. Not just what's best for me in disguise."

Everything is unraveling. There's a fresh note of resolution in her voice. Panic seeps into me. "This . . . this is important for you to do. I love you and . . ."

"I love you, too." She looks at me for a second with all of it in her eyes, and I have to stop breathing. "That's why I'm not going."

I was wrong. I don't have any control over her. Or anyone. Just like I had no control over him, or myself. I'm still helpless.

If my sister doesn't protect me from my demons, they'll ruin me. I won't be able to go back to school, I won't get into college, everything that was worthwhile about me- Will disappear.

"Grace?" she says.

I'm ice. I'll stay ice forever. Cryogenic. Frozen in time before anything can catch up with me.

But Joy's fire. Fire grows and flickers, changing all the time. Devouring other things in order to get bigger. None of this will affect her for long. She'll go on with her life and leave me behind. She's always leaving me behind.

I want her to stay frozen here with me.

"Everything you said this summer about breaking me out of my sh.e.l.l, that was selfish, too, wasn't it?" I say in my new ice voice. "You just wanted me with you so you'd feel comfortable doing the crazy stuff you wanted to do. You wanted me in the background so you'd feel safe f.u.c.king Ca.s.sius."

Her eyes open wide. The part of me that cares is locked outside.

"You never cared about protecting me." I can't stop. "I was just there as a safety net. So you got to be the brave one. That's always been the point of me, being this background that you get to stand out against."

She hasn't moved an inch. Good. Now we're both frozen.

Trying to be different is dangerous. People only change for the worse.

She opens her mouth, shuts it again. Then she backs out into the hallway. It's the first time in her life she hasn't slammed the door after a fight. She closes it so gently it's like she's shutting a dead person's eyes.

I stay in my room while, three miles away, the rest of the world celebrates the fact that Adam Gordon was born.

Then, at two a.m., while I'm lying awake, my phone blows up with Ca.s.sius Somerset's name.

I didn't know what adam was doing that night I swear. I just found out. I'm so sorry.