Please Don't Tell Part 9

Yes.

That.

"You're not hard to talk to, though. Usually I have a harder time with strangers," he explains. "And don't worry, I understand sisters being a pain. Mine's a freshman next year, and she picked the worst kids in middle school to hang out with, and I don't want her coming to high school and getting in trouble and making everyone think I'm like that."

"Joy's a mess, and that doesn't make anyone look down on me."

"No, I mean . . . at a school like this, it's like a black kid represents every black kid. If Savannah does something bad, I might as well have done it." He shrugs. "I just think she needs consequences."

"Joy gets away with things, too."

"Adam also does stupid stuff. But he does it to cope."

"Cope?" Something in my chest yanks. "Cope with what?"

"His dad wants Adam to be a famous musician like his grandfather."

"Pressure sucks," I burst out. "It's like you can't screw up. Because all that matters is that you do the one thing you're supposed to be good at. Even if you're scared, or miserable, or hate the way you look . . ."

"Do you hate the way you look?"

"No," I say too quickly.

"I do. I hate the way I look. This skin thing. I hate it."

"But it's beautiful," I say without weighing it first. "You're like a work of art."

He lifts his chin from his knees and looks at me for a long time. "A work of art?"

"It's like people don't only look good when they look like a magazine." I'm drunker than I thought. "People can be aesthetically beautiful in the way sunsets and leaves and things are."

"n.o.body has ever said anything like that to me in my entire life," he says.

Could I have this effect on Adam, if I told him he's beautiful?

"You are really not like your sister," he adds quietly.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I'm glad."

n.o.body's ever said anything like that to me, either.

Do people tell Joy to be like me as often as they tell me to be like her?

"Sometimes I think we were meant to be a whole person, and we would have been okay that way, but we got split up and now we'll never be . . . right. Technically, I mean medically, I guess we were supposed to be one person."

"Can I paint you?" he asks suddenly.

"Are you joking? Why would you want to paint me?"

"I like painting interesting people."

"You should paint Joy."

"I want to paint you."

He gives me a special look, like he's already painting in his mind.

If I spend more time alone with him, maybe I can get him to be interested in Joy. And maybe I can ask him more about Adam.

"Okay," I say. "You can paint me."

SIX.

October 5 Joy THE COPS DRAG PRINc.i.p.aL EASTMAN OUT of school by 10:00 a.m.

Or he escapes through the fire door, or he breaks a window in his office. Depends who you listen to. But everyone agrees that Savannah ran out five minutes into advisory. They didn't even have time to call her to the office.

I did this to her. A freshman girl, and I ruined her life.

I'm the person who hurts people, the girl who destroys other girls. The failed knight. If n.o.body'll exile me, I'll exile myself. I hide from Levi for the rest of the day. I don't look for Preston. I spend detention writing apology letters I won't send and shredding them into thin piles of paper. After school, I make the ten-minute bike ride to Preston's house.

The Bell house is a healthy kind of messy, the furniture and nineties wallpaper in different floral shades. Preston's first step, first birthday, first ice-cream cone, it's all doc.u.mented on the walls. He says he hates constantly looking at his past.

There's a zillion notes on his bedroom door: Do not enter. Do not touch my things. Do not clean.

"Pres, I'm coming in."

"Don't," he replies, m.u.f.fled.

"I'm not mad at you for putting the photos in everyone's lockers. But we need to talk."

A long silence.

"Someone told me that Savannah girl is taking the rest of the semester off," he says.

"It's not your fault," I say desperately. "You just didn't want anything to happen to me."

He opens the door, slouching more than usual. His curls corkscrew like he just whipped a blanket off his head. His shades are shut as always, the dim light deepening the circles under his eyes.

"Last night, all of it felt like something from Sherlock Holmes. It didn't feel real. But now I'm panicking. And I think I wrecked someone's life because I was scared about someone wrecking yours."

Which one of us is gonna be the strong one?

"I'm the one who got the envelope. I'm the one who showed it to you." I try to smile.

He hugs me. Pres hates hugs. It's stiff, uncomfortable, and it's the best hug I've ever had.

"It's Adam and this blackmailer person," he says. "Not you."

It'd be so much easier if that were true.

"Have you heard anything else from the blackmailer?" he asks.

"No. I watched the window all night."

"You can't sleep there."

"I'm gonna stay awake in case he comes back."

"You can't stay awake forever."

"What if he comes through my window, goes to Grace's room?" The knife under my pillow won't be enough. "I stay awake or I tell the cops."

"No cops." He's agonized. "Please."

"Maybe now that Eastman's arrested, it's done with."

"We have to talk to Ca.s.sius. Tonight or tomorrow."

"I can't believe Ca.s.sius would do that to his sister. And if I ask him about it, and it wasn't him, what if he realizes the photos were because of me?"

Outside, a car gravels into the driveway. Pres shrinks back into his room. "I can't talk to Mom when I'm-she can always tell."

"I'll distract her."

"Text me if you get another envelope."

"I bet I won't," I say for him. "I bet it's over."

I hope it is. But I'm getting a sharper knife and setting my alarm for every ten minutes tonight.

I shut his door and head downstairs, tripping over Ms. Bell's shoes and scarves, scattered like she sheds accessories on her way to her room every night.

"h.e.l.lo, Joy. Visiting Pres?" Ms. Bell is wearing a simple blouse and a high-waisted skirt. No bright lipstick, no ten-cent craft store flowers in her ponytail. "Long day. Staff meetings about . . . those photos."

She beckons me to the kitchen, which is cluttered with spices and mismatched plates, and fills a bright purple mug with water. She sticks it in the microwave, finds a box of hibiscus tea. I bite my tongue. There's no way to wish someone else was your mom without feeling guilty.

"How's Pres? He good?" she asks.

"Fine," I say all quick. "Doing homework."

"Every single student comes to me with their feelings except my son." She takes out a sleeve of Thin Mints, shakes out three, rolls the rest to me. "I doubt there's anyone who's not feelin' a bit shaken right now. Adam's death, now this. Whoever it was ought to have just reported those photographs to the police."

I crumble the edge of a cookie in my fingers. "Maybe they wanted to humiliate Eastman."

"That's exactly what that man deserves, but not the girl. I have a meeting with her family tomorrow. Don't imagine she'll be comin' back to school right away."

There was a movie Grace and me watched once, about a man who accidentally killed anybody who got near him thanks to a lab experiment. He spent the whole movie running around oblivious, everyone within a mile falling over dead. If he'd just stayed still, they would have been fine.

"Good men are hard to find." She dunks a tea bag in her mug, splashes the counter. "Sometimes I think about findin' a father figure for Pres, and sometimes I think, screw it. The last one he had was no great shakes. I ask you, what does it tell a small boy when his own father doesn't want him?"

Everyone in school trusts Ms. Bell because she talks to us like we're people, not kids. She sucks in a deep breath and pushes it out again. "Sorry. Something like today makes you so mad, you start getting mad about everything else in the world there is to be mad about. How are you doing, Joy?"

I want to bury my face in her shoulder. But all I say is "I'm okay."

She nods sadly. "Were you at Adam Gordon's birthday party?"

It doesn't feel safe to say yes or no, but she keeps talking so I don't have to answer.

"You know, I'm holding a group counseling meeting next week, for everybody who went. You're welcome to join."

Preston said the blackmailer was probably at the party. If I locked eyes with him at this meeting, would he stutter, slip up?

"Do you remember the first time you came over here? Pres made me hide all the pictures of him." Ms. Bell listens so much that when it's her turn to talk, she never stops. "You picked him up a Diet Pepsi, and the can sat on his dresser for weeks. When I tossed it, he moped all day. He'd saved it because you gave it to him."

I've dragged Pres into this mess with me.

"A forty-year-old woman can't smack a bully when he's a teenager, can she? And she shouldn't want to. And I officially do not condone violence, but thanks for sticking up for Pres the other day. You're a good girl."

I push my knee into the table leg until it throbs.

My phone buzzes and I pull it out of my back pocket. It's Mom.

When R U coming home? Could use U to help with Grace.

My blood freezes. What does that mean? I bolt up. "I have to go."

"If you need a ride-"

But I'm already out the door, not thinking, biking home, twice as fast as I did to Preston's. They've never needed help with her. Grace never needs help. Did the blackmailer break in through my window, did he hurt her- When I get home, aching, sweating, Mom's on the porch, her head in her hands. She attempted to hide that she was crying with makeup, but it didn't work.

"What's wrong with Grace? Where's Dad?" I pant.

"Your father's at work." She fixes a smile on her face. "I tried to talk to her about maybe going back to school. I'm not used to fighting with her."

Only with me.

"You girls talk about everything." She holds open the door for me, an apology in her eyes.