Please Don't Tell (14 page)

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 shivers in the dark. “I think about things, too.”

“You see, Grace? You understand me.” He slides his hands under the hem of my shirt. 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 shirt'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 Cassius. He's not giving me the chance.

“Yes. You are.” He peels my shirt 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 ‘fucking 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.”

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 nobody 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 Principal 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 pass 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 title 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.”

“Yeah, but . . .” I ball the note in my fist. “It's November's dad.”

“Doesn't she hate him?”

“I don't want her to have to watch this.”

He looks at me for a long minute. “You should tell her, Joy.”

“I can't. I don't want her to think—to know—” I bite my lip. “I can't.”

“You told
me
about it.”

“Because you always like me, no matter what I do. I need Nov to think I'm . . .”

“If you don't do it, you're in danger,” he says. “They could find you, hurt you. Or they could frame you. November would agree with me. Until we figure out who it is, we need to go along with this. If you won't tell her, we'll just find a way to keep her out of the auditorium.”

“You're really good at handling all this, Pres.”

“It's like, when you're panicking, I feel less scared. It's nice to be the one helping you for once.” He fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “You still haven't told Grace what's going on either?”

“She doesn't need another reason to worry about me.”

“You ever think maybe she worries about you anyway?”

“I don't know anything that goes on in her head anymore,” I say.

Everything at school the next day is bright. Yellow light and noise and plastic food smells. I smile and nod when November stops me by my locker after first period and asks if I'm okay. I don't trust myself to open my mouth.

I don't go straight to the supply closet at lunch. There's somebody I have to find first. But he's not in the cafeteria or any of the upstairs classrooms. When I finally track Cassius down, he's alone in the art room, tearing down his paintings in jagged strokes. Tacks fly off the wall, pinging off the paint-stained sink. The paintings drift to the floor, edges ripped. I've only ever seen him touch things
like they were made of feathers. The same way he touched me that night.

“Can we talk?” I say.

He freezes when he sees me. “Why?” His voice sounds so fragile. I can't believe I ever thought he was the blackmailer. “I mean, about what?”

Being near him used to be enough to make my heart pound. Now it makes my skin crawl. No wonder he acts so scared around me. I must make him feel the same way.

“I was hoping you could do me a favor.” I try not to imply that he owes me one. “I need you to keep Nov out of the auditorium during her dad's presentation today.”

He lets this thaw between us for a few minutes. “How come?”

I might as well tell him. He'll figure it out no matter what.

“I'm going to publicly shame Officer Roseby.” It sounds almost badass. Maybe this will make up for everything between Cassius and me. “I have a video of him. Police brutality. I'm gonna show it to everyone. He deserves it, after how he's been treating you.”

He stares at me. “Am I supposed to say thank you?” There's a little lightning in his dreamy voice. “Like you're saving me from him or something?”

“No! No, not like that.”

He looks down again. I can't understand how I saw him as a sex object. He holds himself like Grace.

“I'm sorry about this summer,” I explode. “I'm sorry I never called you afterward.”

“I didn't call you, either,” he says quickly. I hadn't even noticed.

“Right, but I was the one who climbed all over you, and kissed you first, and just generally instigated things, so it was my responsibility to call. And I probably justified it by being, like, well, the guy is supposed to call, but it was on me.”

A fraction of the tension dribbles out of him. “It's okay.”

“No, it sucked. I was using you, and that was gross.” I twist my hands together. God, this is hard. “You didn't deserve that.”

“It was a messed-up night,” he says. “I think we were both kind of using each other.”

Which hurts some past version of me that I guess I'm still carrying around, but I let it go. His eyes are on the door. We're not having the heart-to-heart I thought we'd have. What if all his avoidance is more than just awkwardness? What if he
is
scared of being near me? A possibility crashes into me.

“Cassius . . .” Real fear isn't hot or electric. It's deep, outer-space, never-ending cold. “That night . . . I didn't . . . You were okay with what was happening, right?”

His eyes widen. “That's not why it was a messed-up night. I definitely consented.”

“Okay. Okay. Just making sure.”

“Right.” His gaze softens a bit. “Don't worry about that.”

One of the paintings on the floor is of the quarry. There's a shadow splashed across the center of the page, a flare going up in the middle, a pillar of yellow.

“I'm leaving,” he says suddenly.

“Oh. Bye . . .”

“No, I mean I'm leaving this school,” he says. “Savannah and I, and Mom. We're moving back to the city with our aunt. Savannah doesn't want to come back here, and people think . . . people think some things about me now.”

“They'll get over that,” I say because I'm supposed to. It sounds weak.

He shakes his head. “Everyone here's already decided what they're going to see when they look at me. They decided it a long time ago, and they were just waiting for something they could call proof. Same for Savannah.”

“Is she doing okay?” The question cracks between my teeth.

“She says Principal Eastman told her she was modeling for a private art project, that she inspired him. She'll be happy once she's somewhere nobody knows what happened.”

I'm the reason everybody knows what happened.

“Anyway, sure, I'll keep November out of the auditorium today. She was there for me when no one else was.” He turns like he's about to leave, then adds, stiffly: “How's
your
sister doing?”

“She's fine.” My chest pops, but his face doesn't change. He doesn't know. He's just being polite.

He nods, and then he's gone, abandoning his paintings on the floor. We're never going to be friends, he and I. But that's okay. Maybe sometimes it's all right to let someone quietly out of your life.

The supply closet door is locked.

I twist the knob for a fourth time. There's no way I could swap out the DVDs after they roll the projector to the auditorium. But there's no way I'm getting through this door. Pres must not have known it'd be locked. I can't call him—he has a meeting with a teacher today that I told him not to skip. I slump against the door.

“Most people want to come out of the closet, not get into one.”

Levi's walking toward me down the hall. He always finds me at these moments.

“Sorry,” he says. “That was a terrible joke. Wow.”

“It's almost like you make bad jokes when you're nervous or something,” I say to distract him from my shaking hands.

“I was looking for you in the cafeteria. It's awful, looking for people in the cafeteria. It's like there's a timer winding down before everybody notices you have nobody to sit with.” He's close now. Too close. He reaches past me, tries the door handle. “You need to get in here? I'm good at picking locks. My mom's always forgetting her keys inside the house.”

“You'd pick a lock for me and not ask why?”

“If I ask, you might not tell me, and then you might not let me help. And I owe you for the other day.” He leans into the door with his sharp shoulder. “Plus sometimes I just want to get into a place where I'm not supposed to be.”

There's nobody else in the hall.

“If you think you can do it,” I say.

“Easy.” Levi pulls a pin from his pocket, inserts it into the keyhole. He crouches over a series of clicks, swearing under his breath.

I'm sweating. “Not easy.”

“Still easy.” He twists the pin.

“If you can't do it—”

“Let me impress you with my mad lock-picking skills, if not my jokes.” He fights with the lock for a few more minutes until the knob twists, the door springing open. He grins and holds the door wide, bowing low. “After you, sweet madam.”

“I've never been called sweet before,” I say, stupidly relieved.

Then, behind us: footsteps, laugher. His grin vanishes. I seize his shoulders and steer him into the closet, shutting the door after us just as a few girls walk by. The closet's dark, too small for both of us. Our shoulders press together. His breath in my ear reminds me of Cassius.

“Now I
am
going to ask what you're up to,” he whispers.

At that moment, I want to tell him everything. I have to physically clamp my mouth shut. The truth is so close
to the surface that it scares me. What would he say if he knew what I was getting blackmailed for?

The girls argue in the hall. If they see me here, they might tell somebody.

“I found this video . . . online,” I start quietly. “It's of Officer Roseby assaulting somebody. I want to have it play during the presentation, so everyone knows what kind of person they're letting patrol our school.”

“That's really . . .” He hesitates. It's too dark to see his face. “Brave,” he finishes finally. “Intense. I'd never . . . Wow.”

For a second, I'm warm, like I'm doing something to be proud of. But it's the blackmailer, not me. I'm not doing this for righteous reasons. I'm doing this so I don't go to jail for a murder I may or may not have committed. I'm doing this so Grace's secret stays a secret.

I worm around, find the DVD player in the light from the door slats, pop out the disk, and swap it. It barely takes fifteen seconds.