Please Don't Tell (22 page)

“I don't need
that
,” she snarls. “I'm not that kind of person.”

“It's nothing to be ashamed of—”

“Not me.” She backs away. “I'm different.”

“Grace—”

But she's already sprinting up the stairs.

Levi reassures me on the porch as I examine his cut. “My forehead's fine. Head scratches bleed a lot, is all.”

He's right. It's barely bleeding anymore. It doesn't make me feel better.

“What happened?” he asks.

“I don't know,” I lie. Now that she's not in front of me, I'm shaking as hard as she was. Fights never catch up to me until they're over.

“Tell her not to feel bad, okay?” He twists the bloody towel in his hand. “I get it. It's not her fault. My mom's been there.”

“She's not crazy!” I snap before remembering he doesn't like the c-word.

But isn't that what I told her when I said she needs professional help? Now I understand why he doesn't like that word. It makes something sound so much worse than it is.

He looks at me with a little bit of pity. “We don't have
to talk about it right now.”

“I know that wasn't what you were expecting.”

“I'm sure she's a good person.” He nudges me, echoing what I said.

We sit in silence for awhile in the cold breeze, recovering. There's a pit in my stomach at the thought of going upstairs and talking to Grace.

“Look,” he says. “This isn't the best time, I get that. And I understand if you have to be with her. But everything between us has been about our siblings since the day we met. Tomorrow's my last real day here. That Halloween fair is happening. There's no school, it's a teacher conference day. Let's go together. Let's talk about something other than them.”

I'm supposed to be centering my life around her again.

But Levi is going away forever.

“If you're up to it, that is.” He flushes. “You were sick. You are sick. And I mean, if I'm feeling up to it, with my excellent new battle scar and all.”

One last moment of stolen time. Then he'll leave and I'll go back to being hers alone.

“Okay,” I say, ignoring the wave of guilt.

He smiles uncertainly beneath the blood on his face, like he's not sure it's right, either. “Meet you at the ticket booth at noon.”

When Mom and Dad get home, the house fills with normal sounds. Pots clattering, cooking noises. Grace's
door hasn't opened yet. I've been waiting for her to go downstairs first.

I cleaned up, but maybe I missed a broken shard, a spot of blood. Maybe Mom will come upstairs and ask what happened and I won't have to start this conversation.

But she doesn't.

So I get out of bed.

It's Grace's choice to tell them about Adam, but I still have to tell them she needs help. If they refuse to see it for themselves, I'll make them look.

Before I can do anything, my phone buzzes.

[email protected]

All my blood leaves my body.

What does Cassius want? He said it was over.

To Joy Morris—

There's one last thing that I need you to do.

I don't bother scrolling down. Preston was right. I shouldn't have let him get away with it.

I open Facebook, find Cassius's cell number, and call it.

He answers on the third ring.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I don't realize how furious I am until I speak.

“Who is this?”

“I was going to forget about it, Cassius. I was going to chalk it all up to some kind of temporary insanity after what went on with your sister. God knows I understand that feeling. I even felt
bad
for you. But do you seriously think you can pull this shit when you already told me I didn't kill him? What part of your brain made you think that would work?”

“Is this Joy?” His voice is tinny, terrified.

“I'm not playing this game anymore.”

“What are you talking about?” he stammers.

“Everything you said in your email—”

“What email?”

“What do you mean what email?” I bark.

“I never sent you any email. I don't even know your email address.”

Why is he lying? There's no one else it could have been.

“This is . . . about Adam?” He gets very quiet. “You mean . . . you remember what happened that night?”

There's something in his voice.

Nausea chews at my stomach. “Remember what?”

“You blacked out,” Cassius whispers. “By the time we got you back in your bed, you didn't remember any of it. You were so drunk.”

“Who is we?”

“I have to go, Joy.”

“Don't hang up—”

“I don't want anything to do with this anymore!” he cries. “I started over. This is my new life. Leave me alone.”

The line goes dead. Cassius's name vanishes from my screen, and the email pops back up. My eyes finally settle on the rest of it.

To Joy Morris—

There's one last thing that I need you to do.

Either you tell Levi that you killed his half brother, or I'll send him, and the police, this video.

Attached file: adamsbirthdayparty.mp4

GETTING DRESSED IS HARD. MY FINGERS
won't move. I maneuver into my sweatshirt with my wrists, elbows. Yank on shorts. I never washed off my makeup.

Don't be scared. Be something else. Empty isn't working.

I can't hold on to the handlebars of my bike, so I abandon it in the dew-wet grass of our lawn, dropping it softly so Mom and Dad won't hear. I don't need it. We walked the last time, too.

She wasn't supposed to go alone. I was supposed to be there, a safety net in the background.
Joy, don't do anything without me. Don't go anywhere without me. It's not safe for either of us to ever be alone.

Only two cars pass me on the way there, the headlights
slicing through the darkness.

As I get closer, I hear the bass down the deserted road, past all the trees. Fast, like the people are dancing to my heartbeat.

There's a bonfire in the yard, barely controlled, but nobody's watching it. This is the kind of party I thought we'd find that night. The kind of party where everyone is hungry, but it's okay, because everyone is overflowing with themselves. When people take, there's enough to go around. There's still soemthing left behind.

I slip inside like I did at Cassius's party, like a ghost. The furniture's shoved to the side. A rotating black box spits blobs of colored light at the walls. I wind through laughter and screams. Underneath it all, there's the quiet hungry growl of the quarry. Nobody else hears it.

There's a hundred people packed together, one body with a million limbs. The house drinks me into the walls. An elbow knocks the breath out of my chest. Light moves dizzyingly over faces mashing together in front of me. I try to disappear, but there's too many hands and everyone is so starving and there's not enough left of me to feed anyone.
Find Joy.

And there he is, detached from everyone, in the center of the mass, the hungriest of all, staggering to the beat. In the darkness his shape is feral. Flashes of red light illuminate every drop of sweat, his mindless, drunken grin.

He'll look. He'll see me. He'll take what's left. The fear
knocks all my walls down at once and I feel everything. Everything.

I run. I fight through a jungle of people, and then a jungle of trees. There's no moon, no stars. I lose myself in the dark. Branches snag me, trip me, cut me. I fall. My knees bleed more than when Joy shaved hers. I'm on my stomach in the dirt and dead leaves, just like when November and I broke into his house. I'll always be running, running in circles. I'm in a cage made of my own bones and skin.

Some part of me sits back and watches me sob.
Get over it.

I was wrong about being empty. I was always full. I just couldn't see it.

People turn off the light when they don't want to know what's in the dark. Everyone's afraid of the dark. They should be afraid of the light.

Pine needles scratch my cheek. Slowly the cold of the earth soaks into me, the truth with it. Tricking my sister into hurting my rapist was never going to help me. There was never an easy fix, a secret shortcut to being okay. I've always been screwed up, and now I'm screwing up Joy, too.

I stay, I don't know how long, until I stop making noises. Then I realize the house isn't making noises anymore, either.

I leave the woods.

The sky's a different kind of blue now. The cars that were in the driveway are gone. I was in the woods for hours.

I left Joy alone for hours.

The house is full of beer bottles, pizza boxes, spilled liquids, but no people. In the silence, my heartbeat is deafening. Did Joy go home? Did she find him first?

“Grace, is that you?”

Cassius is stumbling toward me in the dark, hitting the edge of the dining room table. One of his eyes is bloodshot and swollen. His phone sticks out of his shirt pocket. He stops far away from me and stretches out a hand, like he's reaching over some impossible distance.

“Where's Joy?” I ask, my voice too loud.

“I . . . don't know.”

“I asked you to find her.”

He sways, still drunk. His cheeks are crisp with dried tears. “Grace—I'm sorry—my head is always in the wrong place and if I'd been thinking right that night, it never would have . . .”

I'm so tired of having to reassure people that what happened to me wasn't their fault.

“Cassius, shut up. Tell me when you last saw my sister.”

He blinks his uninjured eye. “I think it was . . . everyone left, right before I passed out in the kitchen. I saw them before that—”

“Them?”

“Joy . . . and Adam.”

All my blood jumps. “What were they doing? Where did they go?”

He's staring at me with a horrible apology in his eyes.

“Tell me where they are,” I shout.

“They went into the woods . . . I think they were going down to the quarry.”

The quarry that I almost fell into. What if Joy falls this time and I'm not there to catch her?

What if Adam pushes her?

“Why didn't you stop them?” I choke.

“I'm sorry!”

I sprint out the door, into the woods again. He follows me. All the times people've walked through the woods to the quarry, and no path has ever formed. You have to fight through branches every time.

If I can get there in thirty-three steps, nothing will happen to Joy.

“Let me talk to you,” Cassius pleads in the dark. His steps are loud, crashing. It makes it impossible to count mine. “Please. I need to.”

I don't care about what he needs. I care about my sister.

“Please, Grace.”

I keep running, branches cracking under my feet. We're almost to the quarry. I can see it through the trees. And the sky, a dim bruised blue. The kind of night that has sun in it, but it's so faint you can barely tell the difference. All you know is that the light's coming. And it's going to show exactly what was in the dark.

Joy's voice slices through the trees, high and hysterical: “You
raped
my
sister
!”

My feet stick to the earth. I never gave her that word to use.

Cassius stops behind me, in shadows. I see Joy's silhouette wavering through the branches. She's barely upright. Adam is standing between her and the edge.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” There's a drunken edge to his voice.

“You know what I'm talking about!” She's blind drunk angry. Her pressure gauge is almost full.

Am I going to find out what she's capable of?

“Is this why you dragged me down here, some bullshit accusation?” Adam says.

Am I going to find out how much she loves me?

“You girls love to stir up drama,” he slurs. “Like I was telling Cas, she called me, she probably felt like a slut and decided to cry rape. Prude like her. Her type, they say no because that's what gets them off. It turns them on. I was doing her a favor. People like her are easy as fuck to read.”

I'm no longer ice. I am fire. Finally Joy and I can burn up at the same time.

“How can you . . .” But Joy is crying. She's not fine, not now. “How are you like this?”

“Chill the fuck out,” he says, disgusted. “She had a crush on me, so I was nice to her because I'm a good guy. Usually I stick to hotter girls.” He steps closer to her. “I would've gone for you—you actually have a personality. But I left you for Cas because he's such a charity case. He needs someone to take the reins, like your sister does. Those two never would have gotten anywhere. But you and I are the same. We go for what we want.”

“Fuck you.” It sounds small and sick and pointless.

“Is that what you want, why you made me come down here?” he asks, smirking. “Does this turn you on? You want me to ‘rape' you, too? You and your sister, you're both repressed fucking freaks, you know that?”

“I'm going to kill him,” Cassius whispers hoarsely behind me.

Everyone says that.

But nobody does it.

Adam will live a nice, long life not ever believing he did something wrong. He's going to play music and party and rape other girls and teach his kids to be like him. He's going to spread through the world like a sickness.

Normal people can't kill other people. But I'm not normal. I never have been.

Maybe that's my value. I could make the world safer for everyone else.

I could be worth something again.

“Stay away from me,” Joy sobs, bringing me back.

“Get over yourself. Spend your time on something that matters. Look up.” Adam waves an arm at the fading stars. The effort unbalances him. “We are so small, don't you realize? All this, this doesn't matter. It's petty, not worth it.”

I wanted November to kill him for me. Then I wanted Joy to do it. Some part of me always knew it was the only answer. The true secret shortcut to being okay.

Maybe I'm the only one with any perspective. But I'm
the only one who can do it. I'll only be okay if it's me.

He's so close to the edge of the quarry. Unsteady. So close. One push. One easy fix left.

If I jump out of the trees, right now, and do it—

It'll be like he never raped me.

“We'll go to the police unless . . . you leave,” I hear Joy mumble.

“Yeah. Sure. Sayonara.” He laughs, like I knew he would.

“You.” She shivers, totally weaponless, grasping. “You . . . I'll . . .”

She doesn't love me enough to do it. That's fine. If she did, I realize now, my last hope would be lost. I'd be in the cage forever.

I'm the one who needs to do it.

“I'll . . . I'll . . .” he mimics. “Believe whatever you want to make you feel like you had an interesting day. You and your sister, you're both crazy bitches. Clearly getting laid did not help like I thought it would.”

My fury expands and then contracts, slamming together into a hard ball of cold iron. It fits inside me. It fits right in my chest. I forget about Cassius, about my sister, about everything. This is the moment. Before and after.

I was always capable of this.

But before I can do anything, there's a movement by the quarry. Joy lurches forward. She slaps at him uselessly. She shoves him a little. I freeze, but she's not trying. She's just drunk.

He stumbles back, his foot scraping the edge, but he's laughing. Neither of them seem aware that they're on the edge of oblivion.

I'm quivering, stuck. I can't push him when she's so close. She could fall.

“What are you trying to accomplish?” he snorts. “You know you're the only reason I hooked up with your sister, right? You practically threw her at me. Mainly I fucked her because you seemed to want me to do it so bad.”

No. Don't say that to her. Don't say that.

Joy makes a strangled noise and shoves him again. It's a frail motion. It barely affects him. He's still smirking. All it does is make him take a tiny step back.

Except there isn't anything left to step back onto.

I can just barely see his face, in the bit of light bleeding into the sky. His expression contorts with a stupid bewilderment. His arms swing forward, groping for my sister, but she jolts back. She doesn't grab him like she grabbed me.

And then he drops out of sight.

The sounds of the crack and Cassius screaming thinly mixes with the rattle of the trees in the sudden wind, canceling each other out until my ears ring with silence.

The quiet, hungry growl of the quarry vanishes from the back of my head.

I leave the trees, walk up to the edge, and look down.

He's motionless, spread-eagled on the flat rock. His face is turned sideways, in shadow. A black stain pools
beneath his head. It spreads slowly, the darkness eating up the stone.

“Jesus, oh Jesus . . .” Cassius is stammering from the edge of the woods.

The stain keeps moving.

But Adam doesn't.

“Grace?” I hear Joy mumble. I turn just as she sits down hard in the dust. Her eyes are unfocused, her mouth hangs open. The sharp smell of alcohol slaps me.

Something horrible settles inside me, along with a strange calm.

I look back into the quarry, but he's not there anymore, even if his body is. He's gone somewhere else. He's the new weight inside me.

She stole my only chance.

“Please don't tell, Grace.” Tears leak down her face.

Because of her, I'll be like this forever.

“Grace . . .” She's barely conscious.

You practically threw her at me.

I wasn't afraid when I was running through the woods, I wasn't afraid when I saw them at the edge—but I'm afraid now.

What if I hate her forever?

“The police.” Cassius finally looked over the edge. He's gasping. “We have to call . . .” He fumbles with his phone, drops it. I pick it up.

“It was an accident,” I say robotically.

“What?”

“He was drunk and he fell in. Everyone's always saying how somebody was going to fall in.”

“You . . .”

“She didn't mean for him to fall. You saw it. She wasn't thinking.” I don't know why I'm protecting her. Because of her . . . “If you don't tell anyone, I'll forgive you for that night.”

His mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

“It's not that hard, not saying something.”
Come on, Cassius.

“I'm . . .”

“For me,” I say.

“I . . .” He won't look at Joy. “I . . . okay.”

“Do you promise?”

He's sobbing. “Y—yes.”

I move to give him back his phone. Then I notice a tiny green light above the screen, next to the camera.

“Is that recording?” I hear myself say.

“Adam wanted me . . . to film his birthday party.” He digs his fingers unfeelingly into the front of his own shirt.