Please Don't Tell Part 25

SEVENTEEN.

October 24 Joy "GRACE'S RIGHT. SHE HAS TO BE." PRESTON stares unseeingly at his bedroom walls. "November knew about Grace, she was at the party, she knew you didn't remember anything . . . it all fits."

I'm flat on my back on his bed, gazing up at the faded glow-in-the-dark star stickers on his ceiling.

"When I woke up this morning, there was this second between me opening my eyes and me remembering everything, and I felt fine," I say. "Normal. As if none of this ever happened."

"You slept last night? That's good!"

I shrug.

"What are you going to do?" he asks quietly.

I curl up, pressing my knees into my eyelids so hard that my head throbs. It's nothing compared to the pain November must've felt, every single time we pa.s.sed Adam in the halls and all she did was sneer.

"Are you going to confront her?" Preston asks.

I flatten out again, the pulse behind my eyelids fading. "Why didn't she tell me? I would have hated him right with her. I would've-dome something . . ."

"If she'd told, nothing would have happened to Grace."

I jolt upright.

"No. Don't blame her for that. That was my fault. n.o.body else's.

"The thing about guilt is that it stops you from fixing anything. It makes you avoid the person you hurt because you can't face them, and then you hate yourself because you need to face them."

I know you love her, Grace whispered to me last night before I left her room. But you have to stop believing the best of everybody.

"We don't know that it's her yet, for sure," I manage. "And even if it is, I don't care. She's my best friend, other than you. If she's mad at me, I want her to be able to tell me. If I did something wrong, I wanna fix it. I'll talk to her after school tomorrow."

"Joy-if she's been blackmailing you-"

He's looking at me in a way I don't like at all, like I'm about to break. "What if she's dangerous? What if she is the one who killed Adam?"

"She's not dangerous to us. He deserved it."

"That's an intense thing to say," he says slowly.

Preston will never understand in the same way we do.

"He f.u.c.ked up everything. I'm never going to be sad that he's gone."

I yank his sheets over my face until I stop crying.

"I don't know how to stop bad things from happening to people I love," I grit out to the rough fabric.

He grunts deep in his throat, and lies down beside me, gathering me into his arms. All my muscles ball up but I let it happen.

"I don't want bad things to happen to you either," he says, his heartbeat drumming into my back.

"Nothing bad's happened to me. It's Grace and November."

"I don't know if you've noticed," he says, stiffly. "But you've been through h.e.l.l, too."

"It's not about me."

"You're allowed to be affected by this."

He's wrong but I don't say it. "I would be so f.u.c.ked without you."

"I would be ten times more f.u.c.ked without you."

He presses his forehead into my hair, and we stay like that in silence for a few minutes. Then my phone buzzes, hard and loud. I draw back, slip it from my pocket.

A long text from Levi.

so i've been shanghaied into gathering signatures downtown for the quarry fence pet.i.tion. apparently i'm usefully pitiful as adam's half bro or something. but i'm sure i'd get way more signatures if there was a cute girl next to me. G.o.d that was stupid. anyway wanna meet me at the end of barlett street in an hour?

"Who's that?" Preston's sitting up.

"It's nothing." I try to hide my phone under the sheet, but he steals it from me. He reads the text and his eyes widen. "Does Grace know you're hanging out with Adam's half brother?"

"He's leaving for Indiana eventually anyway. She doesn't need to know." My stomach twists with guilt. "He helps me not think. He drowns stuff out."

Preston is silent for a minute.

"He's not part of it," I try to explain. "When I'm with him, I can pretend it's not happening."

"Joy, tomorrow you have to ask one of your best friends if she's been blackmailing you."

I dig my fingernails into my wrist. It's not working as much it used to.

"So maybe you deserve to do something that takes your mind off it for now." He meets my eyes. "It's not wrong of you to feel okay for five minutes."

It's almost the same thing November said. That must mean some part of her still cares about me.

"Preston?" I say.

"Yeah?"

I don't know the right words. There's something so special and strange about being loved by somebody who isn't related to you, someone who has no obligation.

But the right words don't exist, so I just rest my forehead against his.

And then I leave, because everybody has something they use to cope.

The clouds are back by the time I meet Levi on Bartlett Street. They're darker than they were the day we went to the movies, more threatening. This time it's really going to rain.

"I already have fourteen signatures," he says excitedly when I walk up to him.

"Couldn't your dad have the quarry fenced off?" I say it in my most normal voice.

"The quarry's not actually on his property. It belongs to the town," he says. "He's the one who asked me to get signatures. And he was sober when he asked."

We walk together down the sidewalk. I breathe in his presence, use it to block out my thoughts.

"It feels like something I can do for Adam," he admits.

I wait by mailboxes while he rings doorbells. Some people aren't home, and some people pretend not to be. But some nod while Levi talks, and then they sign his sheet of paper.

We turn down another street. "It's gonna rain," I say, to try to get my mind off November.

"That's what the weatherman wants you to think. But I'm an optimist."

"The sky's crazy dark."

"Very," he corrects. "The sky's very dark. Or super dark. Or extremely dark."

I'm still thinking about November. "What?"

"I just don't like that word," he says tensely.

I blink. I guess it's not impossible to annoy him.

"Sorry." He s.h.i.+fts his clipboard to his other arm. "I still haven't told you why I haven't gone back to Indiana yet, have I?"

"You don't have to," I blurt.

"I want you to know things about me." His voice thins. He sucks in a sharp, fast breath and spits out, "It's just not super easy to tell someone your mom's in a mental hospital."

A mental hospital. Like November.

"The s.h.i.+tty thing about schizophrenia," he continues, even faster, "is that it's manageable with medication, but the illness itself convinces you you don't need it. So I should have made sure she was taking it."

I locate my voice. "You're not responsible for that."

"Yeah." But I can tell he doesn't believe me. "She's doing really well, though. I call her every Friday."

"That's great!" I sound so fake. I crush a dead leaf beneath my foot.

We've walked by two houses without knocking on any doors. He's clutching his clipboard tight against his chest like a s.h.i.+eld.

"It's just that if you tell someone that the police found your mom naked under an overpa.s.s because she thought somebody was poisoning her laundry detergent, that'll always be the only thing they think of when it comes to her."

"My friend went to a mental hospital for a while. But she never told me. I found out through someone else. Maybe she thought I'd look down on her."

He nods rigidly.

"But I would never do that." I stop at the end of the sidewalk. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. And if my friend has some sort of mental problem, that doesn't change the fact that I know she's a good person. I'm sure your mom is a good person, too."

Just then the sky splits open. Rain drenches us instantly, soaking the pavement. Levi yelps and drags me forward. We take refuge under somebody's gazebo, the rain pounding over the edge of the wooden roof. Levi pants, wipes his forehead, looks at me.

"Everything good that's happened since I've come here has been because of you, you know that?"

A s.h.i.+ver runs through me that has nothing to do with the rain.

"When I got here, I was p.i.s.sed. p.i.s.sed at Adam for dying, p.i.s.sed at my mom. Do you know what it's like to be p.i.s.sed at people you love for things they can't help?"

Am I p.i.s.sed at November?

If she did it, there had to be a reason. Something I did to deserve it.

Maybe she blames me for what happened to Grace, too.

"But with you, I get to feel like-this charming guy, this funny guy . . ." He stares at the blurry silhouettes of the rain-drenched houses across the street. "I like who I am in the context of you."

That's not something you say to a convenience friend. There's way too much warmth in his eyes.

He moves closer. "Sorry I'm so awkward. I bet I'd top the list of awkward people you know."

Numbly I say, "No. Preston's at the top."

"Second place isn't so bad." His face gets nearer by degrees. I can see the curve of his lips and his cheekbones and his dark eyes.

He looks nothing like his half brother. Whose murder I'm being blackmailed for.

I've been lying to him about every single thing from day one. Using him as a replacement for booze and not sleeping or eating. I told myself he wasn't a part of this, but he is.

What am I doing?

I yank back, my legs b.u.mping into the wet side of the gazebo. Rain soaks the back of my head. "I can't do this."

Shame sprouts all over his face. "Oh G.o.d, I'm sorry. I just came at you out of nowhere."

Guilt strangles me. I've been using him.

"I didn't think you were serious . . . about all the flirting."

I'll never be able to tell Levi what his half brother did to my sister.