Please Don't Tell Part 26

"I wasn't. Mostly. Kind of." He groans. "Can I fix this?"

"We're temporary, right? Convenience friends," I stammer. "You're supposed to go back to Indiana and then we never talk again."

"You weren't ever going to talk to me again?" He looks so sad.

I should have stayed away from him.

"You weren't supposed to be part of my real life," I try to explain. "Like a-a distraction."

"A distraction?" He steps back. Water from his hair runs into his eyes.

I'm making it worse. "I have to go."

"Don't. You'll get soaked."

He reaches out, but I'm already slipping away into the rain.

People shouldn't have to go to school when every particle of them is made of anxiety, when they haven't slept and the halls are a minefield of people they can't face. But if I said that to my parents, they'd tell me to stop being dramatic.

I'm just not going to think about him ever again. Easy.

Back to the avoiding game. The next day, I avoid Levi by skipping American History. I avoid November by eating lunch in the bathroom. Time pa.s.ses fast when you're running from everyone.

But time stops to a dead halt after the final bell. When I'm gearing up to go find November and tell her everything, I open my locker and a note falls out to the floor.

Joy Morris- Four years ago, Adam Gordon s.e.xually a.s.saulted November Roseby. I want you to tell the whole school.

Some may not believe you, but enough will. Don't you think everyone deserves to know what he was capable of?

I grip the note until the edges tear. Then I let out a choked laugh, so loud that Mr. Fennis sticks his head into the hallway and shushes me. I ignore him, balling the note in my fist.

Grace was wrong. November isn't the blackmailer.

My laugh turns to a shuddering exhale. I lean hard against my locker.

The blackmailer isn't somebody I love. I don't have to believe that somebody I love could do this to me.

I don't care if this goes on forever. I deserve that. But November's not mad at me and that's all that matters.

I find her alone in the empty computer lab, earbuds slung around her neck, editing the layout of next week's newspaper. It takes her a second to notice me. She turns, but I'm talking even before I reach her.

"I've been a s.h.i.+tty friend, Nov," I blurt. "And it's probably s.h.i.+tty of me to do this now. But Grace told me everything. I'm sorry. I know you didn't want me to know."

She sits in total silence for a long time, shock unfolding on her face.

"If you ever need . . . to talk, or anything . . ." I cringe. "November?"

She unwinds the earbuds from her neck, places them on the keyboard.

"I should have told you," she says definitively.

"It's okay."

"No one's ever looked up to me before like you. I didn't want to ruin it." She smiles, but it wavers.

My throat closes. "I met Adam my freshman year. I was so used to my dad acting like I was this idiot, and then Adam told me I was smart. It was stupid."

I will never, ever be sad he's dead.

"I thought people would think I was lying. So I didn't say anything. But feelings have to go somewhere, you know? They follow the path of least resistance. Some people turn it on others, I turned it on myself."

She sets her jaw, exhales, and pushes back her sleeve. Scars, underneath the rubber bands. Thin neat lines of them.

"Don't look at me like that. It's fine now," she says quickly. "Every time I get the urge to self-harm, I put a rubber band on my wrist. I just wanted to see some physical evidence that something was wrong. n.o.body could see something was wrong."

Crying would definitely be one of the top ten useless things to do right now.

"My dad noticed eventually. You would have thought I'd done it just to p.i.s.s him off, the way he reacted." Her voice darkens. "He called it a suicide attempt, had me sent to this mental health place. He was doing it as a punishment, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me."

"I'm sorry," I whisper.

"After what happened to Grace, I didn't . . ." She shuts her eyes. "I didn't want you to think it was my fault."

"It wasn't," I say urgently. "I wouldn't have."

"If I'd told you, she never would've gotten close to him."

"It wasn't your fault." I keep my voice steady. "It was mine."

Her eyes change. "Joy-"

"I thought if I could get Adam to go out with her, she'd love me like she used to," I croak. "I didn't know why we were growing apart. So it was my way of bringing us together. Of helping her."

I'm chained to this truth, and I'm responsible for every single thing it destroys.

"No." She grabs my wrist. "It wasn't your fault."

I pull back. "It wasn't your fault."

"It," she says, and stops. "It'd be pretty hypocritical to argue with you, wouldn't it?"

I don't trust myself to say anything.

"I think that it was Adam's fault," she says. "And maybe if we keep reminding each other of that, eventually it'll work its way down to a place we can believe it."

I wipe my nose. "I still look up to you, Nov."

"I don't think I want you to anymore," she says after a minute. "I think I'd rather just be your friend."

I reach into my pocket for the blackmailer's newest note, to show her. I'll never do it, not this time. I don't care what happens to me. But Nov deserves to know what's been going on.

I'm about to hand it to her when I see it-the headline of her editorial.

"Why I Didn't Tell When Adam Gordon Raped Me"

I lurch back.

"You know what I've learned?" She sounds so calm. "Secrets fester inside people. Things that stay in the dark rot. You can't fix anything until you know what it looks like. And I'm not going to keep quiet anymore to keep life simple for other people."

"You're going to publish this?"

"Eastman was the one who always proofread the paper before it went to print. I can print whatever I want."

I guess the blackmailer is going to get what he wants anyway.

I swallow. "Aren't you scared people will be . . . ?"

"I've been planning on doing something like this ever since what happened to Grace." She stares at the computer screen. "That's why I went to his birthday party. I was going to confront him in front of all his friends. But I barely got through the front door before I ran."

"You don't have to. He's gone." I keep saying that, and every time it feels like a lie. "He's not going to do anything to anyone ever again."

"Maybe he already did. Maybe there's another girl here who thinks she's alone in this," she says. "If so, I want to talk to her."

How could I tell her about the blackmail now, when she's in the middle of doing something so brave?

Maybe there's a difference between keeping a secret for your own sake, and keeping a secret for someone else's. I'll tell her someday. When everything is calmer. In the meantime, I have Preston to help me through it.

And my sister.

"You don't have to do this," I repeat, just in case. "To get back at him, I mean. Revenge won't help."

Even Adam dying didn't help Grace.

"He's not important enough to me for that," she says. "Yeah, I was angry. It's impossible not to imagine doing really sick things when you're angry, things that make you question who you are."

I know about those things.

"Maybe if I did want revenge, it wouldn't look so different from what I'm doing now. But reasons are important. And I'm not doing this because I want to ruin his reputation or whatever. I'm doing it because I feel like telling the f.u.c.king truth for once. Even if it hurts some people to hear it."

Like Levi. A jolt runs through me. He'll finally hear the truth about Adam. But will he believe it?

"It's hard to find out somebody you loved isn't who you thought." She smiles at me sadly. "But it's better than believing a lie forever."

"I should be happy," I murmur. "I wanted Levi to know."

"He'll be fine. He's got you to sit next to in movie theaters now."

I shake my head slowly. "I f.u.c.ked up with him. Really badly."

"Girl," she says. "Repair s.h.i.+t. Don't abandon s.h.i.+p."

She turns back to the computer, saves the file to her desktop, and sends it to the printer.

Maybe it's impossible to be honest without somebody getting hurt. But I think I'm getting better at figuring out when it's not worth it, and when it is.

EIGHTEEN.

August 24 Grace "MAYBE HE'LL JUST LEAVE," JOY WHISPERS. "Transfer schools or something, I don't know."

She opens my window to let the stale air out. The breeze blows my curtains so far into the room they almost brush my forehead. Now all she talks about are the ways Adam could disappear.

"Maybe he'll move across the country and we'll never see him at school again," she says.

I haven't told her yet that I'm not coming back to school. I haven't told her about breaking into Adam's house, either. If I'm silent, she'll fill the empty s.p.a.ce with words. She's afraid of my silence.

"He'll graduate early," she says to the window. "He'll do one of those year-abroad programs."

I pull the blanket up to my neck and go still until she thinks I'm asleep.

Then, hours later, when she's asleep in her own room, I leave. Walking at night means the dreams can't find me. That he can't find me. Joy's always so proud of herself for climbing out her window, but it's just as easy to use the front door.

It rained earlier, and my heels catch in puddles on the side of the road. This late, I can walk as far as I want and n.o.body will see me.

I wonder if November has the dreams. She hasn't talked to me since our night at his house. Which is fine. I don't have anything else to say to her.

One foot in front of the other. Mindless movement, for the rest of my life. That's all I want. Like a zombie.

Music thumps halfway down the street. It's coming from Ca.s.sius's house, where he once painted a girl who looked like me. I step closer. I'm a shadow watching normal people, all their details brightly lit up, making them garish, frightening. They spill onto the lawn and lounge against the porch.

I dart through his front door. I want to see the finished painting.

I half slip in a spilled drink as I wander through the throngs. His parents aren't home. I don't see Ca.s.sius anywhere. Somebody says something to me, but I trickle away like water. I recognize a few people, soph.o.m.ores, juniors, but they're as distant in memory as characters from cartoons Joy and I watched when we were ten.

Did Ca.s.sius invite his musician best friend to this end-of-summer party?

Someone b.u.mps into me, and I stumble into the bas.e.m.e.nt door. It's closed. He probably didn't want all these drunk people messing with his precious art.

I open the door and slip into the dark.

n.o.body notices anything I do, these days.