Please Don't Tell Part 32

"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," Ca.s.sius 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. Ca.s.sius'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

TWENTY.

September 30 Grace GETTING DRESSED IS HARD. MY FINGERS won't move. I maneuver into my sweats.h.i.+rt 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.s me on the way there, the headlights slicing through the darkness.

As I get closer, I hear the ba.s.s 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 n.o.body'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 Ca.s.sius'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. n.o.body 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 mas.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.s, 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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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?"

Ca.s.sius 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 rea.s.sure people that what happened to me wasn't their fault.

"Ca.s.sius, shut up. Tell me when you last saw my sister."

He blinks his uninjured eye. "I think it was . . . everyone left, right before I pa.s.sed 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," Ca.s.sius pleads in the dark. His steps are loud, cras.h.i.+ng. 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.

Ca.s.sius 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 f.u.c.k 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 bulls.h.i.+t 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 s.l.u.t 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 f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.k 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."

"f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.king freaks, you know that?"

"I'm going to kill him," Ca.s.sius whispers hoa.r.s.ely behind me.

Everyone says that.

But n.o.body 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.