Please Don't Tell Part 14

"Can we just," he says, "just for a minute, I mean, not yet. Tell me things about you first."

Our pizza congeals in front of us. "About me?"

"You read my weird stupid secret ancient letters to my half brother who I barely knew, which means you know way too much about me, and I don't know anything about you. You have strong arms and were upset in a bathroom once. That's it."

"There's nothing to know." I'm currently being blackmailed by someone who wants to frame me for his half brother's death, I f.u.c.ked up with my sister, I hurt everyone I love.

"You look like there's stuff to know."

"My name's Joy. . . ." I shrug. "My sister's name's Grace, she's smart as f.u.c.k, she's out this semester for an independent project-"

"I want to know about you, not your sister. It's cute that you immediately start talking about her, though. You guys must be close."

I'm not going to cry.

Things to tell him? I haven't cleaned my room in two months. My dad thinks his alcohol sampler got lost in the mail.

Sometimes you don't understand how broken you are until you put all the pieces together, cutting your fingers on them, realizing that enough shards have disappeared so that you'll never fit together like you used to.

"I'm a mess," I say lightly.

"What kind of mess?" There's a yearning in him like there was when he asked about Adam-not the same, but similar.

I drain my grape soda and crush the can.

"It's scary, the idea of a stranger knowing stuff about you," he supplies.

"That's probably how you feel about me reading your blog." I wince. "Sorry."

"Most people would pretend they never read it."

I can tell he's wishing that's what I'd done, and asking why I didn't.

He points at our plates. "Maybe you're not eating because you're just as nervous as me-I don't know why you would be, you're way cooler than me-but I've heard your stomach growl like three times, and food generally helps with that."

What does he mean, cooler than him? I pick up my slice. It's like chewing glue.

"Are you doing okay?" he finally asks. "After your panic attack?"

The hardest thing is kindness when you know you don't deserve it. I want to deserve it. I want it so bad.

"You're trying to find out stuff about Adam, right?"

"I gotta say, I'm scared to ask." He wipes his hands on his lap. "Coming from a girl who hated him. But I'll take anything at this point. The trouble with asking people who liked him is that I don't want to make them sad."

He's so hopeful.

I can't kill Levi's Adam.

"I wanted to give you this back." I unzip my backpack, pull out his sweatshirt and baseball cap. I'm not prepared for how much his face lights up.

"That's where it went! I thought I lost it! The baseball cap, I mean, not the sweatshirt, I don't care about that. I forgot I left it in the pocket." He takes it, runs his thumb over the brim like how I touch Grace's old stuffed animals. "Adam gave it to me last time I came here. I think he was weirded out by me. One time I went with him to his friend's birthday party and he wouldn't tell anyone we were related. My mom and Mr. Gordon never married, it was the first time I stayed with them."

He looks down at the baseball cap again. "But this one time, Mr. Gordon-uh, my dad-was drunk, yelling at nothing, scaring the c.r.a.p out of me. Adam took me down to the quarry until I stopped crying. It's cool, an older sibling, like someone's a.s.signed to you. It's nice. How old's your sister?"

"We're twins," I whisper.

"Oh, cool." He shifts. "Well, I think I hit my daily quota of embarra.s.sing stuff to say to cute girls I barely know. I left out wetting the bed at summer camp and everyone calling me Pee-vi. We'll save that for our next date. Oops. I just told you. Spoilers."

He's weird and nice and quick and he's trying to put me at ease. He should be talking to somebody else.

"I should probably ask why you hated him," he says. "But I'm not sure if I want to know."

"We just . . . didn't get along," I rasp.

"That's not so bad, then. Although I don't get it. You're pretty cool."

He looks shyly down at the table.

"Can I have your number?" he adds. "The homework for American History, I'll text the answers to you. That way you won't have to copy before cla.s.s."

Right. That's all it is. I write my number on a napkin, slide it to him. He puts it in his bag along with his baseball cap.

"By the way." He fiddles with the backpack zipper. "I don't think you're a mess. You do good things for other people."

"Don't think that about me." I let it slip out.

"Why not?"

"It's not true." My face burns.

"When I think good things about other people, I try to say them out loud. People never know how liked they are, you know?"

"You don't worry about sounding weird?"

"I operate under the a.s.sumption that I always sound weird. It's the only way I ever have the courage to say anything."

"What if it's something you can't f.u.c.k up, though?" I insist. "Something you have to say right."

"I don't think there's a right way to say anything. If you know that, it takes the pressure off."

He's wrong. I just haven't found the right words for Grace. I'm not smart enough.

"Man," he says.

"What?"

"Talking with you is like . . . confusing. I always feel like you're asking me about something specific but you're not telling me what."

"Always," I repeat. "We haven't talked all that much."

"True. This is a personal failing of mine."

"There are lots of people at Stanwick for you to talk to."

"There are," he says. "None of them are you."

I'm sitting here doing this despite the blackmail. But he's a force field that pushes all those things into the background. Right now, they seem unreal.

"Sorry. That was such a bad line. I do the ironic flirt thing. It's annoying," he says. I realize how many times he's told me he's annoying. "It's just that I don't have anybody here. It's hard to make friends when everyone's sad. You're the closest one I've got and I'm trying to impress you by saying funny things and then weird semi-advice things and also creepy compliments and none of them are working very well."

He talks so much. "You want to be my friend?"

"It's very first grade. Will you be my friend, let's do finger paints, et cetera."

"Just don't hit on me. That's never ever going to work." I swallow. "Not with you or anybody else. Not for me."

"You are mysterious as h.e.l.l," he says. "And that's not the only reason to talk to a girl."

"I can be your stand-in friend," I mumble. "Convenience friend. Until you meet someone better."

"I hate that thing you just said," he says softly.

I used to be so easy. Everything I said was easy. "Apparently I will also be your issues friend."

"Everyone's got issues."

"Not my issues." It's an obnoxious thing to say. But normal people have normal issues. Normal people worry about sounding weird or that they're annoying. If I start to think for real about my issues, I can't breathe and then I have to stay up another night until my head's too foggy to think, or drink until the world blurs.

"It's okay, you know?" he says. "It's okay."

But I'm not distracted anymore. The blackmailer feels real again. I have to check the baby monitor and see if there are any new notes and . . . Breathe. "I have to go."

"Gotcha. I'll just sit here and wince thinking about all the annoying s.h.i.t I just said."

"You're not annoying," I tell him, and leave before he can smile at me again.

TEN.

July 20 Grace I NEVER REALIZED Ca.s.sIUS LIVED SO CLOSE. It only takes me a few minutes to walk to his house. It's an una.s.suming blue one, tucked behind the hedge that the old neighbors used to trim early on Monday mornings, waking up the whole neighborhood. The new mailbox is brilliantly painted. Clouds and winding vines and birds of every hue. I never noticed before.

Joy doesn't know I'm here. Today I'm taking a path she didn't forge for me.

I'm on the porch, about to knock, when Ca.s.sius opens the front door.

"You were watching from the window?" I ask.

"Nah." There's a dab of paint in the middle of a moon-shaped patch of lighter skin on his forehead. "I just felt you here."

He leads me inside. It's clean, but not spotless like our house. Not a neurotic clean. Taylor Swift blasts from upstairs.

"My sister," he explains. "I work downstairs."

There's no car in the driveway. I'm at a boy's house with no parents around. A trial run for when I go to Adam's.

The bas.e.m.e.nt isn't like any other bas.e.m.e.nt in the world. The walls are covered with paper, big thick endless sheets from the rolls you can buy at craft stores, and they're full of sky. People and animals move from cloud to cloud.

And all the people are naked.

"I like painting the human figure," Ca.s.sius says openly, no creepiness to it, as he ties a paint-splattered ap.r.o.n around his waist and sets up an easel. "Not for school paintings. Adam would give me too much c.r.a.p. But for paintings n.o.body sees. No one else comes down here."

Just me.

I step closer to the wall. The bodies aren't like any naked bodies I've seen before. A lot of them are fat, but it's not an ugly fat, exaggerated for a joke. They're graceful. Comfortable.

Did Ca.s.sius want to paint me naked?

"I don't think I can-" I burst out at the same second he goes, "You'll keep your clothes on, obviously-"

We both stare at each other and giggle.

"How do you want me to be?" I ask.

"Yourself."

I sit on the ratty tan couch, being myself.

"Hmm." He traces a line on his blank paper with the wrong end of his brush. "The way you sit, you ball up . . . People are easier to paint when they're looser. Broad strokes, not all congested like a highway. I'm not that good yet."

I stretch the nerves out of my legs. How would Joy sit? I sling my arm over the back of the couch, kick up one leg.

"You're good at art," I say to distract him from how ridiculous I look.

"I'm not that good yet. But I will be."

I'm not that brave yet. But I will be.

He outlines the pattern of me over his paper once more before he starts his pencil sketch. The silence grows between us, but it doesn't fill with bad things. I can look at him when he's looking at the paper. I can see why Joy thinks he's so beautiful. He's a good combination of hard and soft: the clean edge of his jaw, his warm eyes, his gentle mouth. It's too bad he can't model for himself.

Joy would be so jealous. My stomach twists.