Please Don't Tell Part 20

"Yeah, but . . ." I ball the note in my fist. "It's November's dad."

"Doesn't she hate him?"

"I don't want her to have to watch this."

He looks at me for a long minute. "You should tell her, Joy."

"I can't. I don't want her to think-to know-" I bite my lip. "I can't."

"You told me about it."

"Because you always like me, no matter what I do. I need Nov to think I'm . . ."

"If you don't do it, you're in danger," he says. "They could find you, hurt you. Or they could frame you. November would agree with me. Until we figure out who it is, we need to go along with this. If you won't tell her, we'll just find a way to keep her out of the auditorium."

"You're really good at handling all this, Pres."

"It's like, when you're panicking, I feel less scared. It's nice to be the one helping you for once." He fiddles with the hem of his shirt. "You still haven't told Grace what's going on either?"

"She doesn't need another reason to worry about me."

"You ever think maybe she worries about you anyway?"

"I don't know anything that goes on in her head anymore," I say.

Everything at school the next day is bright. Yellow light and noise and plastic food smells. I smile and nod when November stops me by my locker after first period and asks if I'm okay. I don't trust myself to open my mouth.

I don't go straight to the supply closet at lunch. There's somebody I have to find first. But he's not in the cafeteria or any of the upstairs cla.s.srooms. When I finally track Ca.s.sius down, he's alone in the art room, tearing down his paintings in jagged strokes. Tacks fly off the wall, pinging off the paint-stained sink. The paintings drift to the floor, edges ripped. I've only ever seen him touch things like they were made of feathers. The same way he touched me that night.

"Can we talk?" I say.

He freezes when he sees me. "Why?" His voice sounds so fragile. I can't believe I ever thought he was the blackmailer. "I mean, about what?"

Being near him used to be enough to make my heart pound. Now it makes my skin crawl. No wonder he acts so scared around me. I must make him feel the same way.

"I was hoping you could do me a favor." I try not to imply that he owes me one. "I need you to keep Nov out of the auditorium during her dad's presentation today."

He lets this thaw between us for a few minutes. "How come?"

I might as well tell him. He'll figure it out no matter what.

"I'm going to publicly shame Officer Roseby." It sounds almost bada.s.s. Maybe this will make up for everything between Ca.s.sius and me. "I have a video of him. Police brutality. I'm gonna show it to everyone. He deserves it, after how he's been treating you."

He stares at me. "Am I supposed to say thank you?" There's a little lightning in his dreamy voice. "Like you're saving me from him or something?"

"No! No, not like that."

He looks down again. I can't understand how I saw him as a s.e.x object. He holds himself like Grace.

"I'm sorry about this summer," I explode. "I'm sorry I never called you afterward."

"I didn't call you, either," he says quickly. I hadn't even noticed.

"Right, but I was the one who climbed all over you, and kissed you first, and just generally instigated things, so it was my responsibility to call. And I probably justified it by being, like, well, the guy is supposed to call, but it was on me."

A fraction of the tension dribbles out of him. "It's okay."

"No, it sucked. I was using you, and that was gross." I twist my hands together. G.o.d, this is hard. "You didn't deserve that."

"It was a messed-up night," he says. "I think we were both kind of using each other."

Which hurts some past version of me that I guess I'm still carrying around, but I let it go. His eyes are on the door. We're not having the heart-to-heart I thought we'd have. What if all his avoidance is more than just awkwardness? What if he is scared of being near me? A possibility crashes into me.

"Ca.s.sius . . ." Real fear isn't hot or electric. It's deep, outer-s.p.a.ce, never-ending cold. "That night . . . I didn't . . . You were okay with what was happening, right?"

His eyes widen. "That's not why it was a messed-up night. I definitely consented."

"Okay. Okay. Just making sure."

"Right." His gaze softens a bit. "Don't worry about that."

One of the paintings on the floor is of the quarry. There's a shadow splashed across the center of the page, a flare going up in the middle, a pillar of yellow.

"I'm leaving," he says suddenly.

"Oh. Bye . . ."

"No, I mean I'm leaving this school," he says. "Savannah and I, and Mom. We're moving back to the city with our aunt. Savannah doesn't want to come back here, and people think . . . people think some things about me now."

"They'll get over that," I say because I'm supposed to. It sounds weak.

He shakes his head. "Everyone here's already decided what they're going to see when they look at me. They decided it a long time ago, and they were just waiting for something they could call proof. Same for Savannah."

"Is she doing okay?" The question cracks between my teeth.

"She says Princ.i.p.al Eastman told her she was modeling for a private art project, that she inspired him. She'll be happy once she's somewhere n.o.body knows what happened."

I'm the reason everybody knows what happened.

"Anyway, sure, I'll keep November out of the auditorium today. She was there for me when no one else was." He turns like he's about to leave, then adds, stiffly: "How's your sister doing?"

"She's fine." My chest pops, but his face doesn't change. He doesn't know. He's just being polite.

He nods, and then he's gone, abandoning his paintings on the floor. We're never going to be friends, he and I. But that's okay. Maybe sometimes it's all right to let someone quietly out of your life.

The supply closet door is locked.

I twist the k.n.o.b for a fourth time. There's no way I could swap out the DVDs after they roll the projector to the auditorium. But there's no way I'm getting through this door. Pres must not have known it'd be locked. I can't call him-he has a meeting with a teacher today that I told him not to skip. I slump against the door.

"Most people want to come out of the closet, not get into one."

Levi's walking toward me down the hall. He always finds me at these moments.

"Sorry," he says. "That was a terrible joke. Wow."

"It's almost like you make bad jokes when you're nervous or something," I say to distract him from my shaking hands.

"I was looking for you in the cafeteria. It's awful, looking for people in the cafeteria. It's like there's a timer winding down before everybody notices you have n.o.body to sit with." He's close now. Too close. He reaches past me, tries the door handle. "You need to get in here? I'm good at picking locks. My mom's always forgetting her keys inside the house."

"You'd pick a lock for me and not ask why?"

"If I ask, you might not tell me, and then you might not let me help. And I owe you for the other day." He leans into the door with his sharp shoulder. "Plus sometimes I just want to get into a place where I'm not supposed to be."

There's n.o.body else in the hall.

"If you think you can do it," I say.

"Easy." Levi pulls a pin from his pocket, inserts it into the keyhole. He crouches over a series of clicks, swearing under his breath.

I'm sweating. "Not easy."

"Still easy." He twists the pin.

"If you can't do it-"

"Let me impress you with my mad lock-picking skills, if not my jokes." He fights with the lock for a few more minutes until the k.n.o.b twists, the door springing open. He grins and holds the door wide, bowing low. "After you, sweet madam."

"I've never been called sweet before," I say, stupidly relieved.

Then, behind us: footsteps, laugher. His grin vanishes. I seize his shoulders and steer him into the closet, shutting the door after us just as a few girls walk by. The closet's dark, too small for both of us. Our shoulders press together. His breath in my ear reminds me of Ca.s.sius.

"Now I am going to ask what you're up to," he whispers.

At that moment, I want to tell him everything. I have to physically clamp my mouth shut. The truth is so close to the surface that it scares me. What would he say if he knew what I was getting blackmailed for?

The girls argue in the hall. If they see me here, they might tell somebody.

"I found this video . . . online," I start quietly. "It's of Officer Roseby a.s.saulting somebody. I want to have it play during the presentation, so everyone knows what kind of person they're letting patrol our school."

"That's really . . ." He hesitates. It's too dark to see his face. "Brave," he finishes finally. "Intense. I'd never . . . Wow."

For a second, I'm warm, like I'm doing something to be proud of. But it's the blackmailer, not me. I'm not doing this for righteous reasons. I'm doing this so I don't go to jail for a murder I may or may not have committed. I'm doing this so Grace's secret stays a secret.

I worm around, find the DVD player in the light from the door slats, pop out the disk, and swap it. It barely takes fifteen seconds.

"When do I get my official sidekick outfit?" he asks. "Can we color coordinate? Blue's my color. It'll match your eyes."

Unbelievable.

He squints at me and brushes the corner of my mouth with his pinkie, just the top layer of my skin molecules. "I don't think I've seen you smile before."

The girls in the hallway are gone, but I'd've tumbled out even if they weren't. Levi's framed in the shadows, one foot in a bucket, a guilty look on his face.

"Let's just go to the auditorium," I say, panting, trying to kill the feeling in my stomach.

"I'm just going to run to the bathroom real quick and make sure my face isn't as red as I think it is," he says before bolting toward the opposite end of the hallway.

It's dangerous, the way he makes me smile when I have nothing to smile about.

The auditorium's always felt safe to me. It's dark, cozy, rustling all around you while you sit safe between your people. I used to sit with Grace, the two of us tucked into each other, or between Preston and November. But Nov's not here. I crane my neck to look behind me, accidentally hitting Preston with my elbow.

"I can't see Ca.s.sius. He did find a way to stop Nov from coming," I tell him.

He nods once.

"How are you doing?"

He just nods again, his jaw set.

The stage is empty, but the projector's set up and waiting with the blackmailer's DVD hidden inside like a bomb. Usually Officer Roseby's auditorium presentations are a lot of bulls.h.i.t about s.e.x or drugs, because clearly the only useful information about either of those things is Don't do them. Even Grace, who used to be the queen of Don't do them, would roll her eyes.

"He'll be fired after this," I say even though I have no idea what's going to happen after that DVD plays.

Another jerky nod from Preston. I want to swamp him in a huge hug that both of us would hate.

Someone slides into the empty seat beside me. Levi's back from the bathroom. His wrist brushes mine and my arm tingles all the way to my fingertips. He leans in, but before he can say anything, the lights dim, the shadows swallow his face, and Officer Roseby swaggers onstage. Anger leaps up in me like a stove flame, higher and higher, canceling out some of the fear. I know Preston feels it, too.

"I know many of you are still shocked by the recent tragedy." Officer Roseby glances smugly out at the school. He thinks his uniform means he's a good person. "But that's not what I'll be speaking about today. Today we are going to talk about the women and girls at this school."

It's a lecture on women's safety. Incredible.

"Many of you are likely still concerned about the incident with Princ.i.p.al Eastman. So I organized this presentation to discuss appropriate conduct between members of the opposite s.e.x at this school. It should go without saying that no girl at this school, or any school, should distribute nude photos of herself to anyone."

"She didn't send them." Levi simmers with outrage. "The princ.i.p.al took them. He was in them. And why is this directed only at girls?"

"With that obvious thing out of the way," Officer Roseby says, hammering in the final nail of Savannah's coffin, "I'd like to show a video with some samples of appropriate and inappropriate behavior."

He starts fiddling with the projector. Everything inside me contracts. This is happening because of me. Whatever happens next is my responsibility.

"Where are you going?" Levi whispers as I stand. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. Stay with Preston."

I edge past him, past the rows of people, and as I slip away into the hallway, I hear the video start.