Please Don't Tell Part 23

I breathe.

"You wouldn't do that," she repeats. "You're not capable of that. I don't care if you don't know. I know. I know you better than anybody. I know you better than you do."

The last piece of doubt lodged in my heart starts to dissolve. Maybe Levi's right, and Grace's version of Joy isn't a complete imposter. Maybe I could be her again. It'd be so much easier than finding out who my own version of myself is, and not liking her.

"I can't stand that you've been dealing with all this on your own." She peers at me, eyebrows knotted. "Are you okay?"

"I told Preston."

"You told Preston and not me?"

"Like I said, I was scared you'd be mad-"

"I'm never going to get mad at you, okay? You could stab me and I wouldn't get mad at you. You're my twin." She sits back down. "Does Preston have any ideas about who the blackmailer might be?"

There's a jealous tilt to the way she says Preston.

"He doesn't think Adam's death was an accident. He thinks the blackmailer is the real murderer. And he thinks it must be someone at our school, somebody who was at the birthday party and someone who knows what-"

I stop.

"What he did," she finishes for me, eyes fixed on the carpet.

"n.o.body knows about that, though." It's amazing, all the ways you can talk about something without naming it.

Then she says something weird.

"How much would you say you know about November?"

I blink. "A lot."

"But how much do you know about her past?"

I don't understand where this is going, but this is the most Grace has talked to me in ages. I run through a checklist of all the things I know about Nov. "Her mom died before she and her dad moved here from the city."

"But what about after that? Do you know why she was out of school her soph.o.m.ore year?"

"That was before I met her." When she was Annabella.

Grace taps the side of her knee in a steady rhythm. "Did she go to Adam's birthday party?"

"Well . . . yeah. But she didn't stay."

"She's always hated Princ.i.p.al Eastman," she murmurs. "And her dad."

"Grace." I hold up my hands. "Stop. I get that you're trying to help. But Nov isn't blackmailing me."

A long silence.

"You idealize people, did you know that?" she says.

I don't say anything.

"You put them on these pedestals, so high up you can't see any of their flaws. But I can see them. November's always given me a weird vibe."

A snake rears its head in me and says you're jealous. But I cut off its head before it slithers out of my mouth.

"The way November acts around you, that's not who she really is," she says. "She puts on this act around you-"

"Besides the other one billion reasons you're wrong, Nov would never murder someone."

"Do you really know what she's capable of?" Her eyes are faraway. I always forget how a.n.a.lytical she is. "What the blackmailer is doing, it's just like November. She likes to shame people. Put up signs, call people out, make a scene. Remember how she put up all those posters about Princ.i.p.al Eastman's dress code being s.e.xist?"

"That's different," I say desperately. "How would she have even found those photos of Eastman?"

"She's the head of the school newspaper. She's always digging around, looking for things to publish. Maybe she searched his desk. I don't know."

It does sound like something she would do. I shake my head, feeling sick. "The video of her dad, though. There's no way."

"You know how much she hates her dad. You really don't think this is something she'd do to get revenge on him?" she says. "Like, how would anyone besides her even get ahold of that video?"

Today she told me she was grateful to the person who showed the video.

What if that was her way of thanking me?

All it takes is you seeing their cracks.

Before I got the first note I'd told her I couldn't remember anything from Adam's birthday party- What the f.u.c.k am I thinking?

"November's not the blackmailer," I say, hard. "If she wanted help exposing the princ.i.p.al and her dad, she would have asked me, not threatened me."

"Maybe you were the only person she trusted to help her, but she didn't want you to know that it was her doing it." Grace is lost in thought. "What if she tries to hide that she's unstable by acting like nothing gets to her, but in reality, she's losing it-"

"Shut up!"

She flinches.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." I want to drown myself. "It's just that this is screwed up. There's nothing wrong with Nov."

Her eyes are big and sad. "Joy, November was out of school her soph.o.m.ore year because she was in a mental health facility."

I shake my head. "She would have told me."

"I'm not lying."

"How do you know that and I don't?"

"I've been keeping stuff from you, too." A spot of blood appears at the edge of her thumb where she's been picking it. "I wanted to put everything about this summer behind me. That's why I never told you . . . that November knows about what happened to me. She's known for ages. I told her."

"You told her about Adam? Why?" I whisper. "You don't even like her."

"Because-" She hides her b.l.o.o.d.y thumb in her fist. "Adam raped her, too."

SIXTEEN.

August 18 Grace SUMMER'S NEVER FELT LIKE THIS BEFORE. The sun's too bright. My skin's thinner than normal-I can see all my veins when I go outside. I hate looking at them. Joy keeps asking why I'm wearing long sleeves. She asks a lot of things.

One day, she's sleeping late when the bell rings. Mom and Dad aren't home. When I open the door, November's standing there, her hair swept back, her forehead creased.

I'd forgotten she existed.

"Is Joy home?" she asks.

"She's sleeping." I keep the door half closed between us, but my eyes burn from the light anyway.

"She hasn't answered my texts in ages."

Her forehead creases more.

"Sorry." I don't have the energy to fight her for my sister.

"I heard you guys hung out at Adam Gordon's house," she says fake-casually.

My skin feels like it's being stretched out.

"I told her not to go anywhere with him." Not so casually. "You don't know if . . . she went off anywhere with him . . . did she?"

Her voice shivers apart.

I want her to go away. I hate her. We were fine before she came along. Before her, Joy didn't need to prove anything to anyone.

"I just need to know what happened." All her cool sungla.s.sy calm is gone. She's fragile, cringing.

Go away.

"Like I wouldn't be able to live with myself if anything did," she explains, her calm returning in a strange way.

It's hard to think with the sun in my eyes, but slowly I begin to understand why she hates him so much.

It should feel different, this realization. I should feel sad, angry, something. All I am is cold, cold, cold.

"He did it to you, too," I say numbly.

Her face doesn't change, but it's like something happens to the air. It gets harder to breathe. She wraps her arms around herself.

I need to do something to help her. What's wrong with me?

"So . . . you're saying . . ." Her voice is hoa.r.s.e and low. "Joy won't text me because . . ."

She thinks it happened to Joy. It never would have happened to Joy. Joy would have fought him off, like I should have.

I hadn't turned into her after all.

I was always me.

I point to myself. Pick the victim out of a lineup. If I press my finger against my collarbone I can feel how thin my skin is.

She recoils. There are tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry I didn't say . . . I didn't want Joy to think . . ." Her words are tangled. She's so affected by this. Everyone else is so affected. "I am so, so . . . What can I do? Tell me how I can help."

Everyone else feels it so much more than me.

"It's okay. I'm fine. Just don't tell."

"I should've told. Then this wouldn't have happened."

Why is everyone else allowed to make their sadness so big?

Does November think she and I are the same now?

We're not.

"I thought no one would believe me." She's stammering now. There's sweat on her narrow shoulders. "My dad didn't know what was wrong with me. He sent me to a mental health facility for a year."

"I have to go," I say mechanically.

"Please don't tell Joy."

Joy was the one who wanted a special bond with November. Now I'm the one with it.

I wish she'd never moved here.

"I'm . . ." She's shaking. "I'm going to kill him. I'm really going to . . ."

"What are you talking about?"

"f.u.c.k him, f.u.c.k him. I'm going to do something to him. I'm going to hurt him." She spits the words like weapons.

Joy said that, too. But neither of them are actually going to do it. They talk like their rage can change things, but tonight he's going to eat dinner, go to sleep, and he won't feel a breath of this.