Please Don't Tell Part 34

He lights up when he sees me, that sudden bright smile. He's freshly shaven, his clothes ironed, a scarf around his neck. There's a scabby bruise on his forehead.

I lose control, just for a second, but then I win it back.

"I love the costume," he says, jogging toward me.

"My costume?" His face is so open and good. He is so good.

"You're Grace, right?"

I killed your half brother.

"I considered dressing up," he says. "But then I was like, what if we take a selfie, and it's the only picture we have together, and months later you think about flying out to visit me, and then you look at that picture and you're like, I am not dropping ticket fare on some a.s.shole who can't even pull off a David Bowie wig."

He never had to be Adam's Levi. He's Levi's Levi, all the way.

"Hey." He takes my hand. "You okay?"

"Just tired. A little sick."

Tired. Sick. The best ways to explain everything away.

"Are you sure you're up to this?" he asks worriedly. "Maybe you should be in bed. You can rest, I'll pick up some medicine and juice and whatever. Are you a movie person or a book person when you're sick? I can go to the library."

I pushed your half brother into a quarry.

I pushed your half brother, and he fell into a quarry.

How different are those sentences?

It doesn't matter. The end result is the same. And it starts with I pushed.

"Sorry." He blushes. "Mom Levi makes a stunning appearance."

"I'm fine. How's your forehead?" I structure the words, syllable by syllable, building them, little houses of normality that we can live in.

"My forehead's fine. I got it checked out."

"Good," I tell him. "Let's go."

I want him to have a nice day before I tell him.

I spend as much money as I can-tickets to the pumpkin race, hot cider, rides. He tries to pay for things but I won't let him. I focus all my energy on being normal. Normal is delicate.

Levi makes all his usual jokes, but he's distracted today. He keeps starting to say something and then cutting himself off, muttering idiot under his breath.

Once I catch him looking at me sideways, a lingering gaze, and even though I pretend I don't see it, there's so much warmth that I feel it. But that warmth isn't for me. It's for Levi's Joy, his imaginary girl. All I'm doing is stealing a taste of what would be hers.

Eventually he stops me by the craft booths. He's sweating. "Joy, listen-"

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, Grace!" a woman calls.

Is she here? I twist to look, but instead I trip backward and shear the skin off my elbow on a stone somebody used to reinforce one of the craft booth poles.

"Oh, my goodness. I'm sorry. It's Joy, of course, isn't it? The hair threw me off." It's our sixth-grade teacher, Ms. H something, standing beside the craft booth filled with mountains of identical crocheted dolls.

She's not here.

"I always do like seeing you and your sister. You two were never trouble like other twins. You never switched places," Ms. H. chatters, oblivious to my bleeding elbow. "We had a little joke in the staff room-the one with her mouth open is Joy, the one with her mouth closed is Grace."

Blood's darker on stone.

"Oh dear." Ms. H. peers over the dolls. "Are you all right?"

Levi pulls off his scarf and wraps it around my elbow. I stare at the dark spot I left on the rock.

"Did you hear me? Joy?" he says.

I struggle upright, draw him away from Ms. H.'s booth. "What do you want to do now? Let's go get caramel apples. Do you want anything else? I've got a lot of money left."

"You don't have to keep buying me things."

"I just want today to be nice."

"It's nice." He cups my forearm tenderly, inspecting my elbow again. "Joy, it's nice."

What will he say when I tell him? I deserve his anger. I want to feel it.

He can even call the police. Prison's where they put people to keep everybody safe.

We walk. I say things and forget them seconds later. We watch a costume-judging contest. We pa.s.s a face-painting booth. Everyone's having so much fun.

"All right," he says suddenly, stopping so that I almost b.u.mp into him. "Okay. Gotta just do it. I wanna tell you something, Joy."

Tell him now. Don't make him go through with this.

"I was trying to decide how you'd react, but I don't know you well enough yet," he says nervously. "I say a lot of stupid s.h.i.t but none of the brave s.h.i.t."

Stop talking for once.

"You're brave," he stammers. "That's the main thing I know about you. And the main thing I know about me is that I wish I was braver. I think sometimes we fall for the people we wish we were. Not that I've fallen for you, what a stupid phrase. But I think I could. I don't just like who I am in the context of you, I like you."

No, no, no.

"I don't want you to be some fantasy of a girl I met once, I want to know you for real. I don't want you to be an ex-maybe."

The reality of me is going to break his heart, just like the reality of Adam did.

"It's probably wimpy of me to tell you this right before I move back to Indiana," he babbles. Then he stops. "Actually, you know what? I am not a wimp. I'm dealing with the fact that my dead half brother was an a.s.shole, and I told you about my mom-you're the first person I've ever told about my mom-and those were really hard things for me to do. So I'm a bada.s.s, as a matter of fact. A super cute and funny bada.s.s who you should probably make out with or something."

I can't move or breathe or I'll lose it.

"Oh, G.o.d. Okay." He stares at me, terrified, misinterpreting my silence. "Can you just pretend I didn't say any of that? Just, uh. Forget it."

The thing about feelings is that they're not separated into packets you can open one at a time. They're tangled. If you pull on one, everything comes apart. Levi's pulling hard and I'm about to unravel.

"I have to go to the bathroom," I lie.

I don't wait for him to follow me. I find the Porta-Potties, garish blue. Inside, I reach for my phone to call Preston, but . . .

He believed in me. He thought I wasn't capable of it. I don't want to destroy his version of me, either.

Anybody who gets close enough to find out who I am for real is going to hate me.

The people who love me only do because they don't know the real me yet.

Then I see it, shoved in the corner, one more gross thing abandoned in a Porta-Potty. A bottle of cheap whiskey with two inches of amber liquid left in the bottom. I unscrew it.

People talk about their lowest point like there's some safe distance separating it from who they really are. But this is me. Without my sister, me at my truest self. Hyperventilating in a Porta-Potty, drinking a stranger's dregs.

I'm staring myself in the face, and I refuse to look away.

When I come out, I find Levi again and I smile at him. Now that I'm floating, it'll be easier to put my house of cards back together.

"I'll pretend you never said it," I tell him.

He grins like a maniac. "Great! Selective amnesia is a rare talent. Now I can do anything idiotic that I want around you. I'm gonna make a list of other stupid s.h.i.t I've said that I want you to forget. Including everything I'm saying right now. I'll have the list on your desk by Monday."

He burns up the silence.

I point at a game where you shoot miniature pumpkins with a pellet gun. "I want to win you something."

He trails after me, his shoulders lowered.

"The more you hit, the better prize you'll get," chants the man at the booth as I hand him my money. I take aim. But it's not a pumpkin anymore. Muscle and flesh sprouts, crawling over bone until Adam is smirking at me.

"You and I are the same. We go for what we want," he says.

The pellet pops his eye and splatters the shelf with gore.

But there's another head beside him, turning. "You and your sister, you're both repressed f.u.c.king freaks, you know that?"

This time I shoot him in the jaw. His teeth splinter and a long strip of his pink gums gleams through his shredded skin. There's a wall full of sneering Adam heads now. I hit one in the skull. Chunks of brain slap to the ground. He won't stop talking. He won't go away.

"Joy. Joy!"

Levi drags me away as the man at the booth shouts after us. He pulls me into a run until I break away, panting. We're outside the fair now, standing in the wide rest of the field.

He steadies me. "You wouldn't stop shooting. Are you okay?"

"Did I win?" I murmur.

"I don't know." His face is ashen. Then he sniffs and his face changes. "Is . . . is that alcohol?"

This isn't supposed to be what makes him hate me.

"Are you drunk?" he asks, stunned.

"No," I say. "I've been drunk for real. This isn't that."

"You brought alcohol with you today?" He steps back. "You went to the bathroom to drink. You came back different."

"You said . . . at the funeral." The funeral for his half brother who I killed. "You said everyone has something they use . . . to cope."

"That was before I lived with an alcoholic."

I flinch.

"I'm sorry." He closes his eyes briefly. "It's okay-"

"Don't ever apologize to me, Levi. Don't ever."

"You're tired. You're sick," he recites. "Let's leave."

"I want to go somewhere first."

"I'm taking you home-"

"I need to go somewhere with you."

I finally know exactly where I'm supposed to tell him.

It's a long, cold walk. But he doesn't ask where we're going, and he doesn't turn back. He just squeezes my fingers so hard I lose circulation.

The graveyard is as sunny as the day he was buried. The ground's wet from a brief rain last night, the dirt over his grave spongy. The headstone shines. The flowers are fresh.

Levi rubs the toe of his sneaker against the granite. "Why are we here?"

I killed your half brother.

Say it.

"You know what the stupid thing is?" he mumbles to himself, gazing at the grave. "I'm p.i.s.sed at him for not living up to my expectations. And that's ridiculous. People don't ever live up to dreams. People are real and dreams aren't."

Something seizes in my body. I turn and throw up beside the grave, horribly, unexpectedly.

"Oh, G.o.d, Joy, you're really sick." He sweeps my hair back while I retch. "It's okay," he says over and over again. "I'll take you home."

I sc.r.a.pe words together, put them in a line. "It's my turn to tell you something."