Please Don't Tell Part 36

"He gave you the photos?" I stammer.

"I stole them from his house." She hugs herself. "After the photos went up, he was so upset. He knew it must've been me. But he felt so guilty about what Adam did. So he didn't do anything."

"So he didn't have anything to do with the blackmail. You sent those emails." I already knew, but shock breaks over me in waves anyway.

She looks away from me. "I have to go."

Keep talking. She can't fall if I keep her tied to me. "I don't understand, but I'm not mad, okay? I love you no matter what, okay? Tell me-tell me where you found that video of Officer Roseby."

"In November's house." She answers readily, robotically. "She invited me over one time, when her dad wasn't home. She wanted to talk to me about Adam. I think she wanted to fix me. I poked around. I wanted to find out more about her. Then I found that video in her dad's room, hidden away like a secret trophy. And I remembered how he arrested us that night, how awful he made everything. Everyone deserved to know what he's really like. Just like everyone deserved to know what Eastman is like. People don't believe all men are like that unless they see it for themselves."

"Grace-"

"I knew it would be bad for Savannah, okay? And I knew it would probably be bad for November, too." She lets out a whimper. "But I have to tell the truth, even if it hurts some! You have to warn everyone about what people have done. Or they just keep doing it forever."

She yanks her fingers hard through her hair.

"Either the person has to die, like Adam," she keeps going, "or everyone has to find out what they did. Those are the only ways. And I don't want anyone to know what I did."

"You're not bad-" I can't breathe. "You're not a bad person-"

She covers her ears.

"I knew people were blaming Ca.s.sius," she says. "Officer Roseby started it. I was afraid he'd break. So I had to do something to discredit Officer Roseby before that happened."

There's still the main question-why-but I'm afraid to ask it, afraid it'll upset her more.

"Tell me about the third note," I say instead.

"I wanted everyone to know what Adam was. But I didn't want them to know about me," she says. "I'm sorry I convinced you that November was the blackmailer-I needed you to believe it was someone else. But it made you so sad, and I couldn't tell you it wasn't really her without telling you the truth. I knew if I wrote that last note, you'd realize it wasn't."

"She told the whole school on her own," I say. "I never showed her that note."

"She's stronger than me. Everyone in the whole world is stronger than me."

"No, they're not. I'm not."

She opens her eyes suddenly. "Did you tell Levi?"

"Yes," I manage.

"Does he hate you now?"

It hurts so much to say it. "Yes."

"Good. Now he won't ever be able to do anything to you." Her blue eyes are darker in the evening light than they've ever been before.

I don't bother telling her that he never would have.

"When are you going to ask me why?" she says.

"It doesn't matter." If I ran, could I get to her in time? No. She's too far.

She tilts her head back. "It didn't work."

"I know why you did it." My arms ache from holding them out toward her. "You said it. Getting back at somebody, it's the only way to fix things, right?"

She covers her mouth, clamps her elbows tight to the sides of her chest like she's trying to shrink herself.

"You wanted to get back at me," I say painfully.

She's the only one smart enough to have pulled it off.

She stammers through her fingers. "I didn't . . . I didn't want . . ."

"It's okay." I feel so heavy. "I deserved it."

"No, you didn't!" she sobs. "None of it was your fault! But I couldn't stop blaming you, I couldn't feel different, even when I tried to stop feeling everything-"

She shakes and shakes. She's going to shake herself off the edge.

"And I thought," she says, "if I could make you hurt a little-if I could make you feel it-I could stop feeling it."

"I'm sorry." The worst words.

"I wanted you to think maybe you killed him, and then at the end I'd pin it on someone else. When Ca.s.sius left, it was perfect. If I hadn't gotten so upset about Levi, it would have been fine. I'd have gotten it out of my system, you'd never have known it was me, and we could have gone back to the way we were."

"Why couldn't you have just told me you were mad?" I whisper.

"If you knew I was the kind of person who'd blame you-"

"Well, now I know. And guess what? I still love you."

"I hurt you on purpose," she says dully. "You're not safe with me."

Maybe I do have a special window into her head. Maybe we've been feeling the same things, but in different ways, for different reasons.

"I have to keep you safe from me," she says.

"Grace, shut up, shut up or I'll say something really corny about how we'll always be together-"

"We would've been. That's why I have to go. I'm holding you back."

"If you fall, I fall with you." As it bursts out, I know it's true.

Her eyes open wide. "Stop."

"I'll dive after you. You know I would. Right over the edge."

"No." She recoils.

"Then come here," I beg. "You're going to get help. I'm going to be with you through every second of it."

"I hurt you," she repeats, faintly.

"People are more than one bad thing they did." I inch toward her. She doesn't move. "We're the ones who get to decide if we want to forgive."

"What if I can't forgive you?" She's so close to me now, almost close enough to grab. "For forever?"

"I trust forever." So close. "I trust you."

"Things won't change." She's a foot away. "They never have before."

"You won't know unless you stay."

I catch her. I catch her, I catch her.

And this is how it ends, sometimes. With nothing feeling good. With all your worst fears confirmed, every nightmare coming true, and the last time you saw the only boy who ever made you smile when you didn't want to, he was broken because of you.

But someone you love is alive and safe, and hurting someone doesn't mean you can't save someone else.

No matter what I say, Grace, I don't believe it yet, either. It might be impossible to believe that things can change when nothing ever has.

But maybe waiting for it anyway means that you're starting to.

November 7.

Grace.

To Joy Morris-.

The food here is exactly as bad as November warned me.

I know you and Mom and Dad are trying to bring it down from three visits a day to one, that you're trying to give me the "time I need." I guess a suicide attempt is what it takes to move them from clueless to helicopters. I'm hoping eventually they'll stop somewhere in the middle.

My therapist told me to write you letters. She said I didn't have to send them. But from now on, I want you to know exactly what's in my head.

I'm still kind of mad that you told Mom and Dad what I almost did at the quarry. I don't want to be, but that's the thing about feelings. They happen to you.

I told my therapist about Adam. The bare minimum. I haven't been able to talk about it much, but she says that doesn't mean I'll never be able to. Next week. Or the week after. When I'm ready.

She says there are these inventions called Rube Goldberg machines that are meant to do something simple in the most complicated way possible. She says I'm like that with my emotions.

I hope your therapy appointments are going well, too. I'm jealous that you just have to see someone once a week instead of staying in this place, but I guess you weren't the one on the edge.

At first I talked a lot about you. My therapist says that's how you can tell who somebody loves the most, when you ask them about themselves and they start talking about that person. And that you know somebody's family when you love and hate them at the same time.

Thanks for visiting today. I'm glad more people are supporting November at school. I'm glad you're thinking about telling Preston the truth about who was sending you those notes. It scares me, but I think he deserves to know more than I deserve not to be scared.

I guess Levi never did tell the police what you told him. That's the other thing I was going to say. After what you told me about him, I wrote him a letter, too. And I told him about the parts you left out. I told him you didn't know what had happened the night of the birthday party until I showed you the video. And I told him what Adam did. I don't want to stay locked up in my own head anymore. I think telling is the key to getting it out.

And I told him maybe it wasn't really like you pushed him. Maybe it was more like he fell. Maybe he took a step he didn't have to, that he wouldn't have taken if he wasn't drunk.

He can decide how big a difference that is.

We might not ever know the absolute truth for sure. But maybe there is no absolute truth. Maybe believing what makes you happy is all you can do. Maybe it's just what you can live with.

Choosing to believe something is hard. You have to work at it every single day for a long time before it sinks in. (This is another thing my therapist said.) I still sort of think it's all bulls.h.i.t. That's how it feels. But I'm repeating the stuff she says anyway, since it's her job to know better than me.

I don't know if I can ever be a different person. Or what that girl would be like. Or if she exists, in this forever we're apparently trusting.

But if she does, I kind of want to meet her.

Love, and some hate, I guess, Grace.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

This book has been with me through lots of different phases in my life, lots of terrible haircuts, and lots of wonderful people.

Thank you so much to the amazing, dedicated, and inspiring Sarah Davies, who is the reason Joy and Grace first had a chance to grow.

Thank you, too, to Karen Chaplin, who was endlessly patient and helpful through an intense revisions process. She knows exactly what it means for a book to be at its best, and without her, it never would have gotten there.

And thank you to Dana Levy, Sarah Harian, Rachel Simon, Luvina Jean-Charles, and Mich.e.l.le Painchaud for reading the earliest version of this book and offering flawless advice.

Thank you to the Freshmen Fifteens and the Sweet Sixteens-I'm so lucky to know so many wildly talented writers.

To my parents, who rightfully interpreted "I'm writing, you guys" as "I'm on Facebook" in high school, but now for some reason believe me, even though it still usually means "I'm on Facebook Tumblr."

To my best friends from Maine, who are always supportive and never fail to forgive the unreturned calls and texts when I'm on deadline. To my new friends in San Diego, who are all kinds of really awesome-especially Sarah Mack, who chose to believe that the person tweeting "hey I just moved here, someone be friends with me" wasn't a serial killer. To Amit, for convincing me I'm not a failure at everything whenever I decide I'm probably a failure at everything.

Thanks to Courtney Summers, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Libba Bray, whose books about complicated, confused teenagers I devoured as a complicated, confused teenager, and who continue to inspire me as a still-pretty-confused twentysomething.

Thank you to all the fantastic people at HarperCollins-this book would not exist without you.

And thank you to everyone reading this who has dealt with terrible, scary things and stuck around anyway. You make my world better.