Please Don't Tell Part 6

Pres is a problem solver. I'm safe. I have him. I'm going to be okay.

Unless I actually did-no don't think about it.

"You and me and Grace are the only ones." I say it quietly, even though the treadmill's still thumping down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, loud enough for me to hear even from up in my room. "Grace doesn't even know you know."

"She must've told someone."

"There's less than zero percent of a chance she did that."

"Then we have to a.s.sume Adam told."

Told someone, maybe. Bragged about it, maybe. My gut clenches.

"Which means that this person, the blackmailer, was friends with Adam." He's zoned into his thought process. "And obviously not a big Joy fan, if they're doing this to you. Here is my theory."

"You have a theory already?"

"We can't a.s.sume Adam's death was an accident anymore."

My hands go numb. "So you think I-"

"No! G.o.d, no. Look, there's only one reason someone would try to pin Adam's death on you when everybody thinks it's an accident. That's if somebody did kill him. And they're scared people'll find out."

"You think the person who wrote this letter is a murderer."

"It's the clearest motive."

"You think a murderer climbed the tree outside my window and left me this and, like, knows where I live."

"I didn't say it was ideal."

I put my head between my knees and imagine the trapezoid, breathe with it.

But Pres is in problem-solve mode. "They must have figured out a way to frame you, so n.o.body finds out what they did. But first, since it's convenient, they're going to use you to get revenge on someone else they hate-Princ.i.p.al Eastman. Two birds with one stone."

This still doesn't fix it. But he's getting there. He's got this.

I sc.r.a.pe myself together. "It's like everything that was jumping around in my head all panicked is lined up neat in a row now."

"I'm good at this sort of thing," he says. "And I think I have a pretty good guess as to who the blackmailer is."

I'm okay, I'm safe, he solved it. "Who?"

"Ca.s.sius Somerset."

"What?" No way.

"You saw his black eye? Ca.s.sius got in a fight with Adam at the party. I was there. He tackled Adam, and Adam punched him in the face." He's getting excited now. "It makes sense."

"Ca.s.sius was Adam's best friend."

"That's what I'm saying. He fits. Adam did something to make Ca.s.sius so angry that he'd attack him at his birthday party. Maybe even drunkenly push him when he was standing next to the quarry. Adam must have let slip what he did to Grace." Preston smooths out the note again and again. "So he panicked. He knew you were blackout drunk that night. The only thing I'm hung up on is that Ca.s.sius has no reason to hate you this much."

I dig my nails again into the inside of my wrist. I saw Grace do it in middle school. She said the pain zapped her back to the present.

"I never told you this because I hate thinking about it now," I say slowly. "But Ca.s.sius and I hooked up over the summer. Maybe he has weird feelings toward me because of that."

"Joy."

"It's Ca.s.sius, though. He protested the frog dissection in bio."

"Joy," he repeats. "You do know that's his little sister in the photos with Eastman?"

"What?" I grab the photos. They don't look alike. She's slim, no trace of vitiligo.

"Savannah Somerset. She's a freshman this year," he says. "That explains why Ca.s.sius wants Eastman to be publicly humiliated."

I want to believe him, I want all of this to be over before it starts. But it feels wrong. "If that's his sister, he wouldn't have me put these all over school."

"Maybe he's mad at his sister, too."

"What are we even gonna do-confront him?"

"We need a plan. If we're right, he killed somebody. He's dangerous."

"I'm more dangerous than Ca.s.sius Somerset."

"Quiet people, Joy. You can't see into their heads."

I remember how I tried to get to know Ca.s.sius over the summer, how little he spoke when I did.

"In the meantime, do you need help putting the pictures up tomorrow morning?" says Preston suddenly.

I shrink away. "What?"

"We have to a.s.sume Ca.s.sius has something to back this up. Some way to make it look like you killed Adam. It wouldn't be hard for the police to figure out you blacked out that night. You could be tried as an adult and sent to prison. Until we figure this out, we have to play along. This is murder, Joy."

"You're sure-you think there's no chance he's telling the truth-"

I said it without thinking: I'm more dangerous.

"You are not capable of something like that," he says firmly.

I'm so exhausted. "Either way, I can't spread these around. Imagine being Savannah, coming to school, seeing these pictures everywhere."

"It's not ideal. But it's better than you going to prison."

"I can't, Pres. I need to take the pictures to the cops no matter what the note says." My fingertips tingle again. "That is some creepy disgusting child p.o.r.n s.h.i.t."

"No, no, no." He scratches convulsively at the zit on his chin. "You have to do it. Joy, please. You can't go to jail."

I shake my head. "It isn't so easy just to frame someone for murder, you know? Maybe the cops could investigate. Like look at fingerprints and crime stuff. And then, if it was me, they could tell me."

"Joy!"

"And if it was, maybe I do deserve to go to jail," I mumble. "That's where they put people so they can't hurt anyone."

"Stop it. Grace needs you."

"She barely talks to me lately." I touch the rip on the side of my quilt. It's been there since fifth grade, since Grace and I made sock monkeys and her scissors snagged in the fabric. She cried over it, she felt so bad. "We're not the way we used to be."

He makes a weird noise that isn't a word.

"And my parents think I'm a failure anyway. I'm not going to college, Pres. I'm basically f.u.c.ked after high school. Prison wouldn't be so bad." I'm dizzy. "They'd feed me and-I'd know what the rest of my life would look like."

"Forget about Grace, then." His chin's bleeding. "I need you."

"Pres, it's okay."

"It is not okay." He's half yelling. I flinch. Downstairs, the treadmill noise stops. "I rely on . . . before I met you, it was horrible. I don't need much. I just need one person. It's stupid."

"It is not stupid."

"It's stupid how I am. If something happened to you, I don't think anyone else in the world would want anything to do with me."

My heart splits wide open. "You'd find a new person."

"I don't want to."

Suddenly Grace opens my door, a microwave popcorn bag in her hand. "Hey."

Pres shoves the photos under his thigh. They trade panicky nods. They've always been alarmed by each other.

"Mom called and wanted me to tell you she and Dad are both going to be home in like fifteen," she says carefully.

If she moved the blanket just a little bit, she'd see the envelope.

"Okay," I say. And then a moment of awkward silence.

"Whose sweatshirt is that?" she asks, accusatorily, pointing to my chair across the room.

I turn and see Levi's sweatshirt, the baseball cap jutting out of the pocket.

"n.o.body's."

"Is that a guy's sweatshirt?"

"It's mine."

She looks around my room for a second, all the pictures of us, all her old drawings. She crumples her nose, goes back out into the hall, and closes her door.

"If your parents are coming home, I should go," says Pres thickly.

"I promise I'll think about what to do," I whisper.

He takes the photos from under his thigh, shoves them back into the envelope so quickly I barely see him do it.

"You okay?" I ask.

"No."

"Preston-"

"I'm going to go now."

"Wait," I say, but he's already halfway across my room, climbing out into the night.

I spend the night awake, facing the window, a knife under my pillow, remembering every night I slept in Grace's room so she wouldn't be afraid of the dark.

"The tree branch outside my window is rotten," I tell Mom in the car to school the next morning. "The big branch. The one on the tree that Grace fell off when she was a kid and sprained her ankle. It's dead. Can Dad saw it off?"

"I don't know what all this is about trees, Joy."

I leave the car without saying good-bye.

The photos are in my bag. I'm not-I can't-do this. I'll take them to the police station after school. Or talk to Savannah myself.

Those are the good-person things to do.

I'm early again. Preston's always early, too, since he comes in with his mom. But I can't find him. The last place I look is the art room. Eastman hangs the decent still lifes and the landscapes upstairs, to show them off on Parent Night. Down here, it's bloated self-portraits, angry scribbles, a painting of someone in a bath full of knives. Art that makes adults uncomfortable.

Something catches my eye by the sinks. There's a painting of the quarry. But it's nothing romantic. It's a wound in the earth, blood splashing the trees. I squint. The name in the corner: Ca.s.sius Somerset. His art's always been upstairs. Pastels, clouds, not the kind of thing a murderer would paint. I used to sneak extra minutes in the hallway after school to look at them.

This b.l.o.o.d.y quarry, it's the kind of thing a murderer would paint.

I've dreamed about that night with him twice, muscle memory, his skin setting fires on mine. My cheeks ache with how hard I was smiling and then I have to curl up, digging my thumbnail into my palm, half-moon marks, because it should be a nightmare, not a dream.

Kissing someone doesn't mean you know them.

I wander out of the room. The buses'll be here in a few minutes. Pres vanishes when other people are around.

I turn the corner, nearly bang into Levi.

"Joy." His expression's weird. "I was looking for you."

"I forgot your sweatshirt at home," I say, tired. "I'll bring it tomorrow."

"It's not that. I looked in my locker."