by Laura Tims
“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 classrooms. When I finally track Cassius 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 badass. Maybe this will make up for everything between Cassius 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 sex 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. God, 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.
“Cassius . . .” Real fear isn’t hot or electric. It’s deep, outer-space, 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 Principal Eastman told her she was modeling for a private art project, that she inspired him. She’ll be happy once she’s somewhere nobody 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 knob 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 nobody 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 nobody 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 knob 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 Cassius.
“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?
“I found this video . . . online,” I start quietly. “It’s of Officer Roseby assaulting 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 Cassius. 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 bullshit about sex 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 Principal Eastman. So I organized this presentation to discuss appropriate conduct between members of the opposite sex 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 principal 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.
FOURTEEN
August 7
Grace
JOY STARTS GETTING UP AT NOON. THEN two. Then three. She eats only Saltines. She lifts weights in the exercise room until four a.m., straining every muscle in her body. Her room turns into a garbage can. She leaves the house only once to buy us both Plan B.
Mom and Dad have always whispered about her. Now they whisper more. She’s going through a phase. They dissolve their own worry for their own sakes. Nobody whispers about me. Which is good, because I don’t need to be whispered about.
One day Joy walks back from Preston’s house in the rain. Her orange shirt’s dark with water, a rust color, like dried blood. Her socks are sponges on my floor. Her hair tangling around her neck in wet ropes, like a noose, she asks: “Are you mad at me?”
I put my arms around her. I feel like a machine.
She wants to go to the police. She wants to go back to his house and kill him.
“I know you’re mad at me,” she repeats. “I can tell you’re mad at me.”
I’d never be mad at her. I’m not avoiding her because I’m mad at her. She just makes me tired.
She pulls me into the bathroom while Mom and Dad talk about colleges downstairs. She’s full of thunder. “We need to tell somebody. I can’t do this silence. You can’t.”
Why do I have to be the one to make her feel better? Nothing even happened to her.
Did anything even happen to me?
Five hours of sleep. Four hours of studying. Two hours of exercise. Three hours of self-improvement reading. If I don’t go over six hundred calories a day, I won’t have bad dreams. If I can do my makeup in under two hours, she’ll stop asking if I’m mad at her.
I build little pyres out of my emotions and burn them. I am clean.
She comes to my room at night and whispers, even though I pretend I’m asleep: “Just let me do something. Let me go to his house. I’ll . . . I’ll . . . You’re not being normal about this.”
I’m not normal. I’m stronger than normal people. It’s my head. I’m in control of it.
She’s not in control of anything. Why did I ever want to be like her?
She comes to me outside, when I’m sitting on the porch, tying and untying one shoe.
“Are you sure you’re not mad at me?”
“Yes,” I tell her. But my voice is different now. I can’t tell if she’s not listening or if I didn’t speak.
Time slips in and out, like it did when I was drunk, but I’m not drunk now. Whole days pass without me noticing. Everything is dry and clear and flat. And far away. Joy feels very far away.
She comes to me in the exercise room when I’m sweating off breakfast. “We can’t just pretend like it didn’t happen.”
“Yes we can.” If I don’t call it anything, it isn’t anything. “Nothing even happened.”
“That’s not what you said the night it—”
“I don’t know what I said. Leave it alone, Joy.”
She whispers to me in the bathroom, when I’m flossing too hard, cutting my gums. “Mom and Dad ask me to do the dishes and I’m screaming the truth at them in my head. We need to tell.”
“Please don’t tell,” I say, my mouth full of blood. “Promise me you won’t tell. If you tell, I’ll hate you forever.”
After that, she stops asking if I’m mad at her.
That night, I dream I’m in a crowd and everyone’s wea
ring Adam’s face. I’m called into Principal Eastman’s office, and Eastman is wearing Adam’s face. I walk into Joy’s room in the middle of the night and she’s wearing his face.
He’s astral projecting into my head. This dark-haired, guitar-playing person . . .
All my old fantasies transform. It’s me who finds his body at the bottom of the quarry. He comes to me with his problems and I bash his brains in with a rock. I’m in a crowd of people wearing his face, and I set off a bomb, blowing them all apart.
Dream: I stick a knife between his ribs. I feel it go in.
I don’t want to be someone who dreams about this.
It’s fine. It will go away. I’m stronger than this. I’m better than normal people.
FIFTEEN
October 23
Joy
AS KIDS, GRACE AND I SPENT A LOT OF TIME at the elementary school playground, on the wooden ship with the fake wheel. I’d steer us over oceans, away from pirates. I’d climb to the top of the jungle gym and she’d wait below me, face screwed up in fear, arms out to catch me if I fell, even though she wasn’t big enough. Even though she knew I’d bring her down with me.
“Sorry I didn’t reply to your texts.” November’s sitting on the swing next to me. School’s been out for an hour now. The sky’s cloudy, rain threatening. The wind scatters dead leaves underneath the jungle gym.
I’m the one to say it for once: “Are you okay?”
“I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.” She says it like she’s tearing off chunks of something inside her chest and throwing them into a fire. “The department’s put him on unpaid leave. He was already in trouble, the way he went around asking unauthorized questions about Adam dying. He punched a hole in the basement wall.”
“Are you okay, though?”
“That woman in the video sued my dad, back in NYC. But the security video from the street camera disappeared. That’s why the chief suggested he apply for jobs in upstate New York instead of straight-out firing him.” The swing chain’s pinching her fingers. “I just don’t understand who found it.”
