Please Don't Tell

by Laura Tims

  I changed my name to November because that was the month I got sent to a mental health facility after Adam Gordon raped me. I expected therapy to be bullshit. And some of it was. But mostly, while I was there, I realized what I wasn’t. I wasn’t weak. None of the people I met there were weak because they were sad. People say don’t let things get to you, but sometimes things just get to you and that’s the way it is. And it’s okay.

  Originally, I was going to write this as a letter to him. But you are so much more important than he is. And I want you to know that wherever you are, whatever you’re struggling with, I see you. Your monsters are real, and you’re brave, and I’m proud of you.

  The newspaper is recalled once Vice Principal Matthews realizes what was printed, but copies are everywhere. People hide it in their lockers, stuff it in their sweatshirts, read it under their desks in class. There’s a lot of whispering.

  Levi isn’t in American History.

  When the bell rings for lunch, November’s waiting for me outside the classroom door. Half the people passing by stare at her, and there’s a nasty comment somewhere in the crowd, but she ignores it.

  “Do we really have to do this?” she groans.

  “Yes. I’m escorting you everywhere today.” I glare at a freshman who points out November to his friend, muttering behind his hand.

  “It’s cool, Joy. I don’t care what they think.” Her smile’s real. “I thought I would, but I don’t. I wrote it for the right reasons.”

  “Are people being okay to you?” I say over the rush of hallway noise as we walk together.

  “Some people are being dicks and some people are not being dicks. But that’s life.” She hitches her bag higher. “I got a few hugs.”

  “Hugs?”

  “Brodie Simmons said I helped with her depression. That is a nice thing to be told.”

  “You helped me, too,” I say. It’s true. I can handle thinking clearly for the first time in forever. I still don’t know who the blackmailer is, but I’m going to figure it out. Today I’ll be there for November, but then I’m going to find a way to stop this.

  November squeezes my arm. I push away my thoughts. I want to be the great friend she thinks I am. “So nobody’s harassing you?”

  “Joy Morris, I can take care of myself,” she says. “The only annoying part of today was Vice Principal Matthews. She kept me in her office all morning. I’m banned from the school newspaper.”

  “That’s bullshit!” I snarl, fuming. “I’m going in there and—”

  “Who cares?” She smiles again. “I said what I wanted to say.”

  We round the corner of the hallway and head into the cafeteria. The cafeteria has never gone silent before, but today it comes pretty close. November snickers as we get in line.

  “By the way,” she says under her breath, “daily reminder that it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Daily reminder that it wasn’t your fault, either.”

  “Not working yet, is it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Maybe eventually,” she says quietly.

  Before we can get our food, there’s a commotion by the doors. It’s Ben, trailed by Kennedy and Sarah. Ben has a sheaf of papers under his arm. He slams one to the cafeteria wall and tapes it there.

  “Don’t start shit, Joy,” November says to me as Ben whips around and beelines straight for us.

  “I thought you might be interested in this,” he says loudly. Now the cafeteria really is dead silent. He pushes a flyer toward her. I intercept it. There’s a picture of Adam’s face and the words Remember our friend the way he really was. “We’re planning another memorial service for Adam next week. The point is to celebrate what a great guy he was. From the memories of people who knew him, not a lying bitch who hated him for no reason.”

  November puts out a hand in front of me, but I’m not lunging, even though I’m quaking with fury. She’s right. She can handle this herself. My anger’s not the important thing. Sometimes being a good friend means standing back.

  “The amount I give a shit about what you have to say is so small it couldn’t be seen with a microscope,” she says coolly.

  Kennedy and Sarah press in behind us. Kennedy’s glaring. Sarah bites her lip.

  Ben leans in. He’s breathing as heavily as he did the day he fought with Levi. “You can disguise it with fake-inspirational mental health bullshit all you want, but I know what you’re doing. You just want attention.”

  The freshmen at the tables nearest me are motionless, sandwiches halfway to their mouths. It’d be funny if my skin wasn’t buzzing. Even the people who were coming out of the food line are still, their trays tipping in their hands.

  One of them is Levi.

  My stomach jolts. I thought he skipped today. Our eyes meet for a split second. He’s not smiling. He looks really tired. There’s only an apple on his tray.

  Please let him believe her.

  “You all realize she’s lying, right?” Ben addresses the cafeteria at large. “She said it herself. She got chucked in a mental hospital. She’s fucking crazy.”

  I punched him in third grade. I’m burning to do it again, but November’s staring him down like a badass, unflinching, and he tenses.

  Levi abandons his tray on a nearby table and walks toward us.

  “You’re on my side, right?” Ben says to him. “Adam’s half bro?”

  Levi’s cheeks are hollower than normal. His baseball cap is nowhere in sight. “Why don’t you fuck off?”

  “I should’ve known.” Ben laughs mockingly. “You’re way more of a pussy than Adam—”

  “Will you shut up?” It’s Sarah, trembling. She glances nervously at November.

  “I liked your editorial,” she says rapidly, looking petrified. “It was—it—I’m sorry.”

  The corner of Nov’s mouth lifts. She holds out a fist. After a moment, Sarah returns the bump.

  Levi stares at all of us for a second. His throat works. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. He backs away, turns, and half runs out of the cafeteria without telling me what it is.

  Ben and Sarah are arguing, their voices raised, but I don’t catch a word of it.

  “Go,” November mouths to me.

  So I do.

  But I hesitated too long. By the time I reach the halls, they’re empty.

  I take out my phone to text him, even though I have no idea what to say.

  There’s a new email on my screen from the address tojoymorris@gmail.com.

  Instinctively I know who it’s from. My heart stops. But it’s done that so many times, and it always starts again.

  “Joy?” someone says. I turn, and Preston is coming out of the science wing, one of his lunch hiding places. My chest uncoils at the sight of him.

  “Perfect timing,” I say.

  He steps closer, and I hold the screen up wordlessly. He squints at it, then his eyes go wide.

  “You think?”

  Breathe. I can handle this fear now. “Guess he’s entered the digital era.”

  “We can track the IP address,” he gasps.

  “Let’s read it first.” I keep my voice calm, but my palms are sweating. “Not here. Outside.”

  We slip out through the side door beside the math classrooms and crouch together against the brick wall, next to the Dumpsters. When my hand starts shaking, Preston opens the email for me. We read it together.

  To Joy Morris—

  I guess I can tell you who I am now.

  The day Adam died was the day I found out what he did to Grace. Do you know what it’s like to realize that the person you called your best friend was a stranger? A monster?

  By the time I followed him to the quarry, everyone else at his birthday party had left. I hid in the trees while he walked, drunk, to the edge. I don’t think he jumped. But it wasn’t quite like he fell. It was like the quarry pulled him in.

  Most of the time, when people do bad things, nothing happens to them.

  It all began w
hen I found those pictures in Savannah’s room. I don’t trust the police—I thought if I brought the photos to them, they’d brush me aside.

  If someone caught me putting them up, Savannah would hate me forever. That’s when I thought of you. I knew you’d been blackout drunk at Adam’s birthday party, that there was no way you remembered that night, and that you must have wanted him dead after what he did to Grace. I was too scared to put up the photos, but you’re brave. I knew youd be able to go through with it.

  How rationally were you thinking after finding out something horrible had happened to your sister?

  And maybe part of me thought you deserved to suffer for what happened this summer. It was supposed to end after that. But November invited me to her house one day, and while she was downstairs, I found that security video of Officer Roseby in his room. I went through his closet—I knew he’d had something to hide. I knew if everyone saw it, he’d have to stop harassing me.

  And when November and I got closer, when she finally told me what Adam did to her, I knew the school needed to know the truth. November needed them to know, even if she couldn’t tell them herself.

  I never meant to use you more than once. It just worked so well the first time. But you used me, didn’t you, this summer? So we’re even.

  I don’t think you’ll show anyone this email. It would mean admitting you were the one who put up the photos and swapped the DVDs. Either way, I’m far away now. If you accuse me, I’ll lie. But I thought I at least owed it to you to tell you that it’s over.

  We made our school a better place. A safer place.

  Cassius Somerset

  “It was him,” Preston’s face goes pale and then red. “I was right about him, all along. We’ll make him pay for this—”

  “No. We won’t.”

  “What?”

  I lift my face toward the sky. It’s clear. The sun cuts around the edge of the building just enough to douse us completely with light. “I’m sick of revenge.”

  “We can’t just let him get away with this,” he says, disbelieving.

  I lift my hands, examine them. These hands never pushed anyone into the quarry. They’re normal hands. I’m a normal person.

  There is no secret evil core in me.

  “He’s gone, Preston,” I say. “Getting revenge will just stop this from being over.”

  “He blackmailed you for something you didn’t do.”

  I’m never going to get another one of those notes again.

  I can sleep. I can eat. I can focus on Grace. I can make everything about Grace again. This time I’m going to do it better.

  “How are you not angry? You’re . . . you.”

  Maybe Grace’s Joy got angry. But this is my version. And I decide when it’s worth getting angry.

  “I didn’t do it, Preston.”

  He groans. “We always knew you didn’t do it.”

  “I wasn’t sure,” I whisper. “I don’t think anybody knows themselves that well. The only way to find out is to be in the situation. I was . . . and I couldn’t remember what I did.”

  I only cry for a few minutes. Preston fidgets miserably beside me. I wipe my eyes, because I know what it’s like to want to help and not know how.

  I stand up, because I still need to be with November today, because I need to find Levi, even if I’m afraid to face him. But my head fills with light and I lose my balance. Preston catches me.

  “You okay?”

  “No.” I sound delirious. “But I will be.”

  He sighs, but he doesn’t put me down. “You’re actually going to let this go.”

  “I want to try letting something go,” I tell him.

  When I get home that night, I steal into Grace’s room first.

  “Joy,” she mumbles as I slip into bed beside her, like I used to. Like I always will.

  “I have to show you something,” I whisper.

  The invisible force field between us is weaker. Maybe it was only so strong because I needed it to be.

  She wakes up, pulling the quilt over both our heads so that we’re in a tent. “Did you talk to November?” she says tentatively.

  I show her the email. The cold light of the phone screen illuminates every detail of her face. Sometimes the fact that we’re identical seems ludicrous to me. She’s so different. Her pores are clogged with makeup I don’t wear. Her eyebrows are stubbly with plucked hairs that I let live. She’s decorated with choices that are hers alone.

  There’s only the sound of our breathing and the heavy silence of somebody reading something very important.

  Finally she looks up.

  My phone light fades. I can’t see her at all in the dark, but we’re so close that the vibrations of her voice shiver along my skin. “Cassius did this to you?” she chokes. “I can’t believe . . .”

  “Don’t hate him,” I tell her.

  “How can I not?” The whites of her eyes shine.

  “You’re right,” I say. “Hate him until you don’t need to hate him anymore. But don’t do anything about it.”

  “You can’t trust any guy. No matter how they act.” Her voice shakes. Her hair tickles my chin. It lies fine and straight on the pillow, any evidence of our curls burned out of it. “Once, I thought Cassius was . . .”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I was wrong about November.” In the dark, I can hear all her emotion. It’s only in the daylight that she hides it.

  “The whole school knows that—they know what he did to her now,” I tell her. “She wrote about it in the school newspaper. I’ll bring you a copy. You can read it if you want.”

  “Is she okay?” she says in a tiny voice.

  “She’s okay.” And I believe it.

  I want to believe it about Grace, too.

  “I hoped you’d blame November,” she says, shivery. “I wanted you to hate her. I was scared you were leaving me behind for her. I’m always scared you’re leaving me behind.”

  “I never will, I promise.” I can center my life around her again.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so distant,” she whispers. “I thought if I could push you away before you could do it to me, it wouldn’t hurt so much.”

  Her body heat soaks the tiny space we share until beads of sweat pop on my cheeks. “Now it’ll be you and me again. Just us,” I say.

  For some reason, I remember what Levi said, about how neither of us have had the chance to find out who we are without each other. My spine prickles strangely.

  She clasps her hands together in front of her mouth. “I won’t doubt you anymore.”

  This is all I ever wanted. To have things be the way they were. But now, for some reason, this feels wrong. Like trying to put on an old favorite shirt only to find it doesn’t fit anymore.

  I swallow. It doesn’t matter. I owe her. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her.

  “You and me,” I tell her, twisting my words until there’s happiness in them.

  “You and me,” she repeats.

  Us.

  I lean my forehead against hers, just to check, one more time if that twin telepathy has come into being yet. If I can read her mind.

  But no current of secrets passes between our skin.

  That’s okay. They don’t need to.

  All our secrets have been laid to rest.

  The next morning, I wake up in my own bed. I don’t remember leaving Grace’s room.

  I push the covers back and then I’m shivering, freezing cold everywhere, in my blood, fingertips numb, head throbbing, popping full of needles.

  “You’re sick,” Mom informs me after she takes my temperature. She sits back on my bed, studying me while a dragon eviscerates my chest. “Did you take ibuprofen?”

  I sneeze.

  “I’ll call you out,” she sighs. “But talk to your teachers about any missed assignments first thing tomorrow. Your father and I have to go to work, but Grace will be home.”

  Us.

  Mom leaves and I
go back to dying. This sickness feels like an exorcism. Like all the fear from the past month is being drained from my body.

  I’m sick for three days.

  It’s a blur of fever, arguing with Dad about going to the doctor, Mom bringing me soup, Grace delivering glasses of water to my bedside table. Her coming into my room isn’t an event anymore. Once, when she goes downstairs, I get up and walk in and out of her doorway five times just to prove I can.

  On the fourth day, I wake up and I can see straight. I’m not sweating anymore. I check the clock—two thirty in the afternoon. There are a couple of glasses of water on my bedside table, Grace’s contributions. I chug them both. Someone knocks on my door.

  “Come in,” I croak. Mom and Dad are gone. It’s got to be Grace.

  But it’s not Grace. It’s Levi.

  “The front door was unlocked. Dunno if that counts as breaking and entering. I brought you soup,” Levi says nervously, a Tupperware container under his arm. “I googled the recipe and I bought dried shiitake mushrooms and I let it simmer for four hours.”

  Levi?

  Levi’s in my house.

  I’m 110 percent awake. I bolt upright, tissues falling off my chest.

  Did Grace see him come up the stairs?

  I was wrong. I didn’t tell her every secret.

  “November Roseby said you were sick. She gave me your address.” Levi stares at my posters, at my bookshelf, like they’re fascinating. My room’s not as horrifying as it was a month ago, but it’s still pretty bad. I don’t freak out about it, though, or the fact that I haven’t brushed my hair in three days, or that I’m wearing one of Dad’s old shirts, because if Grace comes in—

  “Are you drinking enough water?” he stutters. “Do you need orange juice? I can go buy orange juice. Do you need more tissues?”

  “You have to leave.” My throat’s full of razor blades. This is the one thing left that could mess things up again.

  “That’s fair. I figured you’d feel that way.” He sets the Tupperware on my bedside table and turns to go.

  Grace still sleeps so late. She’s probably asleep now. I can risk a few minutes.