Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,10

my college handouts, so cliché it must have been on purpose. My future in the dirt.

“Did you even see me?” Adam laughs, not helping. I gather the handouts. Measure each movement. Must move smoothly, not awkwardly. He leans forward, his T-shirt crumpling at the waist. “You look so high.”

What’s being high like: stammering, heart racing? Maybe this is it. Wavy dark hair skims his cheekbones. Dark eyes. Dark soul? Writes beautiful, sad music, plays it for talent shows, musicals. He has a way of looking at people like they’re special. Like Joy does. Whenever I see him, I want to ask if he’s okay.

“I thought you were a freshman.” He gestures at the pamphlets.

“Sophomore. Or, I was. I’m a junior now, technically.” I wince.

He taps his cigarette on the edge of the bench. His fingers are calloused. “Applying extra-extra early decision?”

“Principal Eastman wants me to look to the future.” I. Sound. So. Ridiculous.

“He probably just wanted to look down your shirt.” He smirks. A bad-boy smile, like the twenty-five-year-old actors who think they can play seventeen-year-old boys in teen movies. “Kidding. A guy with a telescope couldn’t get a glimpse down there.” He holds out a cigarette. “Want one?”

“No, thank you.” Should have said yes. Was he just looking at my chest? I’m wearing two sports bras. “Does Principal Eastman look down shirts?”

“Yeah, he’s a pedo.” He shifts his guitar onto his other leg. “But some girls here are thirsty for it.”

Is he joking? Do I joke back?

“If that’s what you’re into, wear, like, a button-down. Pop the top two before he calls you into his office. Easy.” He breathes smoke and fire. “You freshman and sophomore girls. Half of you have no clue. Makes a guy wanna look out for you.”

Sometimes I think everyone but me had a secret meeting about the way people are supposed to talk.

“Kidding.” He coughs out an acrid smell. His eyes are foggy and rimmed with red. Meaning any mistakes I make might be ones he’ll forget.

“Eastman’s the worst,” I venture. “I bet he hides in the girls’ bathroom on his lunch break.”

He snorts so hard his guitar slides off his lap and thuds against the bench. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have the world’s only funny underclassmen.”

I made him laugh!

“Monroe, right?” He’s looking at me. Finally.

“Morris. Grace Morris.”

“Oh yeah, right. One of the twins. The smart one and the obnoxious one. Which one are you again?”

I nervous-giggle. Joy hates that habit. I don’t know how to stop.

“Kidding. You’re supposed to be brilliant, right? Everyone else at this school is so fucking stupid.” He yanks a book out of his bag. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. “Have you read this? I’m halfway through.”

It’s a terrible book.

“We should talk philosophy sometime. I can never find anyone who can keep up with me.”

I have this fantasy where I finally ask if he’s okay. Fantasy Adam says, “Nobody’s asked me that in years. Thank you. No. I’m not okay.” I say, “Me neither.” And he says, “Maybe we can be not okay together.”

God, I’m stupid.

In real life, he tilts his head to the side. Smirks. “You know, just from a guy’s perspective, you’d be cuter with less makeup.”

Mornings: makeup, two hours.

“I, uh . . .”

“Don’t cover up your face,” he says. “You should relax. Be more like your sister. She truly does not give a fuck.” He laughs and adds quickly, “But not too much like her.”

I die a little inside.

That night, Joy fights with Mom and Dad.

She cries like she lives, never making the sound of herself smaller. It fills the house. Downstairs: Dad banging dishes against the sink. Mom banging the vacuum against the floor. They always clean the house after they fight with her. But she stains.

If I roll this pencil between my fingers thirteen times before Mom stops vacuuming, Joy’ll stop crying.

The vacuum whirs off immediately.

I should study. I should go for a run. Half an hour and I can burn three hundred calories. That cancels out lunch.

Downstairs: Mom, Dad, talking. We can always hear what they say in the living room. Either they don’t realize, they don’t care, or they want us to hear everything.

“I just don’t get why she doesn’t try as hard as Grace,” Mom’s saying.

I slip out into the hallway and through Joy’s door.

Her room is inside out. She saves everything: birthday cards, handmade presents from first grade, memories scattered in the open. A monument to how dorky I used to be. Even stupider than I am now. Everything triggers a