Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,22
I saved you. Remember that time when we were little and I made you climb that tree outside my window? You fell and I didn’t grab you and you sprained your ankle? But I grabbed you this time. Right out of the air. Whoosh!”
“How long do you think it would take to hit the bottom?” I ask.
“A million years. Don’t ask me that.” She stumbles, collapses drunkenly against my side. “Grace. I love you sooo much. Did you know that? You are just. Sooo perfect. Oh my God.”
My sister is an idiot and I love her.
She fumbles with my hands, examining them in the dark. Splaying them out on the blanket. “You have to stop biting your nails.”
“I hate the quarry,” November says suddenly. I forgot about her.
Joy abandons my fingers. “Because Adam lives up there?”
“No. He never comes down here.”
How does she know that? She catches me staring.
“Guys,” Joy says. “Guys. I’m so drunk. I’m hallucinating that Cassius just showed up.”
I follow her pointing finger. Cassius Somerset is hanging back in the tree shadows, the strange patterns on his skin silver in the moonlight. Did he come down from Adam’s house? Is Adam here, too? But no one else is moving in the trees.
“Hey, friends,” he says. Even though none of us are his friends.
“Holy shit.” Joy finger-combs her hair. Her hand gets tangled in the mess. “Hi. Hello. Did you hear us?”
He flinches at her drunk shouting. “I was leaving Adam’s. I heard a scream.”
“That was me! Wow! You should definitely hang out with us for a while, probably. We have whiskey. Can he drink your whiskey, Nov?”
“Cassius, I would be utterly delighted if you would come and drink my whiskey so there’s less for this fool.” November sighs.
He just stands there in the shadows, hands in his pockets.
Joy’s wobbling. “Okay. I have to pee. Grace. Come with me.”
She grabs my arm, not November’s. She drags me away into the woods. Trees close over our heads and the night fills with crunching as she splinters every branch.
“Do you think we’re far enough away where he won’t hear any splashing?” she whisper-yells after a minute.
“Try to pee quietly?”
“How am I supposed to control the volume of my piss hitting the ground, Grace?” And then she’s giggling frantically in dark, fumbling. I wait, facing the other way. Grinning in the dark.
“I need your help,” she slurs as soon as she’s done. “Cassius . . . is . . . beautiful and perfect, and I . . . am . . . drunk, and I love him, and I love you.”
“Do you even know him?” I ask.
“I know that he’s beautiful and perfect.” Joy hiccups. “Help.”
She’s asking for my advice. “Just . . . be nice.”
“Nice,” she repeats. “Right.”
We struggle back through the trees to our blanket. Cassius and November are sitting slightly apart. Talking quietly. They stop when they see us.
“Hello,” Joy declares. About to be nice.
Instead, she vomits absolutely everywhere.
November springs up, businesslike, seizing her arm. Stabilizing her. I should be doing it, but I’m frozen. I didn’t expect this. Neither did Joy, because she’s looking openmouthed at the puke on her shirt like someone else put it there.
“All righty then,” November says wearily. “It has been a night. Nice talking to you for the first time, Cassius.”
Joy moans. Her face glows pale. “I don’t wanna go yet. Cassius came all this way. He walked forever.”
“Everyone walks everywhere here,” November mutters.
Cassius folds his knees to his chest, pulls his sweatshirt sleeves over the patchy skin on his hands. Trying to make himself smaller. I can tell because I do the same thing. Joy takes up a lot of space. It’s hard to fit when she’s around.
“I’m at least taking you to my car to change. I have clean gym clothes in the back.” November disappears with my sister into the woods. And I’m alone with the guy Joy has sex dreams about.
He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy anyone would have sex dreams about. He seems like the kind of guy people should be tucking into bed.
“You and November never talked before?” I’m not usually the one to break a silence.
“Not really . . . we were just talking about—it’s funny—we were just talking about how we both resented how everyone thought we’d be friends, since there aren’t a whole lot of black kids at Stanwick. So we avoided each other. But it turns out she’s cool . . .”
Everything he says trails off at the ends. Like