Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,25

your mom without feeling guilty.

“How’s Pres? He good?” she asks.

“Fine,” I say all quick. “Doing homework.”

“Every single student comes to me with their feelings except my son.” She takes out a sleeve of Thin Mints, shakes out three, rolls the rest to me. “I doubt there’s anyone who’s not feelin’ a bit shaken right now. Adam’s death, now this. Whoever it was ought to have just reported those photographs to the police.”

I crumble the edge of a cookie in my fingers. “Maybe they wanted to humiliate Eastman.”

“That’s exactly what that man deserves, but not the girl. I have a meeting with her family tomorrow. Don’t imagine she’ll be comin’ back to school right away.”

There was a movie Grace and me watched once, about a man who accidentally killed anybody who got near him thanks to a lab experiment. He spent the whole movie running around oblivious, everyone within a mile falling over dead. If he’d just stayed still, they would have been fine.

“Good men are hard to find.” She dunks a tea bag in her mug, splashes the counter. “Sometimes I think about findin’ a father figure for Pres, and sometimes I think, screw it. The last one he had was no great shakes. I ask you, what does it tell a small boy when his own father doesn’t want him?”

Everyone in school trusts Ms. Bell because she talks to us like we’re people, not kids. She sucks in a deep breath and pushes it out again. “Sorry. Something like today makes you so mad, you start getting mad about everything else in the world there is to be mad about. How are you doing, Joy?”

I want to bury my face in her shoulder. But all I say is “I’m okay.”

She nods sadly. “Were you at Adam Gordon’s birthday party?”

It doesn’t feel safe to say yes or no, but she keeps talking so I don’t have to answer.

“You know, I’m holding a group counseling meeting next week, for everybody who went. You’re welcome to join.”

Preston said the blackmailer was probably at the party. If I locked eyes with him at this meeting, would he stutter, slip up?

“Do you remember the first time you came over here? Pres made me hide all the pictures of him.” Ms. Bell listens so much that when it’s her turn to talk, she never stops. “You picked him up a Diet Pepsi, and the can sat on his dresser for weeks. When I tossed it, he moped all day. He’d saved it because you gave it to him.”

I’ve dragged Pres into this mess with me.

“A forty-year-old woman can’t smack a bully when he’s a teenager, can she? And she shouldn’t want to. And I officially do not condone violence, but thanks for sticking up for Pres the other day. You’re a good girl.”

I push my knee into the table leg until it throbs.

My phone buzzes and I pull it out of my back pocket. It’s Mom.

When R U coming home? Could use U to help with Grace.

My blood freezes. What does that mean? I bolt up. “I have to go.”

“If you need a ride—”

But I’m already out the door, not thinking, biking home, twice as fast as I did to Preston’s. They’ve never needed help with her. Grace never needs help. Did the blackmailer break in through my window, did he hurt her—

When I get home, aching, sweating, Mom’s on the porch, her head in her hands. She attempted to hide that she was crying with makeup, but it didn’t work.

“What’s wrong with Grace? Where’s Dad?” I pant.

“Your father’s at work.” She fixes a smile on her face. “I tried to talk to her about maybe going back to school. I’m not used to fighting with her.”

Only with me.

“You girls talk about everything.” She holds open the door for me, an apology in her eyes.

I nod and go inside. Everything’s meticulously clean in Grace’s room, except her desk lamp, which I painted for her at arts and crafts camp when we were ten. It’s one of the only sentimental things she’s kept. Now it’s cracked in two.

“The fight wasn’t a big deal. Honestly,” she says, curled in bed, before I even open my mouth. “It’s just the way she looks at me. Like she’s searching for someone else. Some other version, smarter, prettier . . .”

“That’s not true.”

“Don’t lie.” She muffles herself with the blanket. “She’s sick of having me around. I’m sick of having me around.”

“Nobody’s sick of you. They’re scared you’re a hermit