Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,37
to put me at ease. He should be talking to somebody else.
“I should probably ask why you hated him,” he says. “But I’m not sure if I want to know.”
“We just . . . didn’t get along,” I rasp.
“That’s not so bad, then. Although I don’t get it. You’re pretty cool.”
He looks shyly down at the table.
“Can I have your number?” he adds. “The homework for American History, I’ll text the answers to you. That way you won’t have to copy before class.”
Right. That’s all it is. I write my number on a napkin, slide it to him. He puts it in his bag along with his baseball cap.
“By the way.” He fiddles with the backpack zipper. “I don’t think you’re a mess. You do good things for other people.”
“Don’t think that about me.” I let it slip out.
“Why not?”
“It’s not true.” My face burns.
“When I think good things about other people, I try to say them out loud. People never know how liked they are, you know?”
“You don’t worry about sounding weird?”
“I operate under the assumption that I always sound weird. It’s the only way I ever have the courage to say anything.”
“What if it’s something you can’t fuck up, though?” I insist. “Something you have to say right.”
“I don’t think there’s a right way to say anything. If you know that, it takes the pressure off.”
He’s wrong. I just haven’t found the right words for Grace. I’m not smart enough.
“Man,” he says.
“What?”
“Talking with you is like . . . confusing. I always feel like you’re asking me about something specific but you’re not telling me what.”
“Always,” I repeat. “We haven’t talked all that much.”
“True. This is a personal failing of mine.”
“There are lots of people at Stanwick for you to talk to.”
“There are,” he says. “None of them are you.”
I’m sitting here doing this despite the blackmail. But he’s a force field that pushes all those things into the background. Right now, they seem unreal.
“Sorry. That was such a bad line. I do the ironic flirt thing. It’s annoying,” he says. I realize how many times he’s told me he’s annoying. “It’s just that I don’t have anybody here. It’s hard to make friends when everyone’s sad. You’re the closest one I’ve got and I’m trying to impress you by saying funny things and then weird semi-advice things and also creepy compliments and none of them are working very well.”
He talks so much. “You want to be my friend?”
“It’s very first grade. Will you be my friend, let’s do finger paints, et cetera.”
“Just don’t hit on me. That’s never ever going to work.” I swallow. “Not with you or anybody else. Not for me.”
“You are mysterious as hell,” he says. “And that’s not the only reason to talk to a girl.”
“I can be your stand-in friend,” I mumble. “Convenience friend. Until you meet someone better.”
“I hate that thing you just said,” he says softly.
I used to be so easy. Everything I said was easy. “Apparently I will also be your issues friend.”
“Everyone’s got issues.”
“Not my issues.” It’s an obnoxious thing to say. But normal people have normal issues. Normal people worry about sounding weird or that they’re annoying. If I start to think for real about my issues, I can’t breathe and then I have to stay up another night until my head’s too foggy to think, or drink until the world blurs.
“It’s okay, you know?” he says. “It’s okay.”
But I’m not distracted anymore. The blackmailer feels real again. I have to check the baby monitor and see if there are any new notes and . . . Breathe. “I have to go.”
“Gotcha. I’ll just sit here and wince thinking about all the annoying shit I just said.”
“You’re not annoying,” I tell him, and leave before he can smile at me again.
TEN
July 20
Grace
I NEVER REALIZED CASSIUS LIVED SO CLOSE. It only takes me a few minutes to walk to his house. It’s an unassuming blue one, tucked behind the hedge that the old neighbors used to trim early on Monday mornings, waking up the whole neighborhood. The new mailbox is brilliantly painted. Clouds and winding vines and birds of every hue. I never noticed before.
Joy doesn’t know I’m here. Today I’m taking a path she didn’t forge for me.
I’m on the porch, about to knock, when Cassius opens the front door.
“You were watching from the window?” I ask.
“Nah.” There’s a dab of paint in the middle of a moon-shaped patch of lighter skin on his forehead. “I just