Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,47

I’m talking about.

“Are you too young for this?”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. This. Alcohol. Boys. The sentence ‘It’s just sex.’”

“Joy. We’re the same age.”

“I’m eighteen minutes older,” she says, but she’s younger than me. She always has been. Just like she’s taller than me, even though we’re the same height.

“Nothing’s really going to happen,” I tell her. Am I lying? I can make things happen, I’ve discovered. I could make this happen. A boy has already seen me naked. Now I could try it with the right boy.

Her breathing quiets. “I’m glad we’re talking like this again. Like we used to.”

My heart melts. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy with school.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been with Nov so much. You should hang out with her alone sometime. You need more friends beside me. So you don’t get lonely.”

In grocery stores, in the doctor’s office, everyone used to say to us when we were kids: “Well, they’ll never be lonely!”

But maybe being lonely just means that you get to fall in love with other lonely people.

Joy’s watching me. I smile. “How could I be lonely when I have you?”

“I know I’m not always a good listener. And I do things without thinking.”

“I’m not always a good talker,” I reassure her. “And it’s because of you that Adam paid any attention to me. So don’t feel bad.”

She grins proudly. Then it falters. “You’re sure Cassius is going to be there tonight?”

“Pretty sure. Cassius is always there. They’re best friends.”

“Do you know how many people are going?”

“No. But I mean, even if it’s not that many, he said he was having a big party for his birthday after school starts. I’m going. You can come.”

There’s such a difference between We should go and I’m going, you can come.

“Sounds like Adam Gordon wants you at all his events.” She leaps up. Punches the air a few times. “Let’s take you to the lovebird.”

I stand up. She opens the window. Glances at me uncertainly. I haven’t touched that tree since I fell when I was little. She climbs out first, her dress bunched high on her hips. Then she’s sitting on the branch, twigs in her hair. She’s still a kid, gangly. In my makeup. Sometimes I forget we are the same age.

“I’ll catch you if you fall,” she says uncertainly.

I edge out onto the tree, bark scraping my arms. My heart shivers in my throat. All the nothingness beneath me. She reaches for me, but I don’t take her hand. I don’t need her. I’m going to stop myself from falling on my own.

Adam’s house is a shrine to his grandfather.

Memorabilia everywhere. Vintage guitars. Empty liquor bottles, too, half hidden in cabinets. A classic rock museum turned midlife crisis hovel. Not a single photo of Adam. It’s cold, too big, empty, even with the clutter. I don’t like to think of him growing up here.

He hugs me at the door. “Grace!” Barely acknowledges Joy. She shifts. She’s not used to disappearing. It’s my turn to have solid outlines.

“We left our bikes on the lawn,” I say.

“Ben’ll give you a ride home later.” The word later has a special tilt to it that I don’t understand.

We walk down to the basement. There’s a foosball table, old Godzilla movie posters, an abused leather couch. Cassius is on the floor with his knees to his broad chest, intently watching an animal documentary that no one else is paying attention to. The shapes on the skin of his neck disappear into his sweatshirt. Kennedy-Ben-Sarah are playing Cards Against Humanity. Two random seniors bend over a coffee table, rolling weed into cigarette paper. Three others shout over a video game on a second TV.

Joy sticks close behind me. Hoping I’ll keep her visible, maybe. She shrugs at me. I shrug back. I don’t know what I was hoping for.

Adam mixes Coke and something else in a tall glass that says Guinness. He hands it to me. I hand it to Joy. He frowns and makes me a new one. I want to brush his hair out of his eyes.

Joy makes silly faces at me when he’s not looking. We squish together on the carpet while the seniors ignore us. We’re overdressed. Adam plucks softly at his guitar strings, in the middle of everything. We finish our drinks.

“I’m getting more, I don’t care. I can’t be sober right now,” Joy whispers, like she’s an expert at not being sober. She retrieves the bottle from beside the foosball table.

Cassius finally looks away from