Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,66

wasn’t. Mostly. Kind of.” He groans. “Can I fix this?”

“We’re temporary, right? Convenience friends,” I stammer. “You’re supposed to go back to Indiana and then we never talk again.”

“You weren’t ever going to talk to me again?” He looks so sad.

I should have stayed away from him.

“You weren’t supposed to be part of my real life,” I try to explain. “Like a—a distraction.”

“A distraction?” He steps back. Water from his hair runs into his eyes.

I’m making it worse. “I have to go.”

“Don’t. You’ll get soaked.”

He reaches out, but I’m already slipping away into the rain.

People shouldn’t have to go to school when every particle of them is made of anxiety, when they haven’t slept and the halls are a minefield of people they can’t face. But if I said that to my parents, they’d tell me to stop being dramatic.

I’m just not going to think about him ever again. Easy.

Back to the avoiding game. The next day, I avoid Levi by skipping American History. I avoid November by eating lunch in the bathroom. Time passes fast when you’re running from everyone.

But time stops to a dead halt after the final bell. When I’m gearing up to go find November and tell her everything, I open my locker and a note falls out to the floor.

Joy Morris—

Four years ago, Adam Gordon sexually assaulted November Roseby. I want you to tell the whole school.

Some may not believe you, but enough will. Don’t you think everyone deserves to know what he was capable of?

I grip the note until the edges tear. Then I let out a choked laugh, so loud that Mr. Fennis sticks his head into the hallway and shushes me. I ignore him, balling the note in my fist.

Grace was wrong. November isn’t the blackmailer.

My laugh turns to a shuddering exhale. I lean hard against my locker.

The blackmailer isn’t somebody I love. I don’t have to believe that somebody I love could do this to me.

I don’t care if this goes on forever. I deserve that. But November’s not mad at me and that’s all that matters.

I find her alone in the empty computer lab, earbuds slung around her neck, editing the layout of next week’s newspaper. It takes her a second to notice me. She turns, but I’m talking even before I reach her.

“I’ve been a shitty friend, Nov,” I blurt. “And it’s probably shitty of me to do this now. But Grace told me everything. I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want me to know.”

She sits in total silence for a long time, shock unfolding on her face.

“If you ever need . . . to talk, or anything . . .” I cringe. “November?”

She unwinds the earbuds from her neck, places them on the keyboard.

“I should have told you,” she says definitively.

“It’s okay.”

“No one’s ever looked up to me before like you. I didn’t want to ruin it.” She smiles, but it wavers.

My throat closes. “I met Adam my freshman year. I was so used to my dad acting like I was this idiot, and then Adam told me I was smart. It was stupid.”

I will never, ever be sad he’s dead.

“I thought people would think I was lying. So I didn’t say anything. But feelings have to go somewhere, you know? They follow the path of least resistance. Some people turn it on others, I turned it on myself.”

She sets her jaw, exhales, and pushes back her sleeve. Scars, underneath the rubber bands. Thin neat lines of them.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s fine now,” she says quickly. “Every time I get the urge to self-harm, I put a rubber band on my wrist. I just wanted to see some physical evidence that something was wrong. Nobody could see something was wrong.”

Crying would definitely be one of the top ten useless things to do right now.

“My dad noticed eventually. You would have thought I’d done it just to piss him off, the way he reacted.” Her voice darkens. “He called it a suicide attempt, had me sent to this mental health place. He was doing it as a punishment, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“After what happened to Grace, I didn’t . . .” She shuts her eyes. “I didn’t want you to think it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t,” I say urgently. “I wouldn’t have.”

“If I’d told you, she never would’ve gotten close to him.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” I keep my voice steady. “It was mine.”

Her eyes change. “Joy—”

“I