Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,68

the country and we’ll never see him at school again,” she says.

I haven’t told her yet that I’m not coming back to school. I haven’t told her about breaking into Adam’s house, either. If I’m silent, she’ll fill the empty space with words. She’s afraid of my silence.

“He’ll graduate early,” she says to the window. “He’ll do one of those year-abroad programs.”

I pull the blanket up to my neck and go still until she thinks I’m asleep.

Then, hours later, when she’s asleep in her own room, I leave. Walking at night means the dreams can’t find me. That he can’t find me. Joy’s always so proud of herself for climbing out her window, but it’s just as easy to use the front door.

It rained earlier, and my heels catch in puddles on the side of the road. This late, I can walk as far as I want and nobody will see me.

I wonder if November has the dreams. She hasn’t talked to me since our night at his house. Which is fine. I don’t have anything else to say to her.

One foot in front of the other. Mindless movement, for the rest of my life. That’s all I want. Like a zombie.

Music thumps halfway down the street. It’s coming from Cassius’s house, where he once painted a girl who looked like me. I step closer. I’m a shadow watching normal people, all their details brightly lit up, making them garish, frightening. They spill onto the lawn and lounge against the porch.

I dart through his front door. I want to see the finished painting.

I half slip in a spilled drink as I wander through the throngs. His parents aren’t home. I don’t see Cassius anywhere. Somebody says something to me, but I trickle away like water. I recognize a few people, sophomores, juniors, but they’re as distant in memory as characters from cartoons Joy and I watched when we were ten.

Did Cassius invite his musician best friend to this end-of-summer party?

Someone bumps into me, and I stumble into the basement door. It’s closed. He probably didn’t want all these drunk people messing with his precious art.

I open the door and slip into the dark.

Nobody notices anything I do, these days.

I turn on a light. It’s too bright, so I turn it off again, using my phone flashlight instead. His paintings on the walls have changed. Some of the clouds are more ominous now, darker, pouring rain over the naked people floating beneath them.

It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for. The painting is finished. It’s set up on an easel right in the middle of the room, like it’s the one he’s most proud of.

There are plants growing out of her. Vines and flowers. Most just buds, some blossoming, some barely poking out of her skin. She’s gazing straight up and there’s a look in her eyes like she sees something beautiful in the distance, just out of reach.

I grab the painting and try to tear it, but it’s canvas, and I’m not strong enough. I try to punch through it instead, hitting it so the paint flakes and cracks, and then I throw it to the floor and grind my heel into it.

“Grace?”

That name belongs to the girl in the ruined painting. She can keep it.

“Grace, what are you doing here?” It’s Cassius, standing on the stairs. He turns on the light. Suddenly everything in the room is too sharp. Like knives.

“My painting,” he says, shocked.

“I’m sorry, I—” I choke on my apology, on his sadness and confusion. I shove past him, run up the stairs, back into the real world. I have to get away. I can’t look at him and see an old version of myself reflected in his eyes.

I head for the front door, but Cat and my old friends are standing in front of it. I don’t want to hear them call my name. I don’t want to know if they’d bother to say it or not.

I cross the living room to the kitchen and stare out the open window, my heart pounding. The backyard is much smaller than the front, and fenced in. Someone’s arranged a circle of old tires for people to sit on. Two girls, a guy, and—

Him.

“Let me try,” one of the girls says, reaching for the guitar balanced on his lap. “I took lessons.”

“Yeah, uh, no,” he slurs. “This thing cost like two grand. My hands only.”

To them, he’s normal. Person shaped.

He lights a cigarette. “Anyone got a