Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,69

joint?”

“We can roll one upstairs,” says a girl.

The guitar slides to the grass as he stands, wobbling a little. He hasn’t changed like me. He looks exactly the same.

The girls climb the porch first and I watch him study the length of their shorts, almost clinically, before following.

I wander onto the back lawn, gulping lungfuls of night breeze.

His guitar’s in the wet grass. The wood’s pretty, swirly, expensive, like coffin wood. I pick up a cup on the ground and sniff it. Whatever type of alcohol it is, it’s not mixed with anything. I dump it all over his guitar.

That’s almost the end of it, except that he left his cigarette lighter.

I look around. Nobody at the kitchen window. In one of the upper bedrooms, a light comes on and several outlines crowd together. He’s taller than the others. He talks with his hands.

I’m so tired.

I bend down and pick up the lighter, flick it on, and stare at the flame for a moment before I touch it to the guitar. The fire catches so quickly that I stagger back. Immediately, the wood warps black, flashing in the gold and orange glow.

I drop the lighter, then wind back through the house, curving away from drunken limbs. Once I’m outside, I walk in the coldest puddles.

“Grace, wait!”

It’s meant to be a shout, but Cassius’s voice is too soft. I don’t get very far before he’s behind me in the road, still in his sweatshirt even though it’s a summer night, all the patterns on his skin hidden.

I force myself to calm down. He’s not going to do anything to me. It’s Cassius.

Unless he was scheming with his best friend this whole time. Maybe that’s why he wanted to paint me. Maybe they laughed about it together. Nightmares swirl together in my head.

“I thought I saw you leaving. . . .” he says uncertainly, his hands in his pockets. “Can I walk you home?”

Boys always think silence means yes.

We walk in the road. No cars this late. If they do come, maybe I won’t dodge fast enough. How easy is it to die? Sometimes it seems really easy, and then sometimes it seems unreasonably hard.

“I’m sorry you didn’t like the painting.” He’s looking at the stars, shoulders hunched sadly.

“I don’t know why I did that,” I burst out. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says.

None of this is okay.

“Were you at that party to see Adam?” he asks. My stomach turns, but he keeps talking, oblivious. “He’s the one who put it together. I told him my parents would be gone for the weekend. He wanted to practice throwing a bigger party, since his birthday party’s coming up, I mean. I didn’t really expect it to be so big.”

My skin feels like paper, like it’s not holding me together very well at all.

“I was gonna try not to bring up that night,” he says after a minute. “Adam said everything went fine, that I shouldn’t be weird about it, but I feel weird about it.”

One step in front of the other. Listen to the gravel beneath my feet. I am a collection of small practiced movements.

“I hope . . . I, um,” he starts. “I hope . . .”

“Do you love him?” I ask. “Like in a best friend way?”

He looks confused. “Who?”

“Adam. Do you care about him, as a person?”

“Um,” he says. “Yeah, for sure. He’s the reason I have friends at this school. I know he can be a jerk—sorry—but I owe him.”

“Did he ask you to ask me if you could paint me?”

He stops in the road. “You mean as some wingman thing? No. Painting someone is . . . very personal for me. It’s a thing I want to do with some people, and not other people, and I don’t know why, but I definitely wouldn’t do it for him.”

The problem with good liars is that you can’t tell that they are. The only safe people are the ones who lie badly to your face. At least then you can tell.

“Have you guys talked?” he asks.

“No.” The word burns.

“Joy and I haven’t talked.” He nudges a bottle cap aside with his foot. Joy would have kicked it. “I was worried you were mad that I hadn’t called her. Adam said I wasn’t supposed to.”

I shrug. I have nothing to give him.

“Is it okay if I tell you something that I probably wouldn’t tell you if I wasn’t drunk?”

He’s going to tell me no matter what. Sweat collects along his