Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,86

email came right after she found out about Levi . . .

Shut down. Turn off. Don’t look. Nothing’s there.

I need to tell Levi the truth anyway. I need to scare him so badly he won’t try to stay in contact with me once he moves. He’ll stay in Indiana. Stay safe.

Mom’s waiting. But I can’t find anything to offer her.

“All right. I get it. ‘Stop rambling, Mom.’” She sighs, disappointed. “I’ll give you a ride wherever you need to go.”

She drops me off at the fair.

They have it every year in the middle school field, the one where we got high. I’ve come here, almost every year, with my sister. Booths are arranged on the field, blazing white against the grass that’s still green, despite the cold air. The air smells like onion rings. Everyone’s dressed up. Monsters and mummies and ghosts. You can’t see anyone’s face.

I stand by the ticket booth until he finds me.

He lights up when he sees me, that sudden bright smile. He’s freshly shaven, his clothes ironed, a scarf around his neck. There’s a scabby bruise on his forehead.

I lose control, just for a second, but then I win it back.

“I love the costume,” he says, jogging toward me.

“My costume?” His face is so open and good. He is so good.

“You’re Grace, right?”

I killed your half brother.

“I considered dressing up,” he says. “But then I was like, what if we take a selfie, and it’s the only picture we have together, and months later you think about flying out to visit me, and then you look at that picture and you’re like, I am not dropping ticket fare on some asshole who can’t even pull off a David Bowie wig.”

He never had to be Adam’s Levi. He’s Levi’s Levi, all the way.

“Hey.” He takes my hand. “You okay?”

“Just tired. A little sick.”

Tired. Sick. The best ways to explain everything away.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asks worriedly. “Maybe you should be in bed. You can rest, I’ll pick up some medicine and juice and whatever. Are you a movie person or a book person when you’re sick? I can go to the library.”

I pushed your half brother into a quarry.

I pushed your half brother, and he fell into a quarry.

How different are those sentences?

It doesn’t matter. The end result is the same. And it starts with I pushed.

“Sorry.” He blushes. “Mom Levi makes a stunning appearance.”

“I’m fine. How’s your forehead?” I structure the words, syllable by syllable, building them, little houses of normality that we can live in.

“My forehead’s fine. I got it checked out.”

“Good,” I tell him. “Let’s go.”

I want him to have a nice day before I tell him.

I spend as much money as I can—tickets to the pumpkin race, hot cider, rides. He tries to pay for things but I won’t let him. I focus all my energy on being normal. Normal is delicate.

Levi makes all his usual jokes, but he’s distracted today. He keeps starting to say something and then cutting himself off, muttering idiot under his breath.

Once I catch him looking at me sideways, a lingering gaze, and even though I pretend I don’t see it, there’s so much warmth that I feel it. But that warmth isn’t for me. It’s for Levi’s Joy, his imaginary girl. All I’m doing is stealing a taste of what would be hers.

Eventually he stops me by the craft booths. He’s sweating. “Joy, listen—”

“Oh, hello, Grace!” a woman calls.

Is she here? I twist to look, but instead I trip backward and shear the skin off my elbow on a stone somebody used to reinforce one of the craft booth poles.

“Oh, my goodness. I’m sorry. It’s Joy, of course, isn’t it? The hair threw me off.” It’s our sixth-grade teacher, Ms. H something, standing beside the craft booth filled with mountains of identical crocheted dolls.

She’s not here.

“I always do like seeing you and your sister. You two were never trouble like other twins. You never switched places,” Ms. H. chatters, oblivious to my bleeding elbow. “We had a little joke in the staff room—the one with her mouth open is Joy, the one with her mouth closed is Grace.”

Blood’s darker on stone.

“Oh dear.” Ms. H. peers over the dolls. “Are you all right?”

Levi pulls off his scarf and wraps it around my elbow. I stare at the dark spot I left on the rock.

“Did you hear me? Joy?” he says.

I struggle upright, draw him away from Ms. H.’s booth. “What do you want