Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,1

seniors. A couple of other juniors like me. Adam’s people. I sit on the carpet by the door.

“We met at summer camp when we were kids.” Kennedy stuffs used tissues into her sweater pocket. “No one should ever die if you remember what they looked like when they were seven years old.”

Sarah shifts, silky blond hair hiding her eyes. Flashes of last night: she and Kennedy were barefoot on the lawn, dancing together by the bonfire. But I was looking for Adam, so I went inside, pushed through music and bodies, deeper into the big slanted house on the hill. Passing the bar, I snatched a bottle of Four Roses bourbon for bravery. And . . .

Blurry dreams. This morning, in my bed, shoes still on, hair knotted, cotton mouthed.

And the guy I’d looked for, wanted gone—

“This is hard for you all. Very hard.” Ms. Bell’s pale under the burst of purple in her scarf, and the glass lily on a ribbon around her neck is orange like the hair she shares with Pres. She catches my eye, smiles small and sad. I’m special to her. The only one who hangs out with her son.

She’ll hate me when she hears. But I gotta tell. My mouth’s novocaine numb. I open it anyway. “I’m—”

But the door opens faster. Cassius Somerset—Adam’s best friend—stands in the doorway and looks around. He has vitiligo, so his skin’s like a map, continents breaking up the brown on his arms, neck, wide face. His hair’s buzzed across his forehead in a ruler-sharp line. He’s a broad person, but he’s always trying to take up less space. There’s a mark on his hip, hidden now, like a comet trailing stars down his thigh. I think I’m the only one who knows about that.

Amazing how someone’s presence can firebomb your skin, right up until it doesn’t anymore.

He turns, sees me. He has a black eye. Cassius, president of the Art Club, vegetarian who speaks so quietly they turned the mic up extra loud during his valedictorian speech to the freshmen this year, has a black eye.

He gazes at me for a minute, shell-shocked. He walks back out of the room.

Kennedy rakes her fingers through her hair, whispers to Sarah. I swear everyone can sense it when two people’ve had sex. Like a ghost in the air.

But who cares about that now?

“I’m sorry,” I say aloud, suddenly, crackly, useless.

It’s weird, being the only one who knows what I’m apologizing for.

I’m not letting myself hide in the bathroom anymore.

Since the beginning of school last month, the cafeteria’s been a war zone for me. I looked around corners with a mirror. Adam was a land mine, winning the battle he didn’t even know was happening.

Now I’ve won, I guess.

I sit at the table closest to the garbage cans and do the bravest thing I’ve done all day: I check my phone.

Twenty texts from Grace.

It wouldn’t be twenty if it were just about our fight last night. She’s heard.

I sneak a gulp from the minibottle of Jägermeister in my backpack, stolen from the sample collection Dad has. It’s an art—drinking enough that you can breathe again but not so much that people notice. One I’ve perfected in the last month. The alcohol burns my throat. It burned last night, too, on the way to the party, but it wouldn’t have been enough to make me forget. What I drank after I got there was enough.

November sits down across from me, and I ram the bottle back into my bag. She’s eight inches shorter than me, but somehow way taller. Her hair’s in a zillion braids, half of them green. She probably wondered why I stopped begging her to dye mine, halfway through the summer.

“You okay?” she asks immediately.

“I’m always okay,” I say without thinking.

She toys with her rubber bands. She’s never explained why, but she always has at least ten on each wrist. “So. Adam. Damn.”

Everything she and I did together over the summer feels like a movie I watched about someone else. The silence between you and someone you’re supposed to love can get bigger and bigger, both of you feeding it, until you can barely see the person on the other side. And you wonder how long it’s been since you looked.

“I went to his birthday party,” I force out. “Got sorta wasted. I don’t remember anything after his front door.”

Her eyes widen. “Why the hell did you go? I told you to keep away from him.”

People lie all the