Please Don't Tell - Laura Tims Page 0,2

time. I can lie. Just lie, Joy.

Instead I start crying.

She moves to the seat next to me and sighs. She presses me into her chest, arms solid wire. A hurricane couldn’t move her if she didn’t give it signed permission. It fucks me up that she thinks I’m sad for him.

“I’ll go with you,” she says.

For a second I think she’s talking about jail.

“To his funeral in a couple days. You know I hated that dick, but if you’re crying you need to go, and if you need to go, you can’t go alone.”

If I see his body, maybe I’ll remember what happened.

“Grace can come, too,” she says quietly. I don’t say anything. Empty noise fills me.

“I’m gonna head home. Principal Eastman said all absences are excused. Should take advantage.”

She’s already halfway up. “I’ll drive you. My car’s right at the front of the senior lot.”

“No.” I swallow. “I want to walk.”

Stanwick, New York, has two claims to fame—the birthplace of the seventies hit “Carry Me Down to the Quarry” and the fact that the Times named it the third most walkable small town in America, like small towns aren’t walkable by definition. I don’t know anyone who lives farther than two miles from the high school. Even the elementary school playground and the shopping center with the Regal Cinemas are just a twenty-minute walk from my house. The quarry, Adam’s house: half an hour. An easy trip, even in the dark, up that road past the tall black pines.

I’m halfway home when my phone goes off again and again. Preston, texting—he’s worried.

Did you ditch? I told you I need to talk to you.

I text him back: sorry. tell me now.

Okay, listen: I know why you couldn’t have done it. You left the party last night before Adam died. After you told me about your fight with Grace and quit replying, I figured it was where you went.

Was scared you’d do something bad. So I went to the party and looked everywhere (Everywhere) but you weren’t there. Adam was definitely alive at that point.

I know because he called me a fucking fag and made me leave.

I close my eyes and squeeze my phone until my knuckles ache.

I left the party before he died. It wasn’t me.

I’m not going to jail. I’m not capable of it after all. I’m normal, thank God, oh thank God.

u r the most incredible friend in the world thank u so much

I sprint the rest of the way, even though it kills my head. I’m awake now. Now that Adam’s dead, now that the universe is proving it does love us, maybe Grace’ll wake up, too.

Mom and Dad are still at work—Mom at her law office, Dad at the gym. The only sound at home is a thudding underneath the floorboards. It’s always there, like a heartbeat. She’s on the treadmill.

I slam downstairs to the exercise room. The walls yell at me, Dad’s posters: You Are as Strong as You Want to Be! Push Through It! Breathe! I’m just going to talk to my twin, not jump into a pool of sharks. The only reason my legs feel like this is because I ran here.

Some people jog with their limbs flailing in what Dad calls a disorganized unit. Grace is an organized unit. She runs clean, elbows in, flat-ironed hair twined up tight, bangs pinned to her scalp. We’re identical in the same way as a sketch and a painting. Same basic material, but only one of us is polished-perfect. Even in our fourth-grade gym relay races, she ran like that.

She hears me come in and hits a button. The treadmill slows but doesn’t stop. Sweat studs her forehead, her waterproof makeup flawless. “You get my texts?” The words heave out of her.

She doesn’t know about Adam. If she did, she’d be crying, laughing, hugging me, sliding back into her old self.

“He’s dead,” I blurt. “Adam. He fell into the quarry last night, bashed his head. Everyone always said how someone was going to fall in. It’s like the universe was listening to us.”

I stare at her with anticipation. She’ll get off the treadmill. We’ll step into the time machine, go back to the beginning of the summer, and redo everything.

“I heard,” she says. She doesn’t get off the treadmill.

“Do you feel . . . How do you feel?”

She shrugs. “Glad. I guess.” Thud, thud, thud. “Maybe I’m still taking it in.”

She’s paler, wider than me, and I swear her eyes are bluer, but we both