Read Online Please Don't Tell by Laura Tims - Free Book Online

things to do.
    I’m early again. Preston’s always early, too, since he comes in with his mom. But I can’tfind him. The last place I look is the art room. Eastman hangs the decent still lifes and the landscapes upstairs, to show them off on Parent Night. Down here, it’s bloated self-portraits, angry scribbles, a painting of someone in a bath full of knives. Art that makes adults uncomfortable.
    Something catches my eye by the sinks. There’s a painting of the quarry. But it’s nothing romantic. It’s a wound in the earth, blood splashing the trees. I squint. The name in the corner: Cassius Somerset . His art’s always been upstairs. Pastels, clouds, not the kind of thing a murderer would paint. I used to sneak extra minutes in the hallway after school to look at them.
    This bloody quarry, it’s the kind of thing a murderer would paint.
    I’ve dreamed about that night with him twice, muscle memory, his skin setting fires on mine. My cheeks ache with how hard I was smiling and then I have to curl up, digging my thumbnail into my palm, half-moon marks, because it should be a nightmare, not a dream.
    Kissing someone doesn’t mean you know them.
    I wander out of the room. The buses’ll be here in a few minutes. Pres vanishes when other people are around.
    I turn the corner, nearly bang into Levi.
    â€œJoy.” His expression’s weird. “I was looking for you.”
    â€œI forgot your sweatshirt at home,” I say, tired. “I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
    â€œIt’s not that. I looked in my locker.”
    â€œFor your sweatshirt?”
    He holds up a grainy printer-paper black-and-white copy of—
    No. No, how ?
    â€œYou were so messed up yesterday, and I didn’t even know for sure what I saw . . .” He kind of hugs himself. “But this photo I found in my locker—it was in your bag yesterday, wasn’t it?”
    I wrench open my backpack, find the envelope, grope for the edges of the photos and count. One’s missing.
    Preston. He took one last night, he made copies. He was so afraid I wouldn’t do it.
    How long would it take to slip one through the slats of every locker in the school?
    â€œThis is the principal. Is this real?” Levi holds the copy away like it’s poisonous. “Did you put this in my locker?”
    I can’t speak, can’t move.
    Upstairs: the echo of the bus arrival stampede, everyone piling inside, shedding jackets. I start to walk, run. Have to find Savannah, have to get her out of the school—
    â€œJoy?” he asks, but I’m down the hall, fighting through the masses.
    And then a hundred locker doors open at once.

FIVE
June 30
Grace
    â€œ ONE STRAWBERRY SOFT SERVE, ONE VANILLA with rainbow sprinkles.” Joy glances at me eagerly.
    One childhood, two children: extra large ice-cream cones. Strawberry for her. Vanilla for me. “I don’t want one.”
    â€œGrace, seriously. Stop it. You’re not fat.”
    Which is something people always say to confirm that, yes, being fat is as bad as you think it is.
    â€œOne small,” I tell the girl behind the counter.
    We sit in our old corner booth. The red pleather is peeling now. There’s more gum wadded to the underside of the table. When we were little, Joy would steal the cherry on Dad’s sundae and hold it out to me, but I’d shake myhead. I could always tell when she wanted something for herself. Sometimes they’d give us free ice cream for never ever fighting.
    Joy bites into her ice cream with her front teeth. “Remember that time we were spitting sprinkles and nailed that bald dude’s head?”
    â€œThat was just something you were doing.”
    She doesn’t hear me. “And he wanted Dad’s phone number to get us in trouble, and I gave him the number for that sex hotline? This place is the best.”
    My ice cream’s melting. Dripping on my thumb. I tear