Free Please Don't Tell by Laura Tims Page B

the woods. Trees close over our heads and the night fills with crunching as she splinters every branch.
    â€œDo you think we’re far enough away where he won’t hear any splashing?” she whisper-yells after a minute.
    â€œTry to pee quietly?”
    â€œHow am I supposed to control the volume of my piss hitting the ground, Grace?” And then she’s giggling frantically in dark, fumbling. I wait, facing the other way. Grinning in the dark.
    â€œI need your help,” she slurs as soon as she’s done. “Cassius . . . is . . . beautiful and perfect, and I . . . am . . . drunk, and I love him, and I love you.”
    â€œDo you even know him?” I ask.
    â€œI know that he’s beautiful and perfect.” Joy hiccups. “Help.”
    She’s asking for my advice. “Just . . . be nice.”
    â€œNice,” she repeats. “Right.”
    We struggle back through the trees to our blanket. Cassius and November are sitting slightly apart. Talking quietly. They stop when they see us.
    â€œHello,” Joy declares. About to be nice.
    Instead, she vomits absolutely everywhere.
    November springs up, businesslike, seizing her arm. Stabilizing her. I should be doing it, but I’m frozen. I didn’t expect this. Neither did Joy, because she’s looking openmouthed at the puke on her shirt like someone else put it there.
    â€œAll righty then,” November says wearily. “It has been a night. Nice talking to you for the first time, Cassius.”
    Joy moans. Her face glows pale. “I don’t wanna go yet. Cassius came all this way. He walked forever .”
    â€œEveryone walks everywhere here,” November mutters.
    Cassius folds his knees to his chest, pulls his sweatshirt sleeves over the patchy skin on his hands. Trying to make himself smaller. I can tell because I do the same thing. Joy takes up a lot of space. It’s hard to fit when she’s around.
    â€œI’m at least taking you to my car to change. I have clean gym clothes in the back.” November disappears with my sister into the woods. And I’m alone with the guy Joy has sex dreams about.
    He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy anyone would havesex dreams about. He seems like the kind of guy people should be tucking into bed.
    â€œYou and November never talked before?” I’m not usually the one to break a silence.
    â€œNot really . . . we were just talking about—it’s funny—we were just talking about how we both resented how everyone thought we’d be friends, since there aren’t a whole lot of black kids at Stanwick. So we avoided each other. But it turns out she’s cool . . .”
    Everything he says trails off at the ends. Like periods are too harsh for him. If Joy’s words fly out of her, and I have to pry mine out, his drift from him like summer clouds. He stares dreamily at the moon, tapping the bottle of whiskey with his pinkie. His fingernails are curved and delicate.
    Awkwardness stacks up, bricks of it. Does he expect me to say something? But he’s not looking at me. He’s lost in his own thoughts. It’s hard not to feel soft toward somebody when you watch him watch the sky.
    After a while, the silence stops being awkward.
    â€œThe quarry creeps me out,” he says eventually. “It’s supposed to be this romantic place . . . but it’s just evidence of people screwing up the earth for their own gain.”
    It always catches me off guard when someone says something out loud that I was thinking. I always assume nobody else has the thoughts I have.
    â€œI don’t like that you can’t see the bottom at night,” I say.
    â€œMe neither.”
    And suddenly I realize I’m talking casually with Cassius Somerset. Something Joy can’t do.
    â€œIt feels like, um,” I try. “Like it’s pulling at me.”
    â€œSame.” He nods, and that’s it. He’s not always