Made You Up (15 page)

T
he next morning, Miles actually showed up at my house. But I let seven o’clock come and go and asked Dad to drive me to school. He’d noticed something was wrong when I’d done a nosedive into my cereal without even checking it for trackers first. When he asked, I said that I hadn’t been able to sleep.

Still, as soon as we hit the school parking lot, I was wide awake.

He dropped me off at the main entrance. I did a perimeter check, took note of the men—
real or not real?—
standing on the roof, and shouldered my backpack. I got the overwhelming feeling that people were staring at my hair. When I looked around, no one was even paying attention to me.

Miles was at the lockers, standing in front of his open door, stuffing books in. When I opened my locker, a crisp fifty-dollar bill fluttered to my feet. I scooped it up and shoved it at Miles.

“I don’t want it.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Well, that’s too bad, because it’s yours.”

“I’m not taking it.” I threw the bill on top of his books.

“It’s fifty dollars. Surely you could use that for something.”

“Oh, I bet I could. Thing is, I won’t.”

“Why, because of a misplaced sense of morality?” Miles spat. “Trust me, Beaumont doesn’t deserve your guilt.”

“Who are you to decide that?” I tried very hard not to punch him in the face or kick him in the crotch. “You don’t like him because he’s a better person than you are. He doesn’t resort to stealing and sabotage just to get other people to listen to him.”

Miles looked like he was keeping himself from saying something nasty, but he shook his head and tucked the fifty into his back pocket.

As I walked to class, all I could think about was why I had ever wanted to kiss him. But then I heard the unearthly shrieks coming from Mr. Gunthrie’s room. A large group of students had formed outside the door. I shoved my way
through and jumped to the side in case of projectiles.

Celia was back, her fingers tangled in Stacey Burns’s ponytail, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her hair, once blond, was now grass green. Britney Carver stood on Stacey’s other side, trying to pry Celia’s fingers away. Celia swung forward and planted her fist in Stacey’s face with a crunch.

Claude Gunthrie tossed a few freshmen out of the doorway and sprinted into the room, grabbing Celia around the waist and lifting her off her feet.

“GET OFF ME! YOU FUCKERS DID THIS! I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!”

“We didn’t do it!” Stacey yelled back, blood dripping from her lip. “Let me go!”

“Someone grab her arms!” Claude grunted under Celia’s weight. “She’s gonna—AUGH—”

Celia elbowed him in the face.

“WHAT?” Theo shot up and lunged for the arm Celia had hit Claude with, looking prepared to rip it off.

“WHAT’S GOING ON? BREAK IT UP, ALL OF YOU!”

As if he had the hands of God, Mr. Gunthrie thundered into the room, took Celia’s collar in one hand and Stacey’s in the other, and lifted them off their feet. They both looked so thoroughly shocked when he put them back down, they
fell quiet and let each other go.

“CLAUDE, TAKE BURNS TO THE NURSE. HENDRICKS, YOU’RE COMING WITH ME.” Mr. Gunthrie paused a moment, sizing Celia up, and then said, “WHY DID YOU DYE YOUR HAIR GREEN?”

Celia began screaming again and Mr. Gunthrie had to lock his arms around her to drag her from the room. Stacey, clutching her jaw, marched out without Claude. Claude, sporting a bloody nose, followed. Theo managed to slip out of the room with him.

I sank into a seat. Had Stacey and Britney really dyed Celia’s hair green, or was it another one of Celia’s stunts to draw attention to herself?

The whispers got louder. Miles walked in, looking a little put off by the half-empty room and everyone in the wrong seats. He sat down without acknowledging me.

Cliff and Ria were back at Ria’s desk, snickering and glancing at the door every few seconds. Then Ria’s face went so red and Cliff began laughing so hard that I turned and looked, too.

Tucker hobbled into the room, bowlegged. Deep bags ringed his eyes and both hands scrubbed at his uncombed black hair. His tie hung loose around his collar and his shirt was untucked. He gingerly lowered himself into his seat, wincing as he settled, and began scratching himself all over.

I slid out of my seat and hurried across the room. “Are you okay?”

Are you okay?
is probably one of the top five stupidest questions ever. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s easier to use a tiny bit of common sense. However, in the current situation I could think of nothing better to say, because “
I am so sorry for putting IcyHot in your underwear
” is not the first thing you want to tell a person who does not, in fact, know that you were the one who put IcyHot in his underwear.

Tucker folded his hands in his lap as if he’d finally realized he looked like a rabid monkey. “No,” he said. “I woke up this morning and felt like I was on an acid trip. I’m itching all over and I don’t know why.” He leaned closer, shifting around uncomfortably in his seat. “And it feels like someone set my underwear on fire.”

I pressed my fist to my forehead, my stomach twisting itself into knots.

“I know what happened,” he began. I stared at him in horror, but he kept going. “Not the specifics, but I know what happened and why. And I know it was Richter. I know it was him, because he’s the only person who could get in and out of my house in the middle of the night without tripping the alarm. At least, he’s the only person who would do it for the sole purpose of screwing with
me
.”

Tucker shot a glare over my shoulder at Miles. “Look at him; he’s not even subtle about it. He’s staring right at us now.”

I didn’t look. “It can’t be that bad, right? What happened?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. My alarm went off an hour late, and everything’s been going wrong since. I got halfway to school and my car broke down.” Tucker paused for a moment to absentmindedly scratch his chest. “There was more than one person helping him, I think— Richter never did understand cars—probably someone in that club . . .”

Tucker stopped again.

“You didn’t . . . you didn’t help him, did you?”

Maybe it took me a second too long to answer. Maybe I looked in the wrong direction, or pulled a little too hard on my hair. But understanding washed over Tucker’s face before I could start blurting out denials. He turned his whole body away from me.

Why had I hesitated? Why hadn’t I done what I’d planned to do and told him everything?

B
y lunch, the story of what happened in Mr. Gunthrie’s class had spread to the entire school. Claude’s nose was swollen and bruised, and he winced every time he tried to talk. Stacey hadn’t returned from the nurse, but Britney walked around complaining about Celia’s bitchiness to anyone who would listen. I was 90 percent sure Celia herself had gotten suspended. Again.

I didn’t see Tucker for the rest of the day, and it made me hate myself. I mean, forget that there wouldn’t be another library trip to look up anything about McCoy, or any more conspiring at Finnegan’s. I should’ve asked Miles whose house it was. And I knew Miles had been at least a little right when he’d called me a hypocrite for saying it was wrong just because it was Tucker. It should’ve been wrong
no matter who it was. But I’d done it anyway.

By seventh period chemistry, the last thing I wanted to do was stand at a lab table for fifty minutes with Miles. I’d avoided talking to him all day, but the lab forced me to relay data about chemical reactions with certain types of metals so he could write it down. I don’t know why he didn’t just do it himself—the samples were easy enough to examine—but after every reaction he stood there looking at me, waiting for the result.

Apparently, this made him think I’d forgiven him. After class he followed me all the way to the lockers and then to the gym, quiet, until we saw Celia being led from the main office by her father and the school security guard.

“Celia was never like this before,” Miles said. “She liked to bother me, but she never did anything to other people. I think something strange is going on, but I don’t know what.”

I turned and looked at the glass display case outside the gym, as if I couldn’t care less about him or Celia. “You seem to be under the impression that I’m talking to you.”

“You were in chemistry,” said Miles.

“So we could do our lab.”

I heard his molars grinding together. “Fine. I’m
sorry
.” He said the word through gritted teeth. “Are you happy now?”

“Sorry for what?” I looked at Scarlet’s picture again. The thing was entirely scribbled over in red now. I wished I had Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball.

Miles rolled his eyes. “For . . . I don’t know, for not telling you it was Beaumont?”

“And?”

“And for making you put IcyHot in his underwear.”

“It was cruel.”

“So that makes you think it was
my
idea? I don’t come up with this stuff; I just do it for people.”

At the look I gave him next, his hands shot up in surrender. “Sorry,
sorry
, really—all right, if you’re not going to talk to me, will you at least listen?”

“Depends on what you have to say.”

Miles looked around to see if we were alone, then took a deep breath.

“I have some stuff I need to tell you, because I feel like . . . like I owe it to you. I don’t know why I feel like that, and I don’t like feeling like that, but there you go.”

I was surprised, but didn’t say anything. Miles took another deep breath.

“First of all—and if I don’t tell anyone about you, you can’t tell anyone about this—my mom is in a psychiatric hospital.”

Was I supposed to be surprised? Confused? I didn’t
think he’d actually tell me. But now I didn’t have to feel bad about the imbalance of secrets between us. “What? No. You’re lying.”

“I’m not. She’s in a hospital up north in Goshen. I visit her once a month. Twice if I can manage it.”

“You’re serious?”

“
Yes
. Again, you never believe me. I don’t understand why someone would lie about that. I’m trying to make things better, but if you aren’t going to listen then I’ll stop talking—”

“No, no, sorry, keep going,” I said quickly.

Miles gave me a shrewd look. “You’re going to shut up and listen?”

“Yes. Promise.”

“Well, since I know you want to know what she’s in for—it’s nothing. She’s always been a little . . . off-kilter . . . but never bad enough to be committed. Never bad enough to stay in there. But denying that you’re crazy tends to make people think you’re more crazy—”

I made an understanding noise.

“—and that was how my dad convinced them at first. Said she denied it all the time. First he told them her bruises and the black eyes and the busted lips were all her fault. That she caused them in fits of depression and rage, that she was bipolar and he didn’t trust her anymore. And of course
as soon as she heard that, she was furious, which made it worse.” He made a disgusted sort of noise in the back of his throat. “And then . . . the lake.”

“The lake?”

“He threw her in a lake, ‘rescued’ her, and told them she tried to commit suicide. She was hysterical. No one bothered to look for evidence against him. That’s when I started running jobs for people, and now I take all the late shifts I can at work, and forget the underage work laws, because I don’t care. I’m getting her out of that place when I turn eighteen in May, and I need the money for her, so . . . so she has something, you know? Because my father’s not gonna give her anything, and I can’t let her go back to that house.”

Miles stopped suddenly, eyes focused on a spot to the left of my head. Unease filled my stomach, the kind you get from suddenly knowing a whole lot more about a person than you thought you ever would.

“So. So are you—”

“Not done yet,” he snapped. “Sometimes I have trouble understanding things. Emotional things. I don’t understand why people get upset about certain stuff, I don’t understand why Tucker doesn’t try to be more than he is, and I still haven’t figured out why you kissed me.”

Okay. I could’ve died then. Just crawled on the floor and died.

“Have you heard the term
alexithymia
before?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“It means ‘without words for emotions.’ Except it’s more than that. It’s almost a mental disorder, but there’s a sort of scale. The higher your alexithymia score, the more trouble you have interpreting emotions and things like that. My score isn’t as high as some, but it’s not the lowest.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So, sorry if I come across callous sometimes. Or, I don’t know, defensive. Most of the time I’m just confused.”

“So does that mean you don’t care about the people you hurt when you run those jobs?” I asked.

“I’m not sociopathic; it just takes a while for me to process. I’m pretty good at turning off my guilt when I don’t want it. But I can’t stop. It’s an easy way to get money, it keeps anyone from getting too close to me, and I feel . . . safe.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that when I’m the one doing everyone else’s dirty work, and everyone is afraid of me, I feel safe. I control what happens and to who.”

“Whom,” I mumbled, and to my surprise, he smiled.

“Right. Whom.”

I got the feeling the smile wasn’t only because I had
corrected his grammar. I wondered if he’d ever told anyone any of that before, and then wondered about his mother, in Goshen, and exactly how he planned to get her out while his dad was still around. I wondered what he would do if his little dictatorship over the school ever crumbled.

I peered back into the trophy case. Scarlet’s picture screamed at me.

“I might know something about what’s going on with Celia,” I finally said. I told him everything I knew about Celia, Celia’s mother, McCoy, Scarlet, and the scoreboard. How Tucker had been helping me look up information about it, but we’d reached a dead end.

“I know McCoy doesn’t like you, and Celia does,” I added. “And that . . . worries me. I think they’re both really unstable. McCoy needs some kind of psychiatric help, and I don’t think he’s going to get it. I don’t think he even knows, or cares. And I know—I
know
—it’s like, I’m the crazy girl, making up crazy stories, why would you listen to me, but if you could just do me a favor and . . . watch out.”

He stared at me. Blinked.

Then he nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll be careful.”