Made You Up (24 page)

M
y mother was not amused.

As soon as she saw my lip, she knew what had happened. Like Finnegan had some sort of telepathic link with her or something.

Or, more likely, that Finnegan had a sister called the Gravedigger.

She sat me in my room with my pictures and my artifacts, and she forced me to stay there for the rest of the night. Charlie kept me company, curled up in my lap, my arms around her. The gravity of the situation didn’t hit me until Saturday afternoon, when Miles showed up on the doorstep, apologizing.

“I didn’t mean to get you fired,” he said.

I’d invited him in, but he still stood on the welcome
mat outside the door, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Shadows ringed his eyes. A bruise was forming along his left cheekbone that may or may not have come from the fight at Finnegan’s.

“It’s not your fault Cliff punched you in the ear,” I said. “He’s a two-hundred-pound human wrecking ball. Did you really think I was going to stand there and wait for him to hit you again?”

He stared at me.

“The answer is
no, you didn’t,
because
no, I wasn’t
. Besides, Finnegan was going to find something to fire me for sooner or later. I’m glad it was something worth getting fired over.”

“I could have handled Cliff,” Miles said. “I have some general experience getting the shit kicked out of me. But you needed that job.”

I wanted to argue with him, but sometimes he had a terrible way of being right. I hadn’t just gotten fired; I’d gotten fired for starting a fight. So much for ever using Finnegan as a work reference.

I glanced back into the house to make sure no one was listening, but Mom had gone to the store with Charlie, and Dad had fallen asleep reading a
National Geographic
on the couch. I stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind me.

“Well, it’s too late now,” I said, then offered up a pitiful smile. “But hey, that means I’ll have more time to figure out what McCoy’s doing, right?”

I was joking, but Miles frowned. “You still want to break into his house?”

“I have to figure out what’s going on. As long as we don’t get caught, it’ll be fine.” I was positive it would, if Miles was still in on the plan. I waited, but his frown only deepened until he pushed his glasses up to rub at his eyes.

“I remember lifting you up, you know,” he finally said.

“What?”

“With the lobsters. I remember lifting you up. You were heavy.”

“Uh . . . thanks?”

He shook his head. “When are we doing this?”

“The day before the spring sports awards.”

“That’s soon.”

“I know. Tucker found out from the front desk secretary that McCoy is staying late that day for preparations, so we know he won’t be home. I told my mom I’d have to go back to school to help the club set up the gym—I’d sneak out, but my parents have been watching me constantly.”

Miles exhaled sharply through his nose.

“Okay,” he said. “Am I picking you up?”

“Tucker said he could, and we’d meet you there. Since you already live so close.”

“Fine.” He hesitated a second, then turned to go.

“Wait!” I caught his sleeve between my fingers. “Are you angry?”

He only turned halfway back. “I’m a lot of things,” he snapped. “I don’t know.”

“You could . . . you could hang out here for a while. You don’t have to go home.”

“I shouldn’t—” he began. Then my mother’s Firenza turned down the street and pulled into the driveway, boxing in Miles’s truck. Charlie bounced in the passenger seat. My mother got out and called for help bringing in the groceries.

“Well,” he said, and I swear he sounded relieved, “I guess I could stay for a while.”

T
he day before the spring sports awards, Tucker picked me up just as the shadows of the trees began slanting the other direction. I ran out to his SUV as fast as I could, ignoring the perimeter check, so my mother wouldn’t have time to see who was driving. The Hannibal’s Rest phoenix soared overhead. I didn’t mention it to Tucker.

“I didn’t need anything, right?” I asked, checking myself over. Converse. Jeans. Striped T-shirt.

“Nope. Richter said he knows a quick way in.” Tucker pulled out of the driveway and started toward Lakeview.

“Why do you still call him ‘Richter’? You’ve called him ‘Miles’ before.”

Tucker shrugged. “Habit, I guess. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to call him anything else.”

We made it to Lakeview in ten minutes. Tucker passed Miles’s street and went two more, to a cul-de-sac where rainbows and unicorns came to die. Miles’s truck was already parked along the curb. Tucker pulled up behind it and pointed to a house a little farther down.

“That’s his.”

The place had probably looked good once, but now unchecked ivy grew up its sides. The house must’ve been red and white, but the white was peeling and yellowed, and the red had been bleached to a Pepto-Bismol pink.

We got out and met Miles.

“He hasn’t been home since I’ve been here,” said Miles.

“How long do you think we have?” I asked.

“An hour—Evan and Ian said they could hold McCoy at the school until at least four. Should be plenty.”

“Are you sure you can get in?” Tucker asked.

Miles scoffed. “Have some faith, Beaumont. I got into your house, didn’t I?”

Tucker rolled his eyes. “Fine then. Lead on.”

The two of them started down the sidewalk. But as soon as I took a step, a flash of red behind the driver’s seat in Tucker’s SUV caught my eye. I looked back, wondering if it was some sort of hallucination, and then realized—I knew that shade of red.

“Hold on.”

The two of them stopped as I marched back to the SUV and threw open the back door. Charlie crouched in between the seats, curled so tightly I hadn’t seen her there on the drive over. She stared at me, eyes wide and frightened. The black king was in one curled fist, shiny with spit and dented with teeth marks.

“Charlie!”

“Sorry!” she whined. “I thought you were going to your school and I wanted to see it! You never take me anywhere with you!”

I tugged on my hair. “Seriously? Ugh—I can’t take you home now.”

“Let me come with you!” She tried to jump out of the car. I shoved her back into the SUV. I didn’t want her walking around in the middle of the crappy side of Lakeview Trail.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Stay here. Are you listening to me? Do
not
leave this car.” I fixed her with my most searing gaze. “Do. Not. Leave. This. Spot. Got it?”

She nodded, but still tried to get a better look outside. I got the feeling that she hadn’t actually heard a word I’d said.

“What is it?” Miles called.

I pointed a warning finger at Charlie and slammed the door closed. She sat back in the seat and crossed her arms, pouting.

“Charlie hitched a ride,” I said. “I never even saw her get in. I told her to stay put while we’re in there.”

Miles and Tucker glanced at each other, but said nothing.

We walked up to McCoy’s front door. I did my perimeter check, glancing back at the SUV to make sure Charlie didn’t sneak out. Miles went straight for a ledge created by the edge of the porch roof. He felt around for a second, then pulled down a key.

“How’d you know that was there?” Tucker asked.

Miles shrugged. “He probably has them all over the place.” He kicked the welcome mat aside, and there was another key underneath. “See?” He kicked the mat back in place, then unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Inside, the smell of mustiness coated everything like a thick layer of bad cologne. Tucker sneezed. Miles closed the door behind us.

“It looks so . . . normal.” Tucker said.

We passed a staircase and went into a dining room lined with cabinets.

“Maybe for a retired octogenarian,” I said. Antique furniture filled every available inch of space, some of it broken and some of it in usable condition. I thought I saw a WWII gas mask wedged between a broken scale and a worn cookie tin, but I grabbed Miles’s hand and told myself that it wasn’t really there.

We scoured the entire lower level of the house, from the dining room to a narrow, dirty kitchen to a living room with the ugliest orange shag carpet I’d ever seen in my life. For half a second I was tempted to leave McCoy a handwritten note expressing my profound and sincere astonishment that he had the balls to keep such a carpet in his home.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for the gas mask and a few magnets shaped like swastikas on the refrigerator.

“I haven’t seen anything,” I said.

“No.” Tucker shrugged. “But there’s still upstairs.”

I turned toward the staircase again and saw a flash of red.

“Charlie!” I hissed, darting after her. I
knew
I shouldn’t have trusted her to stay in that car. She was too much like me to stay put. She froze halfway up the stairs, looking back.

“I told you to stay in the car!” I said.

“But I want to help!” she cried, stomping her foot.

“Get down here right now.”

“No!”

“Charlemagne!”

“You sound like Mom!” She charged the rest of the way up the stairs. I ran after her. Miles and Tucker were right behind me. I shouldered open the door Charlie had gone through.

And then I froze.

“Look at all the dresses,” Charlie crooned.

The room was a museum exhibit. Dresses—prom, homecoming, cocktail, formal, even wedding—were displayed on mannequins. The mannequins all wore blond wigs. Plastered on the walls behind them were pictures upon pictures upon pictures, all of one person: Scarlet.

My stomach lurched. These could be
my
walls.

There was a large wooden desk on the far side of the room, strewn with papers and more pictures in frames. A pair of silver heels sat on the corner.

“What the actual fuck.” Tucker walked in, then Miles a moment later.

I put an arm around Charlie and moved her behind me as Tucker, Miles, and I moved to search through the papers on the desk. There were all sorts of things—bills, official- looking documents from school, taxes that hadn’t been filed yet, a half-completed crossword puzzle.

“This is all just junk,” Tucker grumbled, picking up a stack of blank printer paper. It didn’t even look like McCoy had a computer, much less a printer.

“Keep looking,” I said. “There’s got to be something. . . .” I grabbed the corner of a photograph and slid it out of the mess, careful not to dislodge anything else.

It was a picture of Celia and an older, dark-haired man
with an arm around her shoulders. Both of them were smiling. Celia’s father, maybe? The man’s eyes had been burned out, the edges of his face crinkled and red.

But why would McCoy burn Celia’s father’s eyes out? Why would he burn
anyone’s
eyes out? How could anyone go this far down the rabbit hole without realizing they needed help?

And more importantly, what would he do if he found us here, looking through his things?

I stuffed the picture back where I’d found it, grabbed Miles and Tucker, and pushed them both toward the door. We needed to get out of here, now. “We’re not going to find anything else. Let’s go.” Eyes peeked out of the dark space under the desk. “Charlie! Come on!”

No one asked any questions. Miles pulled the key from his pocket and locked the front door behind us.

“Uh-oh,” Tucker said.

McCoy’s junker of a car trundled down the street. Miles shoved the key above the doorframe, then grabbed us both and yanked us off the porch. He pushed Tucker and me behind the dead shrubs that hugged the side of McCoy’s house, then ducked in after us. Sharp branches dug into my arms and head, and sweat trickled down my neck. McCoy pulled into his driveway, got out of his car, and went inside.

“Is he gone?” Miles whispered, his neck cranked toward
me so the shrubs didn’t poke his eyes out.

“Yeah,” I said.

As quietly as possible, we climbed out of the shrubs and dashed for Miles’s truck and Tucker’s SUV.

Charlie wasn’t behind me. I jerked to a halt, pulling Miles with me.

“What? What is it?” he asked.

“Charlie! Where’d Charlie go?” I looked around, back to McCoy’s house. “She came out with us, didn’t she? You saw her come out?”

“Alex—” Miles pulled me forward.

“Miles, if she’s still in that house—we have to go back!”

He kept pulling. I dug my heels in. Stupid,
stupid
Charlie, had to follow us. I couldn’t believe her. I knew she was only eight, but I couldn’t believe she could be this stupid.

Miles grabbed my shoulders and dragged me to the cars, swung me around so I was pinned between him and his truck. Tucker stood behind him, his face twisted with that awful pity.

“Alex.”

Miles’s voice was low but forceful. His bright blue eyes pierced me.

“Charlie’s not real.”