Made You Up (7 page)

It can’t be him. It’s not him, is it?

Cannot predict now

I know I’ve asked you a dozen times already, but . . . just . . . yes or no?

Concentrate and ask again

You only have twice as many positive answers as negative and noncommittal—how does this keep happening? It’s not him, is it?

Better not tell you now

You said that one before. I’m going to ask one more time: He’s a jerk, so he can’t be Blue Eyes, right?

Reply hazy try again

Reply hazy my ass.

T
he transition from Hillpark to East Shoal was significantly easier than I’d expected. It was the same basic high school garbage wrapped in a slightly different skin. The only difference was that everything at East Shoal was completely insane.

There were several things I learned that first month.

One: The scoreboard really was a school legend, and Mr. McCoy really was dearly, dearly in love with it. McCoy had his own brand of crazy: he continually reminded everyone of “Scoreboard Day,” when we were all supposed to bring in an offering of flowers or lightbulbs for the scoreboard, as if it was a wrathful Mayan deity that would kill us if we disobeyed. Somehow, he managed to cover this insanity with a mask of good test scores and even better student
conduct. It seemed like, as far as the parents and teachers were concerned, he was a perfect principal.

Two: There was a cult entirely dedicated to discussing preexisting conspiracy theories and determining if they were true. They met in a janitors’ closet.

Three: The cult was run by Tucker Beaumont.

Four: Mr. Gunthrie, the most in-your-face teacher in the school (because of the yelling, see), was nicknamed “The General” because of his penchant for going on war-related rants and wielding his treasured golden fountain pen as a weapon. He’d done two tours in Vietnam, and he had a long family history of war-related deaths, which rendered me almost incapable of not calling him Lieutenant Dan.

Five: Twenty years ago, as the senior prank, someone had let the biology teacher’s pet python loose. It had escaped behind the ceiling tiles, never to be seen again.

Six: Everyone—and when I say everyone, I mean absolutely, positively everyone, from the librarians to the students to the staff to the oldest, crustiest janitor—was piss-down-their-legs scared of Miles Richter.

Of all the crazy things I heard about East Shoal, that was the only thing I couldn’t believe.

I
must have set a record. With the backpack-pushing and the assignment-ripping and all the general childishness that occurred between me and Miles, it only took him a month to banish me to work in the concession stand with Theo.

I was fine with this because a) I liked Theo better than him, b) I was less paranoid when he wasn’t around, and c) I didn’t have to sit in a gym full of people I didn’t know. It didn’t take me long to get used to Theo—she was so good at getting things done that I figured if she wanted to hurt me, she would’ve done it by now.

I thought I had a lot of homework, but Theo’s back should’ve broken from the size of her bag.

“Seven AP classes, plus I’m retaking the SATs and ACTs because I
know
I got cheated last time,” she said. “I keep all
the other stuff I need over here in this pocket, and then my first-aid kit is in this pocket. . . .”

“Why do you have a first-aid kit?” I asked.

“When you have two brothers like mine, someone’s always getting hurt.” She shoved her physics book onto the counter and opened it up.

“I don’t know how you do that,” I said. “Do you go home after club and do homework all night?”

She shrugged. “Not most of the time. I work graveyard shifts at the Showtime. You wouldn’t believe how late people come in to watch movies.” She paused, then said with a sigh, “My parents make me.”

“Why?”

She shrugged again. “That’s just the way it is. They’ve always been like that. They wanted me to take all these AP classes, too.”

“They made you join the club, too?”

Theo grinned. “No. None of us voluntarily joined the club. Except Jetta. Evan and Ian and I got put here when we snuck laxatives into the chili at lunch two years ago.” She laughed. “So worth it.”

I snorted. Theo was okay. “How’d everyone else get here?”

“They found Art with some weed in the bathroom, but he’s the best wrestler we’ve got, so instead of suspending
him from the team, they sent him here.”

“I didn’t peg Art as a pot smoker.”

“That’s because he’s not,” said Theo. “He was trying to stop some of his teammates from smoking, and they let him take the fall.”

“Does anyone actually get thrown out of this school, or are they all given to Miles for safekeeping?”

“I’ve only ever heard of people getting expelled for violent stuff, like fighting or bringing a weapon to school.”

“What about Jetta?”

Theo stared at her physics textbook and sighed. “I think Jetta’s here because of Boss.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jetta came here last year, and she didn’t speak English very well. Boss was the only one who bothered to talk to her.”

“What about Miles?” I asked quickly, before Theo could turn to her homework. “What’d he do to get here?”

“Hmm?” Theo looked up. “Oh, Boss? I’m not sure. Me and Evan and Ian were the first people to join the club, but Boss has always been here. He used to do all this stuff by himself.”

She suddenly stopped talking. Miles was at the big concession stand window. He dropped a worn black notebook on the counter and leaned in.

“How’s the game?” Theo asked.

“Imagine a thousand starving orphans on a sinking ship in the middle of a shark-infested sea, and you’re getting close to how much I don’t want to be there,” Miles said dryly. “I get to hear Clifford talk about how nice Ria’s ass is every fifteen seconds. They’ve been dating since seventh grade; you’d think he’d be over it by now.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m bored,” said Miles.

“What’s new?” asked Theo.

“Let’s play Five Questions.”

Theo snapped her book shut. “Why, may I ask? It’s not going to make you any less bored. And we might as well start calling it Three Questions, because it doesn’t take you five anymore.”

“What’s Five Questions?” I asked.

“It’s like Twenty Questions, only not twenty because Boss can do it in five,” said Theo. “I’ve got someone. Go.”

“Are you a president?” asked Miles.

“Yes.”

“Do your first and last names start with the same letter?”

“Yes.”

“You’re Ronald Reagan.”

“See?” Theo threw her hands in the air. “Two! Two questions!”

I didn’t mind not having many responsibilities with the club, as long as Miles kept reporting that I was doing what I was supposed to. It gave me more time to write out long-winded college essays about how my illness shaped me. My nightly mountains of homework made the Tower of Babel look like a toothpick, and it was only worsened by my late shifts at Finnegan’s. Finnegan’s wasn’t too bad on its own, but as soon as Miles waltzed in, I had the sudden urge to both hide and put soap in his food.

Every time I walked past Miles, I got the distinct feeling that he’d stick his leg out and trip me. He didn’t, of course, because that wouldn’t be subtle at all, and not Miles Richter’s style. Nail files, hedge trimmers, and homemade flamethrowers were more his speed.

I gave him his burger and retreated behind the counter, where I asked the Magic 8 Ball,
Will Miles Richter try to kill me?

Most likely
, it replied.

By late September, we had regular labs every week. I glanced at him a few times as he made tables in his lab notebook. He was bent over, his glasses slipping down his nose, his left hand curled around so he could write properly. His sleeves were rolled up, and I noticed for the first time that his forearms were freckled, too. Were they warm? They
seemed like they’d be warm. Blue Eyes’s hand had been warm. There were four inches between my hand and his arm—four inches and I’d know for sure.

Don’t do it, idiot. Don’t you dare do it.

I stifled the urge and asked a question instead.

“So. Can you really speak another language?”

I hadn’t heard that weird accent from him since the first day, but I knew he and Jetta had been speaking German.

“Where’d you hear that?” Miles didn’t look up.

“Is it true?”

“Maybe. Depends on who told you.”

“I figured it out myself,” I said. “It wasn’t hard. Is it German?”

Miles slapped his pen on his lab notebook. “Why are you here, exactly?”

“Because they put me in this class. Don’t look at me like it’s my fault.”

“Why are you here? In this school? In the club?” His voice was too low for our neighbors across the table to hear. “What did you do?”

“What did
you
do?” I shot back. “Because it must have been pretty weird if they made you run the whole club by yourself, without a teacher supervising.”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Seriously, though.”

“Seriously, nothing. Now why don’t you answer my question, since you seem so intent on getting information out of me, but refuse to give any up yourself.”

I looked at the calcium carbonate. “I spray-painted the gym floor.”

“Spray-painted what?”

“The gym floor, I just said.”

“
What
did you spray paint
on
the gym floor?” The
w
in “what” came out hard like a
v
.

“Words.”

I smiled brightly at the pissy expression on his face. Screwing with him was so unexplainably worth it. I turned back to the Bunsen burner and listened to him seethe.

Game nights in the concession stand hit occasional lulls, so Theo and I entertained ourselves making plastic cup pyramids and talking about English class.

I found out that Theo wrote for the school newspaper, which was why I always saw her talking to Claude Gunthrie, the editor. (“I know he looks kind of constipated all the time”—she knocked over a stack of cups in her excitement—“but you haven’t seen his biceps. My God, they’re beautiful.”)

“I feel like I should constantly be watching my back in that class, you know?” I said. “I’ve had a weird feeling
about Ria since school started.” Ria sat near me in class, but all I’d ever seen her do was bat her eyelashes at Cliff and giggle like some kind of perky, latte-fueled automaton.

“Ria’s really not all that bad,” said Theo. “You’d think she would be. She’s popular, but she doesn’t go picking for food among us lower beings. Unless she’s looking for a distraction from Cliff.”

“Why would she need a distraction from Cliff?”

“They’ve been dating since seventh grade, but the real drama didn’t start till freshman year. Biggest. Shitstorm. Ever. She always accuses him of cheating; he’s always treating her like a trophy. So, like, once a year, she’ll go find a guy to sleep with to make Cliff jealous. Cliff finds the guy, beats the crap out of him, and then Cliff and Ria make up and the whole cycle starts again.” Theo reached over her head to place a cup on top of the pyramid. “No, the people you really want to watch out for are Celia and the Siamese Twins.”

Celia’s two cronies, Britney and Stacey, might as well have been joined at the hip. I could tell Theo’s brothers apart better than I could those two. I reached around and added to the pyramid’s edge. “Celia gives Miles these looks in English class. Like she wants to eat him.”

Theo shivered. “Don’t mention that while Boss is
around. She’s obsessed with him. Has been since freshman year, since she started getting weird. Never came out and said it, but you can tell.”

“Well, she’s a bitch and he’s a douche; they’re perfect for each other,” I said, smiling.

Theo gave me one of those looks, the ones parents give their kid when the kid is talking about something they don’t understand. That look stung more than I thought it would; I shifted and hid behind the pyramid, my face burning. What had I said? What was there about this picture that I didn’t get?

“Bored again?” Theo asked suddenly. Miles stood at the window, still holding that tattered black notebook.

“I hate volleyball,” he said.

Theo smiled wickedly. “No, you hate Ria Wolf. Don’t take your anger out on the poor sport.”

Miles gave her the same pissy look he’d given me earlier and drummed his long fingers impatiently on the counter.

Theo rolled her eyes and kept stacking. “I’ve got someone,” she said.

“Were you alive during the last century?”

“Yes.”

Miles rested his chin on top of his notebook, looking (as I couldn’t help noticing) very much like a mischievous little boy knowing he was about to win a game. A golden-freckled,
blue-eyed little boy. “Were you an Allied leader in World War II?”

I heard Theo grinding her teeth. “Yes.”

“You’re Chiang Kai-shek.”

Theo hurled her cup and the entire pyramid came tumbling down. “Why didn’t you say Churchill? Dammit, you were supposed to say Churchill or Roosevelt or Stalin!”

Miles just stared at her. Theo grumbled loudly and turned to help me clean up.

It was in English a week later when possibly the strangest thing of all happened.

When I tried to sit down, I instead found myself on the floor in a very painful position. The bar connecting the desk and the seat had been partially severed at one end, so my weight broke it the rest of the way. For a second, I thought I was imagining it. People were staring at me. Cursing under my breath, I got up, shoved the ruined desk to the back of the room, and pulled over an unused whole one.

Mr. Gunthrie hadn’t even looked up from his paper. Miles, always politely oblivious, pretended nothing had happened and continued writing in his black notebook.

That also meant that he wasn’t paying attention when I got into his backpack and emptied a tube of fire ants from the colony I’d found in the woods. With six classes together,
there was no way I wouldn’t see the reaction.

This was not the strange part.

Celia Hendricks, always on the prowl, materialized next to Miles’s desk. She did that weird hair flip-and-twirl routine, like she’d learned how to flirt from a tween magazine. Miles glared at her.

“What do you want, Hendricks?”

Celia gave him a winning smile. “Hey. I’m having my bonfire soon. We’re going to have a fake scoreboard to graffiti and everything. You should come.”

“Every year I say no. Why should I say yes now?”

“Because, it’ll be fun!” she whined. She tried to put her hand on his arm, but he recoiled. I could have sworn he was about to snarl at her.

“Get off my desk, Celia.”

“Pleeeease, Miles? What can I do to get you to come?” Her voice dropped low and she looked at him through her eyelashes. She leaned over the desk. He snapped the notebook closed before she could look inside. “Anything,” she said. “Name it.”

Miles paused for a long moment. Then he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder and said, “Invite Alex. Then I’ll come.”

Celia’s expression shuffled so quickly I almost didn’t catch it. One second she’d been trying to seduce Miles, the
next she glared at me like I should be impaled on a pike, and finally she settled on a sort of confused surprise.

“Oh! Well . . . you promise?” She was right in Miles’s face. Miles leaned back. I had the immediate image of an idiot backing an angry viper into a corner.

“Sure. Promise,” he said venomously.

“Good!” Celia pulled a card from the pocket of her shirt and reached over Miles’s shoulder to give it to me. She was clearly on a mission to get his face in her cleavage. I let him squirm for longer than necessary before I took the card. She hopped off his desk.