Made You Up (13 page)

I
spent the rest of the weekend wondering what I was going to say to Miles on Monday. We both knew secrets about each other now. The only difference was he didn’t know that I knew. It felt unfair, somehow. Like I was lying to him.

When I woke up on Monday morning, I remembered the pictures on my camera and wondered how long it would take Celia to find me and kill me after I’d handed them over to Claude. Tucker and I had exhausted the library’s databases on Scarlet and McCoy, with no further clues about McCoy’s particular brand of psychosis. So either I asked Celia what exactly was going on with McCoy—she probably wouldn’t give me a straight answer—or I found another source of information.

I told myself to drop it. I told myself it wasn’t worth
it. But then I looked at the picture of Celia spray-painting that car, and all I could see was myself spray-painting the Hillpark gymnasium.

Two minutes before seven, Miles’s truck idled in the driveway, tailpipe gushing exhaust into the frosty air. My mother stood at the front door, holding her coffee mug in both hands, her face pressed against the screen. I would’ve gotten mad at her, but she’d bought me a case of Yoo-hoo over the weekend. So I poked her out of the way as I shouldered my backpack and grabbed a Yoo-hoo from the hallway table.

“That’s Miles?” My mother shifted to see better when Miles let his arm dangle out the truck window, as if that arm would give her his life story.

“Yes. He brought me home after the bonfire, remember? And on Friday.”

“You should invite him over for dinner.”

I laughed into the Yoo-hoo straw, making the drink bubble up. My face got hot. “Hah, right.”

“You need to learn to be more sociable, Alexandra, or you’re never going to—”

“Okay bye Mom love you!” I charged past her and out the door. She huffed loudly as the screen door clattered shut.

I jogged down the front yard, perimeter checking as I went, and climbed into Miles’s pickup.

“So, how was your weekend?” I asked, trying to sound casual. His gaze snapped up to my face—I think he’d been staring at the Yoo-hoo bottle—and he shrugged.

“Same as usual.” He left something hanging in the air, like he wanted to finish with
except for Saturday night.
Same here, buddy. He backed into the street.

“You work at Meijer, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. The corner of his lips curled up. “I work at the deli counter. Have to give people their succulent, chemical-ridden salami and whatnot.”

I pictured Miles in a dark room, standing at a butcher’s block with a large knife in one hand a bloody cow’s leg steadied under the other, a huge Cheshire grin spreading over his face—

“I bet the customers love you,” I said.

“They do—when my manager is around.”

“So do you run jobs there, too?”

“No. I don’t
steal
from them, thank you very much,” said Miles. “I’m above common thievery. Outside of school.”

“Why do you do it all?” I asked. “It can’t just be for the money.”

“I have reasons.”

“But, I mean, you know sometimes they just want to humiliate you. Like, don’t you think if you’d gone back
through Red Witch Bridge on Saturday, Cliff and the others would’ve tried to scare you?”

“Probably. Trust me, I know. I’ve had plenty of embarrassing jobs.” He parked the truck and reached around his seat for his bag. “It’s all
schadenfreude
. People just want to laugh at you.”

“Can you really speak German?” I already knew the answer.

Miles glanced out the side window, and then said, almost too low for me to hear, “
Ja, ich spreche Deutsch
.” A smile stretched across his face. “But don’t ask me to do it—it makes me feel like a monkey doing parlor tricks.”

We got out of the truck and started toward the school. “It must be awful for Jetta,” I said.

“I think she’s used to it. Whenever someone asks her to say something, she curses at them.”

“She speaks French and Italian, right?”

“And German and Spanish and Greek and a little Gaelic.”

“Wow. Can you speak all those?”

“Not really. I’m just . . . German.” We crossed the parking lot. “Hey, since we were talking about it—I have another job to run on Thursday night. I want you to help.”

“Why? What can I do?”

“Extra pair of hands. Art was the only one available. I’ll
give you a cut of the reward, of course.”

“It’s nothing illegal, right?”

“Of course not. You’ll be fine.”

I had no idea how far Miles’s definition of
legal
stretched, but maybe this was his form of a peace offering. He wasn’t stupid—if it was really, truly dangerous, I don’t think he would have asked. “Okay. I guess.”

Miles went with me to the newspaper room, where I handed over my memory card to Claude Gunthrie, showing him the pictures of Britney’s spray-painted car. First, Claude laughed. Then he downloaded them and sent an e-mail to his father, Assistant Principal Borruso, and McCoy.

I didn’t miss all the weird looks we got on the way to English. I thought it might be because Miles was smiling, but that didn’t seem like it, either. I didn’t like this new attention. It made my neck itch.

I’d hardly finished my perimeter check when Ria Wolf slid into the desk next to mine, looking eager. Chills ran up my arms and legs at her predatory smile. I wanted to get as far away from her as humanly possible, but I dug my fingernails into the desktop and forced myself to stay put.

“Hey, what was Celia like when she was spray-painting Britney’s car?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“You were there, weren’t you?”

I looked around and realized Celia wasn’t there, and most of the class was watching us and waiting for my answer. “I mean—yeah, I was there, but she was just painting the car. . . .”

Holy hell, had it really gotten out that fast? It had barely been five minutes.

“Are you out to get her or something?” Cliff appeared next to Ria, talking to me like we were best buddies. He was even worse than Ria; every time I saw him, I knew he was half a second from lunging out at me with a razor blade. “’Cause that’s awesome; she deserves it.”

“Hey,
Clifford
,” Miles growled from his seat, “go find some other territory to mark.”

“Hey,
Nazi
, go find some more Jews to gas,” Cliff shot back, but even as he said it he stood up and moved back toward his desk.

“Do you understand what you’re saying when those words come out of your mouth?” Miles asked. “Or do you just repeat what everyone else says because everyone else is saying it?”

Cliff settled into his seat. “What the hell are you talking about, Richter?”

“Everyone in this room knows what I’m talking about. Stop calling me a Nazi.”

“Why should I?”

Miles’s hand came down on the desk. “Because the systematic slaughter of millions of people
isn’t
funny
!” His sudden anger quieted the entire room. It even startled Mr. Gunthrie out of his newspaper.

I had thought he didn’t care when people called him a Nazi. A mixed wave of relief and happiness rolled through me that he
did
care, but why did it make him so angry?

“ENOUGH TALKING.” Mr. Gunthrie rose to his feet, looking between Miles and Cliff like he thought they might explode. “GET INTO YOUR LITERARY DISCUSSION PAIRS, AND I DON’T WANT TO HEAR A WORD OUT OF ANY OF YOU. UNDERSTOOD?”

“Yes, sir!”

“BEFORE WE BEGIN CLASS TODAY, I’D LIKE TO HAVE A NICE LITTLE CHAT ABOUT THE VALUE OF RESPECTING ANOTHER PERSON’S PROPERTY. DOES THAT SOUND NICE TO YOU ALL?”

And so began our twenty-eight-and-a-half-minute lesson on why spray paint and car windshields don’t mix. Britney and Stacey watched him intently the whole time, nodding in agreement. Mr. Gunthrie gave us a last disappointed look and told us to get on with our discussion of
Heart of Darkness
.

Tucker, as usual, had already written up our discussion paper. He was being weird again, his expression closed like
someone had shut a door inside him. I knew why as soon as he glanced over at Miles.

“So,” he said, “are you two, like, friends now?”

I tried to keep my expression neutral.

“I . . . I guess. He gave me a ride here this morning.” I paused, then said, “He spoke German.”

“What?”

“You told me to tell you if he ever started talking with a German accent. I got him to speak German, so that’s even better, right?”

If anything, Tucker looked more upset than before. “Why are you in his club?”

“Um. Community service.”

“For what?”

“It’s not a big deal. Just a misunderstanding at Hillpark.”

A smart person would be able to put the Hillpark Gym Graffiti Incident—which most of East Shoal knew about—together with my community service. But no one knew enough about me. Hillpark and East Shoal hated each other so much it severed the lines of communication. Out here in the boonies of suburban Indiana, it was red versus green, Dragons versus Sabres. You didn’t speak to someone from the other school unless you were spitting in their face. The only reason East Shoal knew about the graffiti at all was because Hillpark’s main gym had been closed for
several games while they cleaned the floor. My reputation at Hillpark hadn’t bled into my time at East Shoal. Not yet.

But Tucker was separate from all that. He
did
know enough about me.

“When you two walked in, he was smiling.” Tucker looked down at his desk, tracing the grooves in its top with his pencil. “I haven’t seen him smile since eighth grade.”

“He’s only driving me to school,” I reassured him. “I’m not going to start hanging out or figuring out scoreboard-related mysteries with him or anything.”

“No, because that’s my job.” Tucker’s face lifted, a smile tugging at his lips. “He’s on transportation duty and I get mysteries. I see you building your harem of manservants.”

“I’m looking at Ackerley next—I think he’d give a killer foot massage.”

Tucker laughed, but glanced over his shoulder as if Cliff was going to appear behind him and slam his head into the desk.

I knew how he felt.

For the rest of that week, I felt strangely buoyant. At work, at school, even when I had to go near the scoreboard. Everything was good. Celia was suspended for the paint job. I got all my homework done on time (and even
understood my calculus, which was a miracle in itself), took enough pictures and did enough perimeter checks to put my paranoia at ease, and I had people to talk to.

Real people. Not homicidal people.

Miles drove me to and from school. Like most people, he didn’t act the same when you got him alone. He was still an asshat, but alone he was more Blue Eyes than jerk. On Wednesday, when the club stayed after school to work a swim meet, he even helped me bury Erwin.

“You named your bike Erwin?”

“Sure, why not?”

“After Erwin Rommel? You named your bike after a Nazi?” Miles narrowed his eyes at me. Erwin’s back half swung at his side.

“My dad got him from the African desert. Plus, Rommel was humane. He got an order straight from Hitler to execute Jews, and he tore it up. And then he traded his family’s protection for his own suicide.”

“Yeah, but he still knew what he was doing and who he was fighting for,” said Miles, but without conviction. “I thought you were scared of Nazis?”

My step faltered. “How did you know that?”

“You’re a history buff; I assumed that whatever you were scared of would come from history, and Nazis were pretty scary.” The corner of his lips twisted up. “There’s
that, and whenever someone calls me a Nazi, you get this look on your face like I tried to kill you.”

“Oh. Good guess.” I gripped Erwin’s handlebars tighter. We rounded the back of the school and headed for the Dumpster behind the kitchen doors. I could smell tobacco and wood shavings and suspected Miles’s jacket. He wore it every day now. He pushed the top off the Dumpster and we tossed Erwin’s halves inside, closing the lid on my poor bike forever.

“Why does being called a Nazi make you so mad?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t know why anyone would be happy about it, but I thought you were going to rip Cliff’s teeth out the other day.”

He shrugged. “People are ignorant. I don’t know.”

He knew. Miles always knew.

As we turned back toward the gym, he said, “Heard you’ve been on some sort of scavenger hunt with Beaumont.”

“Yep. Jealous?”

It sort of slipped out. I was too paralyzed to say anything else. He didn’t know about the library, did he? He couldn’t know that I’d found out about his mom.

But then he snorted loudly and said, “Hardly.”

I relaxed. “What is everyone’s problem with him? I don’t think he’s that bad, honestly. Yeah, he’s got a Cult in a Closet, but he’s really nice. He hates you, but doesn’t everyone?”

“He actually has a reason to hate me, though. Everyone else does it because it’s expected.”

“What reason?”

Miles paused. “We were friends in middle school,” he said. “I thought he was a decent guy because we were both smart, we got along well, and I was new and he didn’t make fun of my accent. But when we got here, I realized—he lets other people walk all over him. He’s got no ambition. No drive, no end goal.”