Made You Up (21 page)

She’s not crazy at all, is she?

My sources say no

She’s just . . . alone.

Most likely

But she never wants anyone around.

Reply hazy try again

She doesn’t want help. Why doesn’t she want help?

Cannot predict now

T
he running theme of January seemed to be to make Celia’s time a living hell. Evan and Ian forced her to pick up trash they’d knocked over. Theo had her clean the popcorn and hot dog machines for an entire week. Jetta made her jump into the pool in her clothes to get dive bricks that Jetta herself had thrown in, when the swimming team was standing less than ten feet away.

Celia never did anything to stop this. In fact, the only times she did get angry enough to put her foot down were the times I mentioned McCoy to her.

By mid-February, I began wondering what the club could possibly have against Celia that justified the things they did to her. Yes, she was a bitch. Yes, she’d done horrible things to people—or so I’d been told.

Miles and I didn’t join in, but we didn’t stop it, either, and that made me feel like we had. Whenever Celia saw us, whenever I’d catch her watching us after a quick kiss in the gym or holding hands in the hallway, I could swear she was about to burst into tears.

“They can do what they want to her,” Miles said one day at the end of February, after the triplets had made Celia carry all the fishy-smelling towels to the laundry without a cart. She accidentally dropped some into the pool and had to get into the water to get them. Miles and I stood with our backs against the tiles. Miles was staring at the water with his nose turned up.

As Celia climbed back out of the pool, she looked at us—at Miles.

“Put those in the laundry room,” Miles called to her.

Celia nodded. Miles was the only person she’d take orders from without cursing under her breath or glaring.

“Hey, Green Queen!” Evan, Ian, and Jetta came out of the locker rooms in bathing suits.

“What are you doing?” Miles asked, glancing at his watch. “It’s six.”

“Which means there’s plenty of time to swim before we have to close!” Ian climbed the diving board.

“
Mein Chef!
Alex! You should come swimming wiz
us!” said Jetta, floating over to the side of the pool and looking up at us.

“Yeah! Boss, come on!” Ian cried before diving.

“No,” said Miles. “I hate getting wet.”

“That’s what she s—” Evan began, before being dunked by his brother.

“You know I don’t like swimming,” said Miles when Jetta wouldn’t stop giving him a very hurt-puppy-dog look.

“Zen we should play your game. I ’ave someone.”

Miles fought a smile for a few seconds, but lost in the end. They started a game of twenty questions in German. I didn’t know what they were saying, but I was pretty sure Miles was dragging the game out on purpose. When it was just him and Jetta, he could find any excuse not to speak English.

I was glad he had Jetta to talk to, but I was missing out. There was a whole other person inside him I couldn’t see because I didn’t speak his language.

When the game was over—Miles made it to fifteen questions before guessing correctly—Jetta lifted her arms toward him and wiggled her fingers.

“I’m
not
getting in,” he said one last time, and Jetta admitted defeat and swam away.

“Don’t tell me you can’t swim,” I said.

Miles scoffed. “Of course I can swim. If I couldn’t swim I’d be dead by now,” he said. Then, softer, “My dad used
to take me fishing with him when I was little. You know, most sons fish with their dads; that’s a nice family bonding experience, right? Well, add the attention span of a flea with ADHD, a bit of booze, and a large body of water, and you end up with a dad who thinks it’s fun to throw his kid off the boat and watch him swim for shore.”

“Like he did to your mom?”

He nodded. “He got me first.”

“That’s awful,” I whispered. “You could have drowned! Or gotten really sick—there’s all sorts of bacteria in lakes— or . . .”

“Or gotten pulled under by something I couldn’t see?” Miles offered quietly. “Yeah, that was the best part. He knew I was scared of the things in those lakes. Bastard.”

The smell of algae and pond scum.

“That was the day before my mom and I went to Germany,” he went on. “She realized that Cleveland had done something and came looking for me. We stayed in the car that night, and the next day she decided we were leaving. We only went back to the house for a minute, for our passports. Then straight to Meijer so she could grab stuff she thought we’d need, and finally to the airport.”

I hugged him, something I’d been doing a lot lately, sometimes because I could, most of the time because he seemed like he needed it.

So far, no one had tried to do anything to Miles. I’d hardly seen McCoy at all since the new semester started, and Celia didn’t seem to have it in her to hurt anyone. Whenever I caught her staring, I only had to look at her to get her to go away again. But she was always hovering, like a ghost waiting for someone to join her on the other side.

Miles had been taking fewer and fewer of his mafia hit man jobs, and it was clear that he didn’t have enough occupying his mind. He frequently paced the length of the gym, wrote so often in his notebook that he had to get a new one, and would occasionally start his sentences in the middle of a thought. His limp went away, but he wore his sleeves rolled down and came to school one day with a black eye. His mood infected the club like a disease; nothing ran smoothly anymore. And soon his gloom infested the whole school.

Mr. Gunthrie went on an hour-long rant about the flickering light over my desk, throwing away an entire class period. Ms. Dalton couldn’t find any of her notes and even forgot her Diet Coke. Students who normally paid Miles for his services began taking matters into their own hands, and detention was full for the first time all year.

I wondered if the gloom was affecting me, too, but I got the feeling it had more to do with the thin envelopes I kept
getting from colleges and scholarship foundations. Most of them started with “
We regret to inform you . . .
” I tried not to take it personally—how many mentally ill, lower-class high school girls could there be in Indiana? Probably more than I thought—but handing each one over to my mother was like running the gauntlet of passive-aggressive pep talks.
Are you sure you signed up right? Maybe you just forgot something. Should I have Leann explain things to them?

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy spending time at home. But school wasn’t much better.

In March, I began to notice people pointing at me as I walked by in the hallway, ignoring me when I tried to talk to them, and blatantly not believing things I said. I wouldn’t have cared so much if it hadn’t been exactly what had happened at Hillpark after they’d found out.

At the end of March, the entire club was assembled in the main gym for the band competition. The bleachers were full with spectators, along with the bands from other schools. McCoy employed half the students in seventh-period gym to string up golden ribbons around the scoreboard and create a “tribute table” where people could sign a petition to finally get the scoreboard plated in gold and pick up a complimentary tiny scoreboard magnet. (Obviously, it was a smashing success.)

From what I saw, most people thought this was a joke: honoring the scoreboard like this was a quirky little thing we East Shoalers did to cover up the fact that it had killed someone. I never got wind of anyone accusing McCoy of losing his marbles.

When the competition started, we were kicked out of the scorer’s table by the guy announcing the bands. We stood next to the main doors with our backs pressed to the wall. I stuck close to Miles, because there I didn’t feel the need to check every instrument for contraband items and Communist propaganda. If something strange was actually going on, Miles would tell me.

One band finished their set, and another came in to take its place. The announcer left his post, complaining about never getting restroom breaks. In the relative quiet, I began to nod off against Miles’s shoulder.

“Excuse me, everyone?” Celia’s voice filled the gym. I jerked awake. The room went silent.

“Hi,” she waved from the scorer’s table. “I just wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that all proceeds from today’s concession sales are going to benefit the American Schizophrenia Association.”

You’re the obstacle, idiot!
the little voice roared.

“Alex,” Miles said urgently, pulling me toward the door. “Alex, you have to get out of here—”

But I was rooted to the spot, my brain frozen.

“All of this is in honor of our own paranoid schizophrenic, Alexandra Ridgemont, who transferred to our school after graffitiing the Hillpark School gymnasium.” Celia turned and looked at me, along with everyone else. She waved, smiling. “Hi, Alex.”

Her last words were lost in the empty air of the gym; Miles had shot across the bottom of the bleachers and ripped her microphone’s power cord from its extension. He charged up to the scorer’s table and took the microphone itself away from her, but the damage was done.

I was in a tank full of sharks.

Eyes bore down on me from all sides. The band members stopped moving their instruments. A few people on the other side of the bleachers stood up for a better look. Theo had come in from the concession stand and now hovered by the far doors with Evan and Ian, their faces pale.

My hand fumbled for the door. The push bar slipped under my fingers once, twice—finally I was able to push it open, and I sprinted for the nearest restroom.

I locked myself in a stall, threw up, and curled into a ball on the tile and squeezed my eyes shut. I tugged on my hair, wishing it wasn’t so damned red, wishing my mind worked the way it should, wishing things would go back to the way they were when I was seven, when everything
was real and I didn’t know any better.

When I finally calmed down enough to open my eyes. I was still sitting on the floor in a bathroom stall in a public high school, I was still crazy, and my hair still looked like I’d dunked my head in a tank of ketchup.

Miles must’ve been keeping people out of the bathroom, because no one came, and every so often he would pound on the door and call my name and say that he hadn’t told anyone.

I wanted to tell him that I believed him, that Celia could have found out other ways. But I couldn’t get myself to move, and I couldn’t open my mouth.

“Lexi?”

I pushed myself to my feet, wiping away whatever tears were left, and cracked open the bathroom door. Dad stood there, smelling like freshly dug dirt and wild herbs. Behind him, the hallway was empty. Miles had gone. Dad didn’t say anything, just pulled me into a hug and walked me out to the car.

M
y dad was better at calming me down than I ever gave him credit for. I think some of it was the way he smelled. The other part was his choice in movies.

“Dad, you could be Indiana Jones.”

“You think so?” he replied. “I’d have to grow a bit more scruff than I have now.” He rubbed his unshaven face. “Ooh, I could go as Indiana Jones for Halloween next year. Think your mom would agree to dress up as my spunky yet sexy female companion?”

“I dunno. You’d have to look really good. And probably bribe her with chocolate.”

He laughed, and the doorbell rang. He went to answer it while I settled into the couch with the bowl of popcorn. Charlie had avoided the living room since we’d returned,
and my mother—thank God—had been at the grocery when Miles had called my house.

I tried to ignore what was going on in the hallway. Dad would scare away anyone, unless it was Miles. But I had a feeling Miles was going to give me some space.

“I wanted to check on Alex and make sure she was okay. I heard about what happened at school.”

Tucker.

“Yes, she’s fine,” Dad replied. He peeked into the living room. “Hey, Lex Luthor, you feel up to guests?”

I pushed myself off the couch and peered around the doorframe into the hallway. Tucker stood on the front step, worry on his face. His hand brushed nervously through the huge pot of fresh white geraniums my mother had set on the porch. Behind him, the trees along the street were in full bloom, bursting with the colors of spring.

“Oh, hey, Alex. Are you okay?”

“Dad, it’s fine. I’ll talk to him outside.” I set the popcorn bowl down and moved past my dad to join Tucker on the porch. “It’s okay, really,” I said one last time, and with a reluctant smile, Dad closed the door.

“So . . . you’re okay?” Tucker said quickly. “Are you coming back to school?”

“No, I’m really not okay,” I said. “But yeah, I am coming back. We only have two months left, after all. And
if I don’t go back, things are only going to get worse.”

High school dropout.
That was exactly what colleges wanted to see on applications.

Tucker stood there for a moment, running his hand through his black hair, fixing his glasses, spinning his watch around his wrist.

“How’d you find out?” I asked.

“Text message.” He held up his phone. “I think . . . most everyone in the school got one.”

I nodded. I had figured that pretty much everyone knew by now—that’s why they’d been ignoring me, and whispering behind my back the past few days. Celia’d been leaking the information for at least a week now. The band competition was just a way to scare me.

“So . . . now you know,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? It’s not your fault I’m crazy.”

“No, I . . . I don’t care about that. My dad has schizophrenic patients. He calls them ‘normal people with more quirks.’ I’m sorry that I got so mad at you. And ignored you for so long. And I’m sorry I didn’t trust that you could handle Miles. I shouldn’t have butted in.”

“But you were right—I shouldn’t have done that to you. Or to anyone. I should’ve stopped him.”

Tucker laughed hesitantly. “Well. I kind of deserved it.”

I waited.

Tucker sighed and sat down on the porch swing. “He got that job from Cliff. I’d been waiting for it all semester. Do you remember Celia’s bonfire, on Scoreboard Day?”

“Yeah . . .” My stomach sank. I knew where this was going.

He blushed and looked away. “I slept with Ria.”

Before I knew what I was doing, I had his face in my hands and was yelling, “TUCKER. THAT IS NOT TRUE. You are the one source of GOOD in this godforsaken place! You can’t have gone along with Ria’s plans—
I’m
the one who screwed up and put IcyHot in your underwear!”

Tucker shook his head, and I dropped my hands.

“No, you’re not a bad person,” he said. “And Richter isn’t a bad person, and I’m not a bad person. We’re just people, and people sometimes do stupid things.”

I stared at him. After a few seconds, I said, “So. You and Ria.”

“Me and Ria,” he replied.

“You had sex with Ria Wolf.”

“I had sex with Ria Wolf,” he admitted, raising his hands in defeat.

“And how was that?”

“It
sucked
,” he said, laughing suddenly. “It was awful. I’ve never felt more awkward in my life. I mean, it was
pretty obvious from the beginning that she was using me, but you’ve seen her—she’s hot. Like, beyond hot. Like hotness to the nth power.”

“Tucker, I get it.”

“You’d think hotness would make it better, you know? But it’s kind of hard to enjoy yourself when the other person keeps hitting you and telling you how terrible you are at it and what you’re doing wrong.”

“That
would
suck.” I laughed only because he did. “Why’d you do it? I mean, it couldn’t have been because she was hot.”

Tucker turned a little red again. “Honestly? Richter and I sort of had a war going over her during middle school.”

“Over Ria?” I laughed again.

“Yeah, that’s why he hates her,” Tucker said. “I mean, we both knew it was pointless, but he never understood why she’d pick brawn over brains. She came up to me at Celia’s bonfire and started flirting with me—”

So it was Tucker with Ria in that bedroom, and I had almost walked in on them.

Peachy.

“—and then it sort of happened. I knew she was just doing it to make Cliff mad—everyone knows that, she does it every year—and I knew I’d have to deal with him afterward. That’s why Richter had you guys break into my
house and do all that stuff to me, because Cliff paid him, so really it was my fault in the first place—”

“Tucker, shut up.”

“Okay.”

We lapsed into silence, staring across the street at my neighbor’s bright green lawn. After a few minutes, Tucker said, “So, you still think something is up with McCoy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I never told you—I got to talk to Miles’s mom.”

I explained everything I’d learned from June. Then I told him about confronting Celia outside the gym, and about Miles being an obstacle.

“I think McCoy’s going to do something. But I don’t know when, or how. And I’m afraid that if I don’t figure it out, something bad will happen.”

“And you’re
positive
,” he said slowly, “that this is all actually happening?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m never positive of anything, Tucker, I’m just telling you what I know. But you said earlier this year that Celia and her mom didn’t get along, right?”

“I—well, I mean, I’ve seen them come into school a few times before, and I’ve heard things, but it’s not like I’m in with their family.”

“Well, look—even if I am making up parts of it, I know that
something
is going on. I know McCoy is messed up
and I know he’s taking Celia along for the ride. And I feel like . . . like if I don’t do something about it, then no one will.”

Tucker was quiet for a moment. Then, finally, he said, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but . . . I know where McCoy lives. You won’t find anything incriminating in his office or at school. If there
is
anything, you’ll find it where he lives.”

“Mr. Soggy Potato Salad,” I said, putting my hand over my heart. “Are . . . are you suggesting we
break into
someone’s house?”

Tucker shrugged. “Not to take anything. Just to look around.”

“Should I ask Miles to come with us? He has more experience breaking and entering than we do.”

“He knows about all of this?”

“If McCoy is really after him, I figured he could keep himself safer than I could alone,” I said. “Besides, he’s known about me since October.”

“Oh, well.” Tucker thought for a moment. “Yeah, I guess we’d be stupid not to ask him. His house is only a few streets away from McCoy’s.”

“What?”

“Yeah—McCoy lives in Lakeview Trail.”