Made You Up (8 page)

“Can’t wait to see you there, Milesie!”

I snorted.

Miles glared at me.

“Milesie?” I said. “Can I call you that?”

“You had better show up,” he said, his gaze flat and cold.

Celia’s bonfire wasn’t until mid-October, on Scoreboard Day. It took me a long time to decide to go, and only after consulting Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball (
Signs point to yes)
and much prodding from the rest of the club. Except Miles, of course, who only deemed it necessary to give me one prod. (Days later, he still had a wonderful array of bright red welts on the back of his right hand.)

The fact that the club wanted me to go made it feel like I wasn’t so much using it as an excuse to make my mother and therapist happy, but more like I actually wanted to spend time with. . . .

With friends.

I’d be paranoid as hell while I was there, but my mother was so ecstatic about the idea that I knew there was no way I could back out. She might have even blown a few synapses when I asked her if I could go, because she stood there and stared blankly at me for a minute before asking if I was supposed to take food and how much. She called my therapist with the good news, and my therapist immediately wanted to talk to me and ask why I’d made the decision and how I felt about it.

My mother also said she’d drive me, but I headed her off; Theo had already offered a ride, and I’d accepted. Having my mother and her Firenza drop me off in front of a huge house in one of the richest neighborhoods in town, at a party that I hadn’t really been invited to, was more than enough to make my stomach bottom out.

The Wednesday before the party, Theo put her homework aside to tell me what to expect at the bonfire.

“Don’t eat any of the food,” she said as she handed a customer his hot dog. “Not even joking. Eat before you go. And don’t drink anything.”

Well, that certainly wouldn’t be a problem. I almost thanked Theo for giving me an excuse to be paranoid about the food.

“Why? Does she poison it?”

“There’s no guaranteeing that someone won’t try to slip you a roofie.” Theo turned to refill the popcorn machine. “You’ll be fine. Don’t eat or drink; stay inconspicuous.”

So my normal routine, then.

“Oh, and don’t go upstairs,” Theo added.

“Why would I go upstairs?”

“Just don’t do it, okay?”

“All right, fine.”

“Anyway, everyone only goes to these parties to deface the fake scoreboard and get stories about crazy stuff. Celia’s parties make better stories than Celia does.”

Crazy stuff
happening at parties with roofies and questionable upstairs goings-on didn’t make me feel very good about the whole thing, but if I tried to back out now, my mother and my therapist would be on me like hounds. There was pretty much no way I wasn’t going.

“FUCK IT, I’M BORED.”

“Here he comes.” Theo didn’t even look up when Miles rounded the corner and tossed his notebook onto the
counter. “I don’t think cursing is going to help,” she told him.

“Maybe it fucking will.” Miles seethed. “I hate everyone in that gym. Pick someone.”

“No, I don’t want to play.”

“It won’t take that long.”

“That’s why I don’t want to play.”

“Can I do one?” I raised my hand. “It might actually take you more than five questions, too.”

Miles quirked his eyebrow. “Oh, you think so?”

“If you get this in five, I’ll be thoroughly impressed.”

He leaned over the counter, looking eager. Weirdly, weirdly eager. Not like he wanted to rub my face into the floor. Not like he knew he was going to beat me. Just . . . excited. “Okay,” he said. “Are you fictional?”

Broad question. He didn’t know me as well as he knew Theo, so it was to be expected.

“No,” I said.

“Are you still alive?”

“No.”

“Are you a leader?”

“Yes.”

“Was your civilization conquered by a European nation?”

“Yes.”

“Are you . . . a leader of the Olmec?”

“How’d you get
there
?” Theo blurted out, but Miles ignored her.

“No,” I said, trying not to let him see how close he’d come. “And the Olmec weren’t conquered by the Europeans. They died out.”

Miles frowned. “Mayan?”

“No.”

“Incan.”

“No.”

“Aztec.”

“Yes.”

The corners of his lips twisted up, but he said, “Shouldn’t have taken so many guesses for that one.” Then he said, “Did you found the Tlatocan?”

“No.”

“Did you reign after 1500?”

“No.”

Theo watched the conversation like a tennis match.

“Are you Ahuitzotl?”

“No.” I smiled. This kid knew his history.

“Tizoc?”

“No.”

“Axayacatl?”

“No.”

“Moctezuma I?”

“Nope.”

“Itzcoatl?”

“No.”

“Chimalpopoca?”

“No.”

“Huitzilihuitl?”

“What the hell are you saying?” Theo cried.

He’d cut off a chunk of the Aztec emperors and whittled them down until there was only one remaining. But now he had three questions left—two he didn’t need.

Why hadn’t he cut it down again? Surely he could have shortened his options and not guessed his way through all the emperors. Was this some kind of test? Or was . . . was he showing off?

“You’re Acamapichtli.”

There was a fanatical gleam in his eye, another smile playing on his lips. Both were gone as soon as I said, “Almost twenty. Not quite, but I almost had you.”

“I’m never playing this game again,” said Theo, sighing and returning to her homework.

The little boy from the lobster tank disappeared from Miles’s face.

Why did he invite me?

Most likely

I wish you could say more than yes or no.

C
harlie planted herself in my bedroom doorway with her hands on her hips, the head of a black bishop clenched between her teeth. “Can I come with you?”

“This isn’t an eight-year-old sort of party.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means
no
.” I ducked back into my shallow closet in search of something different to wear. Old jeans littered the floor and shirts hung lopsided from hangers. A ratty pair of ginger cat-shaped house slippers curled up underneath a fraying sweatshirt. The slippers purred when my foot brushed against them.

“Why not?” Charlie stamped her foot. Her cheeks were round and red. With her expression and her tiny frame, she looked closer to four than eight.

“Why are you being so whiny tonight? Usually you give up after a while.”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“Are you crying?”

“No!” She sucked in snot.

“It’s not like I’m leaving permanently. I’ll be back later.” I finally decided it would be easier not to change at all and yanked the Lacedaemon Spartans XXL sweatshirt away from the (hissing) cat slippers to pull it on.

My mother called from the living room. “Alex! Your friends are here!”

It might have been the first time she ever said those words in that order in her life. I picked Charlie up under her armpits and carried her down the hallway, setting her on the carpet in the living room. The triplets waited at the end of the driveway in Theo’s Camry.

“Are you sure you don’t have to take anything?” asked my mother.

“I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said. “But I’ve been dying for some Yoo-hoos lately.” Had to get the requests in while she was still on this normality high. “See you later. If Dad calls, tell him he’s got horrible timing.”

“I wanna go!” Charlie tugged on my pant leg.

“You can’t—it’s a big-girl party,” I said.

“I’m not
four
!” Charlie screeched, the black bishop dancing on her lip.

“No,” I said, “you’re eight. And you need to stop chewing on those things—you’re going to choke.”

My mother’s eyebrows creased in worry right before I ducked out the door. Maybe she cared more about what happened at this party than she let on.

Being in a car with Theo and her brothers was like shutting myself in a bank vault with eighty pounds of TNT and a lit fuse. Theo let me sit in the front seat, but even then it felt like Evan and Ian were too close. The three of them sang earsplitting drinking songs the whole way and only stopped when Theo turned into Downing Heights.

Downing Heights was the richest neighborhood in town. All the houses here were huge and immaculate and eggshell white, but it didn’t take long to figure out which one was Celia’s. Cars lined up on both sides of the road nearly ten houses in either direction. Theo parked, and we walked to the two-story McMansion at the center of all the chaos.

A bad feeling roiled in my stomach. I’d never been to this neighborhood before, and eyes watched me from the dark spaces in the landscaping. I balled my fists in the hem of my sweatshirt.

Music beat a steady rhythm from a huge stereo on the back porch; the bonfire crackled a short distance away. Inside
the house, lights flashed, and people came and went through all sorts of doors and windows like flies on a hot day.

“Keep calm,” Evan said, grinning, as he led the way into the house.

“Don’t go upstairs,” said Theo.

“And don’t. Ingest. Anything,” Ian finished. And then the triplets were gone. Sucked into the crowd beyond the door. Unfamiliar bodies pressed in on me from every side.

My perimeter check wouldn’t do any good in here. I could hardly see five feet in front of me. Checking each person for a weapon would be more than impossible. I had my camera, tucked in my sweatshirt pocket, but that wouldn’t do me any good. I’d never remember what I’d seen and what I hadn’t.

I slipped my way through the sweaty bodies and loud voices, looking for a familiar face. I thought I saw Tucker and headed toward him, but when I made it across the room, he’d vanished.

As I edged around the elaborate, china-cabinet-flanked dining room, I wondered where Celia’s parents were and if they knew exactly how many cans of beer were stacked on their polished mahogany dining table. (Answer: seventy-six.)

The curving staircase was around the corner from the dining room; the upstairs seemed a lot quieter and less alcohol-filled than the downstairs. I knew what Theo had
said, but unless someone was going to ambush me, I didn’t see any reason not to go up.

At the top of the staircase was a gloriously quiet hallway lined on either side with doors. Most of them were closed. Probably bedrooms. About halfway down was a narrow table covered with framed pictures. I could see Celia in them, Celia
smiling
, but before I could get near them, a girl’s voice floated out of a bedroom up ahead.

“Stop squirming! Shut up and sit still . . . I thought you were going to do what I said.”

I tiptoed closer to the cracked-open door until I had a view of the room’s occupants. There was a bed. And on the bed was a half-naked Ria Wolf on top of a half-naked guy who was definitely not Cliff Ackerley. Ria, her back to me, sat up and flipped her hair over her shoulder.

I pushed away from the door and sprinted for the stairs. Holy—
that
was what Theo had been talking about—Ria’s revenge plot—wow, okay. My skin crawled as I cut a path through the thicket of bodies at the foot of the stairs. I rushed into the shiny white kitchen and escaped to the back porch.

Everyone was either clustered around the stereo or the seven-foot-tall piece of plyboard, propped up on the lawn, which had been painted to look like the scoreboard. Beer, candy wrappers, old movie ticket stubs, and one soiled pair of underwear had been left on the ground around it as
offerings. A rainbow of fluorescent graffiti covered its face. Curse words, cartoon penises, obscene suggestions for what McCoy could do with his genitals. Nothing you wouldn’t find carved into the desk of the average teenaged boy. Several people were busy spray-painting the words
Rich Dick McCoy Forever
along its bottom edge in bright pink.

I could only think of the Hillpark Gym Graffiti Incident. Not exactly my shining moment. I headed to the lawn. The nighttime silence and the crackle of the bonfire made a sort of wall against the blaring music on the porch. Three benches were arranged in a triangle around the fire: one had been smashed in the middle by a bowling ball that still rested between the halves; another was occupied by a couple so tightly wrapped around each other I’d need the Jaws of Life to pry them apart. Astronomical amounts of bird crap covered the benches, but the couple didn’t seem to mind and bowling balls tend to be astoundingly unobservant.

The third bench had only one occupant, sitting with his back to me, watching the marshmallow on his skewer burn black in the fire.

When I realized who he was, my heart rose and fell and I considered going back inside before that flaming marshmallow could be weaponized. But then he turned and saw me and arched his eyebrow,
that freaking eyebrow can I rip it off already
.

“You can sit here, if you want.” Miles scooted to one end of the bench. There was something weird, subdued, about his voice. He sounded normal. Calm. Like we were friends or something.

I sat down on the other end of the bench (“the other end” being five inches away), checked him from head to toe for sharp objects, and tugged on my hair. If he was my only point of normalcy in this party from hell, I’d take him. He’d ditched his school uniform for a worn pair of jeans, thick-soled work boots, a white-and-blue baseball shirt, and a heavy bomber jacket that looked like it’d come straight out of World War II.

“What brings you to the fireside?” he asked, lifting his skewer and watching the marshmallow burn without the slightest hint of interest.

“It’s too crowded.” I didn’t know what he was playing at—if anything—or if he was going to snap back to regular old Miles. “And too noisy. Mob mentality is running rampant in there.”

Miles grunted.

“So why’d you make Celia invite me?” I asked. “I can’t believe you’re that hard up for company.”

Miles shrugged. “I don’t know. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Consider it payback.” The marshmallow dropped dead into the fiery depths. He started on a second.
“I asked off work for this. You’d think with all the alcohol consumption and the people groping each other”—he motioned to our Jaws of Life bench friends—“and the anonymous bedroom sex, it’d be a little more interesting.”

I shivered. “I definitely kind of walked in on someone in a bedroom upstairs.”

Miles made a weird coughing sound, like he was holding back a laugh. I’d never heard him laugh. “You walked in on them? What did they do?”

“I didn’t actually walk in. The door was cracked open, and I heard someone talking—”

“Who was it?”

“Ria. I don’t know who the guy was, but it wasn’t Cliff.”

Miles’s eyebrows set in a hard line above his eyes. The second marshmallow fell. He grabbed a third. “Whoever he was, I hope he doesn’t mind having his nose cartilage lodged in the back of his skull. Cliff can be territorial.”

“You sound like you’ve experienced this. Does it have something to do with why you hate Ria? Ooh, were you one of those guys? The ones that she . . . y’know . . .”

“No.” His look was deadly. “I hate Ria because there’s nothing going on inside her head besides volleyball and sparkly things. I hate Cliff for the same reason, only football instead of volleyball and sex instead of sparkly things.”

It certainly hadn’t taken long for Evil Miles to show up
again. He didn’t say anything else. We sat quietly for a few minutes, listening to the snap of the fire and the music from the deck and the sounds coming from the bench couple, who were really going at it. Even with them making out right there and the bowling ball being so conspicuous, I still wanted to take a picture of it all.

Miles burned his way through another three marshmallows. “I think Celia may hate you now,” he said finally.

“No kidding? I wasn’t sure—that viper glare she gave me when you made her invite me didn’t quite get the message across, I guess.” I grabbed a skewer and jammed the prongs into a burning log. “What’s with her, anyway? She’s all over you. Is she your ex-girlfriend or something?”

“No. I’ve never”—he switched gears in the blink of an eye—“she’s always been like that. I don’t know why.”

“She likes you.” I still stood by what I’d said to Theo, even if she thought it was weird.

“That’s . . . stupid.”

“Oh, so you think so, too?” I said.

Miles looked over at me. “Do you hate me?”

The question was so sudden, and his voice was so bland and devoid of emotion, that I wondered if he even wanted an answer. “Um. You’re a bit of a jerk.”

He seemed unconvinced.

“Okay, okay, you’re a complete douche bag. You’re the biggest asshat on the planet. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No, the truth’ll do fine.”

“Okay. You’re a jerk.”
And you have beautiful eyes.
“But no, I don’t hate you.” I became very intent on moving ashes into piles. I didn’t want to look at him again, but I could feel his eyes on me. “I do think the gutting of the books was a step too far.”

“And gluing my locker shut wasn’t? Good job on not admitting that, by the way.”

“Thanks. How’s your hand?”

“Better,” he said. “
Animalia Arthropoda Insecta Hymenoptera Formicidae Solenopsis.
Little bastards. Lucky I’m not allergic to the damn things. If I’d had a reaction, I would’ve sued.”

“And what business would a rich kid like you have suing a poor kid like me?”

The end of Miles’s skewer hit the ground next to the fire. He turned his full attention on me. “What makes you think I’m rich?”

I shrugged. “You’re a brat? You’re an only child? Your shoes are always polished?” It was true—his shirt was always wrinkle-free, his tie straight, his pants sharp and ironed, and his shoes were blacker and shinier than anyone else’s. And his
hair
, let’s not even get started on his hair,
because he had hair that looked like he’d walked right out of the shower every morning and artfully styled it to dry in the most amazingly messy way. Like good-looking bed head, if that’s even possible. Whatever he was, he certainly took pains to make himself look nice.

“My shoes are always polished?” he said incredulously. “
That’s
why you think I’m rich? Because I like
shiny shoes
?”

I shrugged again, heat seeping into my face.

“And sometimes there’s a good reason why someone’s an only child, so don’t even go there.”

“Fine!” I held up my hands. “Sorry, okay? You’re not rich.”

Miles turned back to the fire. Another silence blanketed us, but this one wasn’t awkward, either. Just really, really heavy. Like one of us should have kept talking until we ran out of things to say.

“Exactly how good are you with history?” Miles asked, his tone back to bland and unaffected.

“That depends. There’s a lot of history—what do you want to know?”