Made You Up: Prologue–Chapter 6

I felt a flurry of delirious joy because he’d said, “You smell like lemons” instead of “Your hair is red.”

He knew that the circumference of the Earth was forty thousand kilometers, and that only the male cardinal was bright red.

His cheeks flared red as he scratched more fervently.

For two years after that fateful day in the supermarket, I thought I’d really set the lobsters free.

Schizophrenia isn’t supposed to manifest until a person’s late teens, at the earliest, but I’d gotten a shot of it at just seven years old.

Schizophrenia isn’t supposed to manifest until a person’s late teens, at the earliest, but I’d gotten a shot of it at just seven years old.

(She’d always been a very suspect type of librarian—I refuse to believe donning rubber gloves to handle books is a normal and accepted practice, and I don’t care what anyone says.)

Gangly, bespectacled, hair black as an oil slick and always perfectly combed forward, Tucker was a busboy, waiter, and cashier here at Finnegan’s, not to mention the smartest person I’d ever met.

“Any other questions?” Tucker asked, walking over to lean against the counter next to me. “Or is the crusade over?”
“You mean the inquisition. And yes, it is.”

“He should be here soon.” Tucker squinted at his condiment skirmish. “He comes on his way home from work. He’s all yours.”

Several synapses imploded inside my brain.

He’d forbidden me from bringing my camera to work after I’d photographed an irate man with an eye patch and a peg leg.

“Hi!” Tucker mimicked in a high falsetto.

While Tucker stepped out back for his break, I commandeered his condiment armies.

The oscillating fan on the wall made the papers on the employee bulletin board flutter.

I grabbed the Magic 8 Ball and rubbed the scuff mark as I looked down into its round window.
Better not tell you now.
Evasive little...

Perimeter checks entailed three things: getting a 360-degree view of my surroundings, noting anything that seemed out of place—like the huge scorched spiral design covering the surface of the parking lot—and filing those things away in case they tried to sneak up on me later.

I joined the procession of students—keeping an arm’s- length distance between myself and the rest of them, because God knows who was bringing weapons to school these days—all the way to the guidance office, where I stood in line for four minutes to get my schedule.

“Either way,” he said, “I think you have an inalienable right to know that dyeing your hair is against the dress code.”

A burly kid stood up and moved to his new seat.

To my dismay, he looked even more hopelessly nerdy here—his school uniform starched straight, his arms full of textbooks and already-scribbled-on papers—the sort of nerdy that gets picked on by guys like Clifford Ackerley.

I stared, wide-eyed, at Mr. Gunthrie, praying nothing about him was a figment of my imagination.

“You...wait a minute...he’s the valedictorian?”
I knew Tucker didn’t like the valedictorian, but during his rants at work he’d never said who it was. Just that the kid didn’t deserve it.

“I figured we’d start off the school year with a little icebreaker lab,” Mrs. Dalton said 'with a certain lazy cheerfulness as she returned to her desk, popped open a Diet Coke, and chugged half of it down in one go.

I braced my feet farther apart when it felt like the ground was skewing to the left.

I pressed my pen to my bottom lip and mulled it over.

The group across the table stared at him like it was the advent of the apocalypse.

I felt better when I got away from Miles, like the revelation I’d had in the chemistry classroom had been nothing but a dream, and I’d woken up from it.

When the volleyball team entered the gym, I paused homework to snap pictures: Jetta and Art setting up the volleyball net like pros; Theo manning the concession stand; Evan and Ian scouring the bleachers for trash; the volleyball team looking perky and athletic in their spandex.

Parents filed into the gym from the rotunda, holding popcorn and hot dogs and wearing shirts that read “Go Sabres!”

I searched for the disgruntled parent, but teenagers surrounded me.

Tucker laughed and puffed out his skinny chest in mock bravado.

Tucker prodded the binding of my calculus book.

The enormity of this balancing act hit me all at once, made my stomach lurch.

The enormity of this balancing act hit me all at once, made my stomach lurch.