Made You Up: Chapters 17–24

“Mom told me,” he said, smiling. “Punching? Is that how you wrangle boys these days?”

Better to prepare her for the worst than let it blindside her.

I flipped open my notebook, glanced warily at Ms. Dalton, and began copying.

He sat up long enough to procure a pen from thin air and jot something down in his notebook.

I plowed my way through a half hour of derivatives before the cheerleaders quieted and the coach addressed them.

Celia sat among the cheerleaders, like a hyena in front of a bloody haunch of meat.

Me, who thought he might be Blue Eyes, and who had come to the unfortunate conclusion that even if he wasn’t Blue Eyes, I still didn’t mind noting the way he raked his hair to the side when it fell over his forehead, or how he stretched his legs out exactly twenty minutes into each class.

Her entire face flushed with color as she gazed at her alleged best friend with cold-blooded murder in her wide, rabid eyes.

I could imagine it as a cartoon—Celia’s teeth turning into fangs and steam blowing out her ears as she grabbed Britney around the neck and throttled her until Britney’s eyes popped out of her head.

The crickets and cicadas had faded for the year, leaving the night quiet and undisturbed.

“Well that’s too bad, isn’t it?” I wondered when he’d decided to become a white knight. “I didn’t ask for your permission.”
“And I won’t ask for yours,” he retorted.

“Why should I believe you? You’re kind of notorious for being a lying, thieving bastard.”

At least I knew Miles well enough to understand that the look of frustration on his face wasn’t a ploy.

There were several pieces of paper clipped to the inside back cover, but I ignored them and flipped it open to the middle. Both pages were covered with his untidy scrawl.

My head spun with everything that had happened. Celia’s revenge. Erwin. The increasingly plausible idea that Blue Eyes was not a hallucination at all, and never had been.

I couldn’t tell if she was angry or excited—her zealotry managed to cover pretty much all the emotional bases.

“They probably were. Our childish naivete saved us.”

In the picture, Scarlet beamed and flashed a set of white teeth. Her face wasn’t obscured here; she looked vaguely familiar.

I sat in the copse on the hill behind Red Witch Bridge that night, trying, for a little while, to forget what I’d learned in the library.

People said it was because they didn’t trust the bridge’s integrity, but the real reason was the witch.

The fifth person broke away from the group and started across the bridge. His steps echoed against the old wood. Brave guy. Usually it took more persuasion.

The breeze had mussed his hair; I balled my hands in my lap to keep from reaching over and putting it back in place.

“You’re an enigma. You walk around doing stuff to people for money, and everyone’s afraid to look you in the eye, and I’m pretty sure you’re part of a mafia. You don’t strike me as the kind of person who has a place to live. You’re just there. You exist. You are where you are and you have no home.”

Lakeview Trail was one of those half-and-half subdivisions—half pretty new houses like Downing Heights, half run-down hovels with crumbling sidewalks, like mine.

He made a pretty easy target, sitting there, docile for once, and kind of sleepy.

Two minutes before seven, Miles’s truck idled in the driveway, tailpipe gushing exhaust into the frosty air.

“I work at the deli counter. Have to give people their succulent, chemical-ridden salami and whatnot.”

Britney and Stacey watched him intently the whole time, nodding in agreement.

“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.”

For the rest of that week, I felt strangely buoyant.

“He’s smart,” Miles continued, “he’s really smart. But he doesn’t put it to use. He could have as much leverage as I do, but he sits around with his stupid conspiracies and does his little chemistry equations and obsesses over girls who won’t look twice at him.”

McCoy stood before the scoreboard, his gray hair disheveled, his suit wrinkled.

“Celia is as smart as any of these idiots. She needs more focus, is all,” drawled the woman.

He smashed Theo, Evan, and Ian under his mental heel because it encouraged them to try to beat him, but he always gave Jetta and Art some leeway.

“Did you have a significant effect on the development of some strain of philosophy that profoundly impacted the world?”