Made You Up: Chapters 35–47

“He’s evil incarnate.”

It had only been a day since I’d last seen him, and I hadn’t tried to quell the riot of excitement in my stomach.

Everyone was talking about her, making jokes and snide comments loud enough for her to hear.

Miles looked down as if he’d forgotten he was holding my hand, and then looked back up at Evan and Ian and their impish grins, and said quite plainly, “No.”

Jetta left to watch over Art’s wrestling practice in the auxiliary gym, and Theo retreated to the concession stand.

“You could have had everything, Celia. If you had done as I said, you could have had your pick of any college. Any one you wanted. You could have had everything. But now you’re off the cheerleading squad, forced to spend time with these delinquents—”

“And McCoy and her mom think it’s a bad thing. They think you’re...impeding her potential, or something. And they really don’t like it.”

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.

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 stuck close to Miles, because there I didn’t feel the need to check every instrument for contraband items and Communist propaganda.

“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.”

“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 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—”

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.”

My hair had become a blight, just like at Hillpark; people saw me coming and jumped from my path.

“Tucker said if we’re going to find anything incriminating, it won’t be at school, and he’s right. It’ll be at McCoy’s. While I’m sure I could just John McClane my way into his house by shooting down the front door, I figured you might be able to do the job a little more discreetly.”

They formed one undulating mass of red, the head of a dragon rising from their midst.

A saber hung at his side and the German flag from East Shoal’s Flags-of-the-World entryway rested against one shoulder.

A lone figure sat on the bench next to the pool, soaking wet and clad in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.

Evan and Ian returned laden with towels and Miles’s school clothes, and Miles dried himself off.

He got twenty dollars to put tape on the bridge of his glasses, wear too-short pants, and don argyle socks for three days.

We shambled out into the hallway and toward the stairs.

As we painstakingly descended the stairs, they kept up a steady stream of small talk.

“So, um, Miles.” I squeezed his hand harder. “Have I said how much I really don’t want to be stuck in Crimson Falls? But I’m pretty sure my mom is going to put me there anyway, and this situation made me realize the direness of that whole thing. ...”

When I stopped at Cliff and Ria’s table, everyone there was strangely cordial to me.