Made You Up (10 page)

Am I crazy?

Concentrate and ask again

Am I crazy?

Reply hazy try again

Am I crazy?

Cannot predict now

Better not tell you now

Concentrate and ask again

Better not tell you now

Reply hazy try again

Cannot predict now

Ask again later

Ask again later

Ask again later

I
spent the next three weeks in and out of the hospital.

By the end of the second week, I more often haunted my living room, but the Gravedigger rained medication on me like the London Blitz.

Every morning I woke up with the image of Bloody Miles burned into my memory, and every night I dreamed I stood on a gymnasium floor spray-painted red with the word
Communists
, while McCoy’s scoreboard cackled on the wall behind me.

Nothing felt or tasted or looked good anymore. I didn’t know if it was me or the new medication. Food made me want to throw up, blankets and clothes scratched and twisted, every light blinded me. The world had gone gray. Sometimes I felt like I was dying, or the Earth was breaking
apart beneath my feet, or the sky might swallow me whole.

I couldn’t go to work anymore. Not that I cared. Finnegan hated me anyway. This would be the perfect excuse for him to fire me.

I didn’t even sneak out to Red Witch Bridge. I couldn’t risk it. And a dark part of my mind imagined Bloody Miles standing in the trees, waiting for me.

Homework came in overwhelming waves, especially chemistry and calculus, which I had a hard enough time learning even with formal instruction. My mother tried to teach me, but she sucked at it, too. Some days I thought she’d break down in the hallway or the kitchen and fill the house with sobs. I don’t know much about what my mother’s life was like before she had kids, but I think she was happier. I think she didn’t spend all her time caring for one child who was a high-maintenance musical prodigy and another who couldn’t even manage her own medication schedule.

Charlie was a little different, because Charlie did what she always did when she was afraid or not sure how to handle a situation: she hid. She stayed out of the living room, my fortress, and only ventured into the kitchen when she knew I wasn’t there. I hardly saw her at all those first two weeks, but after I had a particularly bad time with the Gravedigger, Charlie stood on the other side of the doorway,
out of sight, and played me songs on her violin. Usually the
1812 Overture
.

The third week turned out to be the best of the three. That Sunday, Dad came home.

Rain thundered against the windows. I sat barricaded in my pillow fort, leaning against the couch, wondering about the contents of those eighteen-and-a-half lost minutes of the Nixon White House tapes, when rain-rippled headlights roamed across the far wall and gravel crunched as a car pulled into the driveway. Maybe my mother had left without me knowing and was just getting back. But she wasn’t supposed to leave me alone. She wouldn’t.

A car door shut. Someone pulled open the screen door.

“DADDY’S HOME!” Charlie screamed from the kitchen.

I peeked out of my fort. My mother stood right in the doorway, Charlie’s fringe of red hair visible behind her.

And then a completely soaked, suntanned someone leaned around the doorframe. He grinned when he saw me, his warm dark eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Hey, Lexi.”

I almost cracked my head open on the coffee table in my rush to get out of the fort. With my blanket still wrapped around me like a cloak, I threw my arms around his neck and hid my face in his collar.

“Hi, Dad,” I mumbled.

He laughed and hugged me back. “Lex, I’m all wet.”

“I don’t care.” It sounded more like
mfffmmph
.

“I came back as soon as I could,” he said when I let him go. “Did you know? South Africa is
really
far away.”

I
dismantled the pillow fort enough to make the couch sit-able again. Dad and I watched the History Channel and played chess all day, and in the evening, my mother and Charlie joined us. Charlie played behind the life-size George Washington statue in the corner, reenacting the crossing of the Delaware.

When it was just me and Dad, he’d ask about school and what I’d been doing while he’d been gone. He carefully maneuvered around the word “friends,” something I thanked him for. But I did reassure him.

“They’re my friends. I mean, really, they are. Or were . . . I hope they’re still my friends, if they know . . .”

“If they’re really your friends, they won’t care about your condition, Lexi.” Dad hugged me closer to his side. He
smelled like rain. “Tell me about them.”

So I told him about the club. About the triplets. About Art and the fact that even though he could kill a small man with a poke to the chest, he still acted like a complete teddy bear. About Jetta and her French heritage. About Tucker and his conspiracies. I smiled more than I had for the past two weeks.

“Who’s the kid who brought you home?” Dad asked suddenly, throwing me off kilter. “The one you punched?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“Mom told me,” he said, smiling. “Punching? Is that how you wrangle boys these days?” He nudged me in the side. I swatted his elbow away and pulled my blanket tighter, trying to hide the blush in my cheeks. “Wrangling” boys hadn’t been on my agenda lately.

“It’s just Miles.”

“
Just
Miles?”

I ignored him. “He runs the club.”

“What, that’s it? Nothing else?”

“Uh, what do you want to know? He’s the valedictorian. He’s really tall.”

Dad made an approving sound at the word
valedictorian
.

“He knew who Acamapichtli was,” I added after a second. “Along with most of the other Aztec emperors. And the Tlatocan.”

Dad’s approving noise rose an octave.

“And I’m pretty sure he can speak German.”

Dad smiled. “That all?”

My face heated up again at the look he gave me. As if I
liked
Miles. As if I
wanted
to think about him.

Just thinking about his stupid face and his stupidly blue eyes turned me into the most confused person on the planet.

“No,” I said, burrowing into my blanket. “He can also take a hit.”

By the end of the third week, the world balanced on its axis. Dad stayed home, Mom stayed happy, and I got to go back to school on Monday. Sure, I wanted to puke from the anxiety rolling around in my stomach, but now I could get back to my (admittedly late) college search, catch up on all that schoolwork, and see my friends again.

Assuming Miles hadn’t told them everything, of course. If he had, there was a real chance they wouldn’t want to talk to me at all. But, reassuringly, I thought they had tried to contact me. The phone had been ringing more often than usual, and more than once someone knocked on the door and was turned away by my mother. I wished I had my own cell phone, but my mother probably would have taken that away from me, too.

Sunday night, as I tromped down the back hallway—I’d
just finished putting up all my pictures again—to the living room, I heard my parents’ voices floating out of the kitchen. Talking about me. I pressed myself up against the wall outside the doorway.

“—that it’s not a good idea, that’s all. We can’t pretend that it isn’t as bad as it looks.”

“I don’t think we should resort to that yet. Lexi’s a responsible girl. Something must have bothered her. I don’t think she’d forget—”

My heard swelled painfully with appreciation for my dad.

“David,
really
,” said my mother. “You can’t know that. What if she didn’t want to take it? It was my fault for not paying enough attention, but . . . but that’s not the point. The medication isn’t the problem. This has happened before, and it might happen again, and it keeps getting
worse
.”

“So you want to hide her away? You really think that’s best for her? Trying to convince her to stay in some asylum?”

The word rang in the air.

“Oh, David, please.” My mother’s voice lowered to a whisper. “You know they’re not like that anymore. They’re not even called asylums. It’s a
mental hospital
.”

I hurried to the living room and curled up on the couch, drawing my blanket tightly around me. So much for feeling good. My mother had removed my intestines and used them
to tie a noose around my neck. She just hadn’t kicked the stool out from under me yet.

She couldn’t send me to one of those places. She was my mother. She was supposed to do what was best for me, not what would get me out of her hair the fastest. How could she even think of that?

It took a while for me to notice the big blue eyes watching me from the doorway.

“C’m’ere, Charlie.” I spread my arms. Charlie hesitated, then ran across the room and climbed into my lap. I wrapped my arms and the blanket around her.

She saved me from trying to figure out how much I should tell her. “I don’t like it when your head breaks.”

I knew she was old enough and smart enough to know that my head didn’t actually break, but she’d been calling it that for so long it didn’t matter anymore. I think it made her feel better to think of it like something broken that could be fixed.

“I don’t like it, either,” I said. “You do know why it happens, right? Why my head breaks?”

Charlie removed the black castle from her mouth and nodded. “The brain chemicals make hallucinations. . . .”

“And do you know what a hallucination is?”

She nodded again. “I looked it up.”

Word of the Week, maybe? I hugged her tighter. “You
know how you didn’t want me to leave for that party a while back?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And how you didn’t want me to go to the hospital three weeks ago?”

“Yeah.”

I took a breath, pulling myself together. Better to prepare her for the worst than let it blindside her. My parents would never tell her this. Not until it was too late.

Maybe, if I told her now—if I prepared myself, too—I could still avoid it.

“Well, I might have to go away again. And it won’t just be for a few hours or days or weeks.” I absentmindedly pulled a bit of her hair back and began braiding it. “Okay? I might not come back. I wanted you to know.”

“Do Mom and Dad know?” Charlie whispered.

“Yeah, they know.”

It was better if she didn’t know that it was our mother’s idea. She’d figure it out one day, but for now she could go on believing that some higher power sent me where it thought I needed to be. She could keep trusting Mom and Dad, and keep being my whining, chess-playing, crusading Charlemagne.

M
ono was my cover story.

Everyone believed me. Everyone except Miles, Tucker, and Art. Art, because he’d carried me during my episode. Tucker, because his parents were doctors and he could tell when someone didn’t actually know the symptoms of mono.

Miles, for the obvious reasons.

I did my perimeter check three times while I hid Erwin behind his bushes on the front walk, and my eyes were drawn again to the roof, where the men in suits monitored the parking lot. It took me a few minutes to realize that public high schools didn’t
have
men in suits watching their parking lots. I took a picture of them. I wasn’t sure if the pictures would help anymore, but doing it made me feel better. Like I was doing something to help myself. Like that was still possible.

I still had so much make-up work—and no clue how to do most of it. When I slouched into the cafeteria after fourth period, I spent the hour doing homework instead of eating. I didn’t have to check my food because I didn’t eat my food.

I saw that damn snake hanging from the damn opening in the ceiling again on my way to seventh period. I arrived late, but Miles had already finished the lab by himself and, by some miracle, agreed to let me copy his results. I flipped open my notebook, glanced warily at Ms. Dalton, and began copying.

Miles watched me. When I got suspicious and looked up, he just quirked his eyebrow and kept staring. Like a bored house cat. I snorted and kept writing.

He followed me after class, hovering silently on my right side. The cat waiting for attention. Anyone else would have sparked a cascade of paranoia, but he didn’t.

“Sorry you had to do that lab alone,” I said, knowing full well that it had been no trouble for him. “Those results look like—”

“So where were you, really?” he cut me off. “I know it wasn’t mono.”

I stopped, looked around, waited for some kids to pass us. “It was mono.”

Miles rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and my IQ is twenty-five. Really, what were you doing?”

“Having
mono
.” I gave him the you-really-shouldn’t-push-this-any-further look, but apparently Miles Richter didn’t understand
everything
, because he scoffed and moved in front of me, blocking my path.

“Yes, the symptoms of mono include reacting to things that aren’t there, screaming for no reason at all, and flailing on the ground like you’re about to be ax murdered.”

My face flushed with heat. “It was mono,” I whispered.

“You’re schizophrenic.”

I stood there, blinking stupidly.

Say something, idiot!

If I didn’t, he’d have no doubt.

Say something! Say something!

I turned and walked away.

I wanted to shoot Miles in the kneecaps more than ever. Accusations about my mental state were the cherry on top of the I-framed-you-for-setting-someone-on-fire sundae. The dickiest of dickery. I could go to
jail
for the fire thing— not only was Celia’s dad a lawyer, but her family was loaded. We were so poor my mother took three quarters of my paycheck every week to supplement the family income.

Theo assured me that, if Miles really was the one running the job to set Celia’s hair on fire, he wouldn’t have let me take the fall for it. Not something that serious.

I didn’t know if I believed her. Some of the things Miles did for money were pretty out there. He’d actually abducted someone’s ex-boyfriend’s beloved golden retriever.

After that I avoided him. I tried to avoid Celia, too. She walked around the school complaining about “attempts on her life.” She glared at me constantly and flipped her hair whenever I was near, highlighting how short she’d been forced to cut it. Even Stacey and Britney seemed a little wary of Celia now, as if she’d set the fire herself.

I didn’t talk to Miles for most of the week. Not even in our lab on Wednesday, when I broke our watch glass, spilling chemicals all over the table. Miles bent down to pick up the pieces. Then, since our lab was ruined, he fabricated data that ended up being more accurate than anyone else’s.

When I walked into the gym at the end of the day on Thursday, Art and Jetta sat playing cards on one end of the bleachers. Miles was stretched out on the row above them, his battered notebook open over his face. The cheerleading squad practiced on the other side of the gym, their voices echoing off the walls.

As I approached the club, Art leaned back and nudged Miles in the ribs.

“Hey.” I sat down beside Jetta. A solid two feet separated us, but it still counted.

“What’s up?” said Art. “Did anyone say anything to you about the fire?”

Miles lifted the edge of his notebook and peeked out. When our eyes met, he groaned.

“Not really. Weird looks, but not much else. I didn’t do it.”

“We know. Celia did,” said Art.

I stared at him. “What?”

“Celia did it to herself. We went back and interrogated her.”

“You . . . you interrogated her? What’d you do, threaten to take her makeup off and reveal her secret identity?”

“
Mein Chef
said ’ee would shave ’er eyebrows off.” Jetta smiled brightly. “Among uzzer zings. She told us everyzing—she set ze fire ’erself, Stacey and Britney had ze water, and she blamed eet on you.”

Mein Chef?
Was—was she talking about Miles? I looked up at him, but he only grunted.

“It’s a good thing Stacey and Britney put her out when they did,” said Art. “If they’d let her burn, you’d’ve been in deep shit.”

“Oui,” said Jetta. “Deep sheet.”

Miles groaned again. I whipped around. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Maybe I don’t want to tell you,” he snapped. He
sat up long enough to procure a pen from thin air and jot something down in his notebook. The side of his left hand was smeared with black ink from his pinkie to his wrist. Maybe his notebook contained a list of his mafia jobs. Or all the people who owed him money. Maybe—
ooh
, maybe it was a hit list.

Bet I was on there a couple hundred times.

Calculus homework by itself was a bitch, but when you added the screams and giggles of the East Shoal cheerleading squad, it became unbearable. I plowed my way through a half hour of derivatives before the cheerleaders quieted and the coach addressed them.

“So, ladies,” said Coach Privett, a forty-something squat gym teacher with scraggly dark hair. “Basketball season is here, and it’s time to pick another cheer captain. Hannah put in her two cents, and I agree with her.”

“Who is it?” someone called. The whole group giggled.

Coach Privett said, “Drumroll, please,” and the girls pounded their feet on the floor.

Art and Jetta stopped their card game long enough to shoot the cheerleaders dirty looks. Miles flopped onto his side in annoyance.

Celia sat among the cheerleaders, like a hyena in front of a bloody haunch of meat. She had that deadly obsessive
look in her eyes that girls got when they knew what they wanted and were going to do anything to get it.

The same look she had whenever she laid eyes on Miles. Which made no sense to me. What girl in her right mind would be obsessed with Miles?
I
wasn’t even obsessed with him. 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.

At least my attention to him was because I couldn’t get away from him. Celia had to have a different reason.

Coach Privett clapped her hands together. “Aaaand . . . the new cheer captain is . . .”

They sucked in a collective breath.

“ . . . Britney Carver!”

A ripple ran through the girls, and then lots of cheering and clapping and Britney squealed and stood and made a little bow.

Celia did not cheer, and she did not clap. 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.

When Coach Privett concluded the meeting and the cheerleaders dispersed, Celia still stood there, hands balled at her sides, jaw clenched. Her eyes made a quick sweep of the gym and saw me watching her. I looked down at my book. She turned and stomped across the gym and stood underneath the scoreboard.

Was it possible for someone to act the way she did because that was just the way she was? Or was there always a reason? I’d like to think, if someone saw me acting strangely, they wouldn’t assume it was because I was a bad person. Or they’d at least ask if something was wrong before they made the decision.

“Boss, are we done here?” Art asked.

Miles, who had fallen asleep, jolted awake and mumbled something about going home. We gathered up our bags and headed to the exit. I was the last one out, and right before the doors closed, the yelling started.

But it wasn’t Celia’s voice.

I jerked around in surprise and stuck my head back into the gym. Standing under the scoreboard with Celia, her back to me, was a woman in a sharp business suit, her blond hair waving down to the middle of her back. I glanced over my shoulder; Miles and the others were still walking, too far away to have heard.

Celia’s head was down, both hands up by her ears, like
she was ready to block out everything around her.

“I thought it would be okay . . . ,” she said. “I thought . . .”

“That you had the situation under control?” The woman’s voice was sickly sweet with an undercurrent of poisonous. I had heard that voice before, at the volleyball game on the first day of school.

“I did,” Celia whined. “I don’t know why . . . I knew they were going to pick me . . .”

“But they didn’t. You want to explain that?”

“I don’t know!” Celia fisted one hand in her hair. “I did everything exactly like you told me! I did it all right!”

“Apparently not,” said the woman. “You wasted your time with that stunt you pulled at the bonfire. You’ve undermined yourself, and you’re ruining my plans. Where do you expect to go now?”

“I don’t even like cheerleading. And Britney’s my friend—”

“Your friend? You call that bitch your friend? You need to do something about her, Celia. You need to show her that she doesn’t deserve that position.”

Celia whimpered something unintelligible.

“And then you go around thinking a boy will make this all better,” the woman snapped. Blood-red fingernails tapped against her arm. “You’ve known him for five years
and he’s hardly looked at you. He threatened to shave your eyebrows off! He’s an obstacle, Celia! One you need to remove.”

“No, he’s not!”

“I’m your mother—I know these things!”

Her mother?

Celia was crying now. She turned away from her mother to wipe her eyes, smudging her ugly mascara tears. Something slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor, making her jump. Her cell phone.

When she bent down to get it, she saw me. Her eyes opened wide.

I ran from the gym as fast as I could.