Made You Up (26 page)

H
ere’s the thing about dying in a sudden and tragic accident, like getting crushed by a scoreboard:

You don’t expect it.

I expected it. So I think that’s probably why I didn’t die.

I
forced one eye open. Then the other.

My head had been caught in a vise. My mouth was lined with cotton. The light in the room was low, but enough for me to make out the ridge of my legs and feet underneath the covers of a bed and the dark alcove around the corner, where the door would be. A white-noise machine hummed in the corner, and a sterile smell crept up on me.

I was in the hospital. Bed. Bathroom. Machines hanging from the ceiling. Red-eyed camera by the door. No hallucinations here.

My body was still asleep. I flexed my fingers and toes to make sure I could, then looked around.

The curtains were pulled back from my bed. The bed next to mine was empty. On the other side of me, a figure
swaddled in a blanket slept soundly in a chair that looked like it had been designed by a torture expert.

My mother.

I coughed to clear my throat. She jerked awake, stared at me blankly until she seemed to realize I was staring back at her. Then she was right in front of me, brushing my hair from my face.

“Oh, Alex.” Her eyes had already glazed over with tears. She held me carefully, like I’d break.

“What happened?”

“That scoreboard fell on you,” she said, sniffling. “Don’t you remember?”

“Sort of.” I did. I remembered running, then pain, then the light closing off around me like I was being smashed between pages of a book.

“They said . . . they weren’t sure if you were going to wake up.” A sob escaped her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Where is Miles? Is he okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, honey, he’s fine.”

“Is he here?”

“Not right now, no.”

I had to figure out where he was. I had to make sure he was safe. “How long was I asleep?”

“Three days.”

“Mom.” I said it mostly from surprise. The tears were spilling down her face.

“I was so scared,” she said. “When your dad told me you went to school, I wanted to bring you home, but he said you’d be okay. . . .”

“This wasn’t his fault.”

“I know it wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t my fault either.”

“I know, I know.” She wiped her eyes with the collar of her shirt. “I don’t blame you; of course I don’t blame you. I just want to keep you safe, and I . . . I don’t think I know how to do that anymore.”

Carefully, making sure nothing hurt too badly, I propped myself up on my elbows. She took the hint and put her arms around me, hugging me to her.

Why had she waited so long to tell me about Charlie? Was it because she couldn’t bring herself to think about it? Or because I was happier when Charlie was around?

And was this why she wanted me to go to the mental hospital? Not to get me out of her hair, but to save me from myself, because she couldn’t do it anymore?

“I bought you . . . some Yoo-hoos. . . .” she said when she finally pulled away, sniffing. “I put them in the fridge, because I know you like them cold. . . .”

And I thought she poisoned my food.

So apparently crying
did
hurt. My tears stung. I felt the pulse in my head as my face heated up.

“Love you, Mom,” I said.

She leaned over and kissed my forehead.

T
he next day, while Mom went for lunch, I got an unexpected visitor.

Celia. She stood at the edge of the room, looking a little more like her old self—blond hair, too-short skirt, layer of makeup topped by a coat of strawberry-colored lip gloss.

“You know,” I began, finishing off a drink of water from my sippy cup, “everyone says history repeats itself, but I did
not
expect it to be so literal.”

Her jaw tightened, her hands fisting in the hem of her shirt. Tough crowd. She stood there, staring, like I was going to whip a couple of throwing knives out from under the covers and use her for target practice.

Finally, she said, “How did you know?”

“I’m crazy, didn’t you hear?” I said. “The real question is, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Celia shrugged. “I . . . I don’t know. I didn’t think anyone would care. They’d say I was just trying to get attention. Or that it was my fault. Or . . . I don’t know.”

She suddenly looked very, very old. “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of being alone. I’m tired of the way people look at me and the things they say. And I’m tired of trying to deal with it on my own.”

“So don’t,” I said. “You’re allowed to ask for help.”

“Why doesn’t anyone tell us that?”

“Because . . . maybe no one told them.”

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” Celia asked quietly.

“No,” I replied. “I don’t think you’re crazy, either.”

She smiled.

It wasn’t until a few hours later that the nurse came in and said, “We’re all so surprised you haven’t had any visitors yet!”

T
he club visited later, when Mom and the nurse were in the room so I knew they were real. They brought candy and flowers and history textbooks. You know, things they thought would cheer me up. They sat around the bed for most of the day, recounting with great detail and enthusiasm how heroic I looked knocking Miles out of the way right before the scoreboard hit him, and how everyone in the gym freaked out, and how I was still all over the news.

Apparently, Miles hadn’t been McCoy’s target at all. The scoreboard was meant for Celia. She had moved out of the way because she thought I was attacking her. McCoy, enraged, had tried to strangle Miles and had been dragged off by Mr. Gunthrie. A weight lifted off my chest. McCoy had slipped up. The threat was gone.

“But you’re never going to believe
why
he tried to drop a scoreboard on her,” said Evan.

“You know how McCoy is always calling Celia to his office?” said Ian.

“Apparently McCoy was obsessed with Celia’s mom,” Theo said, cutting to the chase. “And she got crushed under that thing years ago. Since he couldn’t have her, he settled for Celia, but Celia wasn’t . . . living up to his standards, or something. So finally he decided he’d immortalize her by dropping the same scoreboard on her that killed her mom. The cops found all sorts of incriminating stuff in his house. Journals and plans and, like, videos. Of Celia. When they got to the school after McCoy tried to strangle her, Celia told them everything, right in front of all of us. It was horrible.”

“It was so weird,” Evan added. “It was going on for two years, and nobody knew. Why wouldn’t you tell someone about that?”

“Maybe she didn’t think she could,” I said.

Theo nodded. “I believe it. I talked to Stacey and Brittney after the awards—apparently Celia’s dad got remarried a few years ago, and Celia’s stepmother was planning on kicking her out of the house as soon as she graduated, and her dad was on board. Stacey and Brittney said Celia hardly ever told
them
anything, and they were her only friends.”

“She has a stepmother?” I said.

“I’ve seen her a few times,” Theo replied. “Short, brown hair, looks like she should be really nice, but I’m not totally surprised to know that she isn’t.”

Was this why Tucker and Miles hadn’t questioned me all year when I said I’d seen Celia and McCoy speaking to Celia’s mother? Because they thought I was talking about her stepmother? How many more hallucinations had gotten past me because of miscommunication?

“How did no one suspect McCoy before this?” I asked.

“’Ee ’as been voted number one principal in the township three times,” Jetta said. “And ’is office was spotless.”

“Apparently he did a pretty damn good job cleaning up after himself,” said Ian. “If he didn’t have all that stuff at his house, he probably could have said Celia was making things up. At least they still would have gotten him for trying to strangle Boss.”

Theo huffed. “At least now when Celia testifies against him in court, they’ll have a houseful of hard evidence to back her up.”

“Does anyone know if she’s okay?” I asked.

“She was molested by a psychopath for two years,” Art said. “So, no.”

Only after I threatened to rip out the stitches in the side of my head did they finally tell me what Miles had done.

“He went all white,” said Art. “I’ve never seen someone lose all their coloring like that. Then he screamed at me to cut the power, and he ran over and started trying to lift the scoreboard off you. We had to pull him away so he didn’t electrocute himself.”

They all looked suddenly guilty.

“We wanted to help you,” Theo said.

“Mr. Gunthrie came back right after that,” Evan said, “with the paramedics and everything. They lifted it off you, but Miles was still there, and he made this noise—”

“And Mr. Gunthrie made us shut him in the boys’ locker room before he did something stupid, like going after McCoy in front of all those cops,” Ian finished.

I took a long draw from the straw jammed into my Yoo-hoo bottle, trying to calm myself. “Where is he? I haven’t seen him. He knows I’m awake, right?”

They shared uncertain looks.

“We ’aven’t seen ’im since,” said Jetta. “’Ee ’asn’t called any of us.”

“We drove by his house, but his truck wasn’t in the driveway.” Evan looked at Ian and Theo, who nodded. “And we checked at Meijer, but he hasn’t gone in to work.”

“I thought he might be at Finnegan’s,” said Art. “He did get banned, but I didn’t think that would stop him.”

“So none of you have seen him since the scoreboard fell?”

They all shook their heads.

A lead weight sunk in my stomach. The threat from McCoy might be gone, but there was another threat to Miles.

One I couldn’t fight.

M
y hands itched for my Magic 8 Ball. For Charlie. For soft, dark, quiet safety. For answers to questions I couldn’t answer myself. For escape from this world by retreating so far into my own head, I never had to question whether it was real or not.

But I couldn’t stop worrying about Miles.

It was Wednesday night—six days after the scoreboard fell, three days after I’d woken up, half a day before I was scheduled to leave the hospital—when Tucker burst into my room, his coat dripping with rain.

“Oh, finally decided to come visit?” I put the finishing touches on my newest Crayola masterpiece, a picture of a T-Rex. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think
of exactly what. “I didn’t figure it’d take you this long to show up.”

“Alex.”

The tone caught me, made me look up again.

“What? What is it?”

“Miles. I think he’s doing something stupid.”

I threw my legs over the side of the bed and hunted for the shoes Mom had brought me. “Have you talked to him? What did he say?”

“He hasn’t been coming to school.” Tucker’s words came out short and fast. “I haven’t seen him until just before I came here. He was at my house—he looked really freaked out, like someone was after him. He apologized. Except he kept tripping over his words.”

I stood, grabbed Tucker’s hand, and pulled him toward the door. “What else?” I peeked around the doorframe.

“He . . . he wanted me to make sure you were okay. He said he couldn’t come himself.”

I ignored the invisible buzz saws cutting holes in my stomach. “Give me your coat.”

“What?”

“Give me your coat. You’re sneaking me out of here.”

“But you’re hurt!”

“I don’t care if I’m missing a leg, Tucker. We’re going
to Miles’s house, and you’re driving. Give me your coat.”

He did. I pulled it on, zipping it all the way up. I balled my hair back and pulled the hood up to cover it.

“Lead the way,” I said.