Made You Up(20)

Please throw up on him, I thought. Please, please throw up on Mr. Gunthrie.

“Gibraltar,” Miles said, then he lurched out of his seat and made it to the trash can in time to be violently ill. Several girls squealed. Tucker yanked his collar up over his nose.

“You all right, Richter?” Mr. Gunthrie dropped his book and walked over to clap Miles on the back. Miles spit one more time and put a hand on Mr. Gunthrie’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Must have eaten something bad at breakfast.” Miles wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “If I could go to the restroom . . . clean up . . .”

“Of course.” Mr. Gunthrie gave Miles another sharp slap on the back. “Take as much time as you need. I’m sure you’ve got this all memorized anyway, haven’t you?”

Miles gave him a wry smile and left.





Chapter Eleven




Tucker found me after lunch and reassured me that Miles had been running a job.

“A job? What, like the mafia?”

“Sort of.” Tucker leaned back against the wall outside the cafeteria. “People pay him to do things. Usually revenge stuff. You know, steal someone’s homework and paste it on the ceiling. Put dead fish in someone’s glove compartment. Stuff like that.”

“So what was he doing this morning?” I asked.

Tucker shrugged. “You usually don’t know until it happens. One time he hid a hundred water balloons full of grape juice into Leslie Stapleford’s locker. When she opened it, there were toothpicks or something that popped all the balloons and set off a chain reaction. Ruined everything she had.”

Note to self: Stand to side of locker door when opening.

“Did you hear the announcement today?” Tucker asked, changing the subject.

“Oh, about McCoy hiring someone to fit the scoreboard with gold plating?”

“Yeah. I told you he was crazy, right? I heard he does some weird stuff at home, too.” He said it with a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Like mowing his lawn, and trimming his peonies.”

“Peonies?” I balked. “God, he really is a freak.”

Tucker laughed. The cafeteria doors beside him swung open and Celia Hendricks walked out with Britney Carver and Stacey Burns. I stepped back, slightly behind Tucker.

“What’s funny, Beaumont?” she asked with a sneer, as if he’d been laughing at her.

“None of your business, Celia.” All humor left Tucker’s face. “Don’t you have a Makeup Addicts Anonymous meeting to get to?”

“Don’t you have a Cult in a Closet to get to?” she shot back. “Oh, wait, I forgot, you have no friends. My bad.”

The tips of Tucker’s ears turned pink and he glared at her, but didn’t say anything else.

“God, Beaumont, you’re so weird. Maybe if you acted like a normal person once in a while—”

“I’m his friend,” I cut in. “And I think he’s perfectly normal.”

Celia looked me up and down, her eyes lingering on my hair. And then she huffed and stomped away without another word.

“You didn’t have to say that,” Tucker mumbled.

“Yeah, I did,” I replied.

There is no force in high school more powerful than one person’s blunt disagreement.

The rest of the day passed without a hitch. Miles did not acknowledge my presence. I did not acknowledge his.

Miles’s locker was still glued shut when I left for the gym.

The entire west side of the school was for extracurriculars. The gym, pool, and auditorium were all connected by hallways that ran behind them and a large rotunda at their center, linked to the rest of the school by a main hall. Lining the rotunda were huge glass cases filled with trophies the school had won over the years: athletics, music competitions, color guard. There were pictures in black and white of the winning teams alongside some of them.

The picture that caught my attention didn’t have a trophy and wasn’t from a competition. It was a framed newspaper clipping. Someone had taken a bright red marker to the girl in the picture, partially obscuring her face, but I could tell she was pretty, blonde, and wearing an old East Shoal cheerleader’s uniform. She stood next to the scoreboard, which looked brand-new.

Beneath the picture was the caption: “Scarlet Fletcher, captain of the East Shoal cheerleading squad, helps introduce ‘Scarlet’s Scoreboard,’ a commemoration of the charity and goodwill her father, Randall Fletcher, has shown toward the school.”