Made You Up(24)

Theo shivered. “Don’t mention that while Boss is around. She’s obsessed with him. Has been since freshman year, since she started getting weird. Never came out and said it, but you can tell.”

“Well, she’s a bitch and he’s a douche; they’re perfect for each other,” I said, smiling.

Theo gave me one of those looks, the ones parents give their kid when the kid is talking about something they don’t understand. That look stung more than I thought it would; I shifted and hid behind the pyramid, my face burning. What had I said? What was there about this picture that I didn’t get?

“Bored again?” Theo asked suddenly. Miles stood at the window, still holding that tattered black notebook.

“I hate volleyball,” he said.

Theo smiled wickedly. “No, you hate Ria Wolf. Don’t take your anger out on the poor sport.”

Miles gave her the same pissy look he’d given me earlier and drummed his long fingers impatiently on the counter.

Theo rolled her eyes and kept stacking. “I’ve got someone,” she said.

“Were you alive during the last century?”

“Yes.”

Miles rested his chin on top of his notebook, looking (as I couldn’t help noticing) very much like a mischievous little boy knowing he was about to win a game. A golden-freckled, blue-eyed little boy. “Were you an Allied leader in World War II?”

I heard Theo grinding her teeth. “Yes.”

“You’re Chiang Kai-shek.”

Theo hurled her cup and the entire pyramid came tumbling down. “Why didn’t you say Churchill? Dammit, you were supposed to say Churchill or Roosevelt or Stalin!”

Miles just stared at her. Theo grumbled loudly and turned to help me clean up.

It was in English a week later when possibly the strangest thing of all happened.

When I tried to sit down, I instead found myself on the floor in a very painful position. The bar connecting the desk and the seat had been partially severed at one end, so my weight broke it the rest of the way. For a second, I thought I was imagining it. People were staring at me. Cursing under my breath, I got up, shoved the ruined desk to the back of the room, and pulled over an unused whole one.

Mr. Gunthrie hadn’t even looked up from his paper. Miles, always politely oblivious, pretended nothing had happened and continued writing in his black notebook.

That also meant that he wasn’t paying attention when I got into his backpack and emptied a tube of fire ants from the colony I’d found in the woods. With six classes together, there was no way I wouldn’t see the reaction.

This was not the strange part.

Celia Hendricks, always on the prowl, materialized next to Miles’s desk. She did that weird hair flip-and-twirl routine, like she’d learned how to flirt from a tween magazine. Miles glared at her.

“What do you want, Hendricks?”

Celia gave him a winning smile. “Hey. I’m having my bonfire soon. We’re going to have a fake scoreboard to graffiti and everything. You should come.”

“Every year I say no. Why should I say yes now?”

“Because, it’ll be fun!” she whined. She tried to put her hand on his arm, but he recoiled. I could have sworn he was about to snarl at her.

“Get off my desk, Celia.”

“Pleeeease, Miles? What can I do to get you to come?” Her voice dropped low and she looked at him through her eyelashes. She leaned over the desk. He snapped the notebook closed before she could look inside. “Anything,” she said. “Name it.”

Miles paused for a long moment. Then he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder and said, “Invite Alex. Then I’ll come.”

Celia’s expression shuffled so quickly I almost didn’t catch it. One second she’d been trying to seduce Miles, the next she glared at me like I should be impaled on a pike, and finally she settled on a sort of confused surprise.

“Oh! Well . . . you promise?” She was right in Miles’s face. Miles leaned back. I had the immediate image of an idiot backing an angry viper into a corner.

“Sure. Promise,” he said venomously.

“Good!” Celia pulled a card from the pocket of her shirt and reached over Miles’s shoulder to give it to me. She was clearly on a mission to get his face in her cleavage. I let him squirm for longer than necessary before I took the card. She hopped off his desk.

“Can’t wait to see you there, Milesie!”