Made You Up(27)

Downing Heights was the richest neighborhood in town. All the houses here were huge and immaculate and eggshell white, but it didn’t take long to figure out which one was Celia’s. Cars lined up on both sides of the road nearly ten houses in either direction. Theo parked, and we walked to the two-story McMansion at the center of all the chaos.

A bad feeling roiled in my stomach. I’d never been to this neighborhood before, and eyes watched me from the dark spaces in the landscaping. I balled my fists in the hem of my sweatshirt.

Music beat a steady rhythm from a huge stereo on the back porch; the bonfire crackled a short distance away. Inside the house, lights flashed, and people came and went through all sorts of doors and windows like flies on a hot day.

“Keep calm,” Evan said, grinning, as he led the way into the house.

“Don’t go upstairs,” said Theo.

“And don’t. Ingest. Anything,” Ian finished. And then the triplets were gone. Sucked into the crowd beyond the door. Unfamiliar bodies pressed in on me from every side.

My perimeter check wouldn’t do any good in here. I could hardly see five feet in front of me. Checking each person for a weapon would be more than impossible. I had my camera, tucked in my sweatshirt pocket, but that wouldn’t do me any good. I’d never remember what I’d seen and what I hadn’t.

I slipped my way through the sweaty bodies and loud voices, looking for a familiar face. I thought I saw Tucker and headed toward him, but when I made it across the room, he’d vanished.

As I edged around the elaborate, china-cabinet-flanked dining room, I wondered where Celia’s parents were and if they knew exactly how many cans of beer were stacked on their polished mahogany dining table. (Answer: seventy-six.)

The curving staircase was around the corner from the dining room; the upstairs seemed a lot quieter and less alcohol-filled than the downstairs. I knew what Theo had said, but unless someone was going to ambush me, I didn’t see any reason not to go up.

At the top of the staircase was a gloriously quiet hallway lined on either side with doors. Most of them were closed. Probably bedrooms. About halfway down was a narrow table covered with framed pictures. I could see Celia in them, Celia smiling, but before I could get near them, a girl’s voice floated out of a bedroom up ahead.

“Stop squirming! Shut up and sit still . . . I thought you were going to do what I said.”

I tiptoed closer to the cracked-open door until I had a view of the room’s occupants. There was a bed. And on the bed was a half-naked Ria Wolf on top of a half-naked guy who was definitely not Cliff Ackerley. Ria, her back to me, sat up and flipped her hair over her shoulder.

I pushed away from the door and sprinted for the stairs. Holy—that was what Theo had been talking about—Ria’s revenge plot—wow, okay. My skin crawled as I cut a path through the thicket of bodies at the foot of the stairs. I rushed into the shiny white kitchen and escaped to the back porch.

Everyone was either clustered around the stereo or the seven-foot-tall piece of plyboard, propped up on the lawn, which had been painted to look like the scoreboard. Beer, candy wrappers, old movie ticket stubs, and one soiled pair of underwear had been left on the ground around it as offerings. A rainbow of fluorescent graffiti covered its face. Curse words, cartoon penises, obscene suggestions for what McCoy could do with his genitals. Nothing you wouldn’t find carved into the desk of the average teenaged boy. Several people were busy spray-painting the words Rich Dick McCoy Forever along its bottom edge in bright pink.

I could only think of the Hillpark Gym Graffiti Incident. Not exactly my shining moment. I headed to the lawn. The nighttime silence and the crackle of the bonfire made a sort of wall against the blaring music on the porch. Three benches were arranged in a triangle around the fire: one had been smashed in the middle by a bowling ball that still rested between the halves; another was occupied by a couple so tightly wrapped around each other I’d need the Jaws of Life to pry them apart. Astronomical amounts of bird crap covered the benches, but the couple didn’t seem to mind and bowling balls tend to be astoundingly unobservant.

The third bench had only one occupant, sitting with his back to me, watching the marshmallow on his skewer burn black in the fire.

When I realized who he was, my heart rose and fell and I considered going back inside before that flaming marshmallow could be weaponized. But then he turned and saw me and arched his eyebrow, that freaking eyebrow can I rip it off already.

“You can sit here, if you want.” Miles scooted to one end of the bench. There was something weird, subdued, about his voice. He sounded normal. Calm. Like we were friends or something.