Made You Up(45)

“Is it?” He sounded serious. “Tell me if I’m doing something weird. Sometimes I can’t tell.”

“What is up with you lately? Why are you being so nice?”

“I didn’t realize I was.” His face remained completely neutral. Except for that infuriating eyebrow.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to ask. “So you don’t think it’s creepy? My schizophrenia?”

“That would be stupid.”

I laughed. I fell back into the gravel and laughed, my voice carrying up through the trees and into the sky. His response made me feel free. That was what I came down to Red Witch Bridge to feel anyway, but I’d never expected any help from Miles.

In a weird way, it felt like he belonged here. He belonged in the land of phoenixes and witches, the place where things were too fantastic to be real.

He leaned over and looked down at me. He seemed more confused than anything.

I pushed myself back up. He kept staring at me. I realized I wanted to kiss him.

I didn’t know why. Maybe it was the way he looked at me like I was the only thing he wanted to look at.

How did one go about it? Ask him if I could? Or maybe quick and unexpected would be better. He made a pretty easy target, sitting there, docile for once, and kind of sleepy.

I really needed Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball. But I could guess what kind of answer it would give me. Ask again later. So freaking noncommittal.

No, none of that. Decision: Outright questioning.

Just say it, said the voice. Ask him. Blurt it out. What can he say?

He can laugh in my face.

Let him. It’ll be a douche move on his part. You’re only being honest.

I don’t know.

Do you really think after all this, he’d brush you off like that?

Maybe.

Maybe he likes you, too. Maybe that’s why he stares so much.

Maybe.

Screw it. I was chickening out. Quick and unexpected— GO!

I leaned forward and kissed him. I don’t think he caught on until it was too late.

He froze up as soon as I touched him. Of course—he didn’t like to be touched. I should have asked. I should have asked, I should have asked . . . . But then, like a building wave, I felt the heat pouring off of him. His fingertips brushed my neck. My heart tried to strangle me and I jumped away from him.

A band of moonlight lit up his eyes like fluorescent bulbs.

“Sorry,” I said, standing and hurrying back up to the copse to find my baseball bat, trying to figure out what I’d been thinking.

He was still sitting there when I stumbled back into the street.

“So, um.” My jaw tingled, lungs contracted, throat tightened. “I’ll see you on Monday, I guess.”

He didn’t say anything.

I barely kept myself from sprinting through Red Witch Bridge. The wind thundered in the trees, and when I finally looked back, Miles stood at the door to his truck, outlined by moonlight, staring right back at me.





Chapter Twenty-three




I spent the rest of the weekend wondering what I was going to say to Miles on Monday. We both knew secrets about each other now. The only difference was he didn’t know that I knew. It felt unfair, somehow. Like I was lying to him.

When I woke up on Monday morning, I remembered the pictures on my camera and wondered how long it would take Celia to find me and kill me after I’d handed them over to Claude. Tucker and I had exhausted the library’s databases on Scarlet and McCoy, with no further clues about McCoy’s particular brand of psychosis. So either I asked Celia what exactly was going on with McCoy—she probably wouldn’t give me a straight answer—or I found another source of information.

I told myself to drop it. I told myself it wasn’t worth it. But then I looked at the picture of Celia spray-painting that car, and all I could see was myself spray-painting the Hillpark gymnasium.

Two minutes before seven, Miles’s truck idled in the driveway, tailpipe gushing exhaust into the frosty air. My mother stood at the front door, holding her coffee mug in both hands, her face pressed against the screen. I would’ve gotten mad at her, but she’d bought me a case of Yoo-hoo over the weekend. So I poked her out of the way as I shouldered my backpack and grabbed a Yoo-hoo from the hallway table.

“That’s Miles?” My mother shifted to see better when Miles let his arm dangle out the truck window, as if that arm would give her his life story.