Made You Up(46)

“Yes. He brought me home after the bonfire, remember? And on Friday.”

“You should invite him over for dinner.”

I laughed into the Yoo-hoo straw, making the drink bubble up. My face got hot. “Hah, right.”

“You need to learn to be more sociable, Alexandra, or you’re never going to—”

“Okay bye Mom love you!” I charged past her and out the door. She huffed loudly as the screen door clattered shut.

I jogged down the front yard, perimeter checking as I went, and climbed into Miles’s pickup.

“So, how was your weekend?” I asked, trying to sound casual. His gaze snapped up to my face—I think he’d been staring at the Yoo-hoo bottle—and he shrugged.

“Same as usual.” He left something hanging in the air, like he wanted to finish with except for Saturday night. Same here, buddy. He backed into the street.

“You work at Meijer, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. The corner of his lips curled up. “I work at the deli counter. Have to give people their succulent, chemical-ridden salami and whatnot.”

I pictured Miles in a dark room, standing at a butcher’s block with a large knife in one hand a bloody cow’s leg steadied under the other, a huge Cheshire grin spreading over his face—

“I bet the customers love you,” I said.

“They do—when my manager is around.”

“So do you run jobs there, too?”

“No. I don’t steal from them, thank you very much,” said Miles. “I’m above common thievery. Outside of school.”

“Why do you do it all?” I asked. “It can’t just be for the money.”

“I have reasons.”

“But, I mean, you know sometimes they just want to humiliate you. Like, don’t you think if you’d gone back through Red Witch Bridge on Saturday, Cliff and the others would’ve tried to scare you?”

“Probably. Trust me, I know. I’ve had plenty of embarrassing jobs.” He parked the truck and reached around his seat for his bag. “It’s all schadenfreude. People just want to laugh at you.”

“Can you really speak German?” I already knew the answer.

Miles glanced out the side window, and then said, almost too low for me to hear, “Ja, ich spreche Deutsch.” A smile stretched across his face. “But don’t ask me to do it—it makes me feel like a monkey doing parlor tricks.”

We got out of the truck and started toward the school. “It must be awful for Jetta,” I said.

“I think she’s used to it. Whenever someone asks her to say something, she curses at them.”

“She speaks French and Italian, right?”

“And German and Spanish and Greek and a little Gaelic.”

“Wow. Can you speak all those?”

“Not really. I’m just . . . German.” We crossed the parking lot. “Hey, since we were talking about it—I have another job to run on Thursday night. I want you to help.”

“Why? What can I do?”

“Extra pair of hands. Art was the only one available. I’ll give you a cut of the reward, of course.”

“It’s nothing illegal, right?”

“Of course not. You’ll be fine.”

I had no idea how far Miles’s definition of legal stretched, but maybe this was his form of a peace offering. He wasn’t stupid—if it was really, truly dangerous, I don’t think he would have asked. “Okay. I guess.”

Miles went with me to the newspaper room, where I handed over my memory card to Claude Gunthrie, showing him the pictures of Britney’s spray-painted car. First, Claude laughed. Then he downloaded them and sent an e-mail to his father, Assistant Principal Borruso, and McCoy.

I didn’t miss all the weird looks we got on the way to English. I thought it might be because Miles was smiling, but that didn’t seem like it, either. I didn’t like this new attention. It made my neck itch.

I’d hardly finished my perimeter check when Ria Wolf slid into the desk next to mine, looking eager. Chills ran up my arms and legs at her predatory smile. I wanted to get as far away from her as humanly possible, but I dug my fingernails into the desktop and forced myself to stay put.

“Hey, what was Celia like when she was spray-painting Britney’s car?” she asked.

“Huh?”