Made You Up(51)

“No no,” Evan said. “Listen. You could say Ian and I have . . . made the front office our second home. How many times would you say we’ve been sent in three years, Ian?”

Ian tapped his chin. “Give or take four times per semester? We’re actually due.”

“So we know a little bit about what goes on in that guy’s office. He talks about Boss all the time. Boss is pretty careful with his . . . stuff . . . you know, so McCoy doesn’t have anything on him, but he has all these theories he’s always telling Assistant Principal Borruso. That Boss has weapons, or drugs, just a bunch of ridiculous stories. He legit wants Boss kicked out.”

This was East Shoal; of course it was out of the ordinary.

“But . . . why?” I asked. “He can’t just be annoyed. What would cause that?”

Evan shrugged. “All I know,” said Ian, “is that McCoy didn’t just make this club and force Boss to lead it because he wanted to stop Boss from plastering people’s homework on the ceiling. He did it because he wants to keep Boss in his sights.”

So the possibly-mentally-unstable McCoy had his crosshairs locked on Miles. Why? Why would he care so much about Miles? Why would McCoy try to hurt him?

Or was I being paranoid? Was McCoy just dealing with an unruly student?

Could I take that chance?

“Don’t worry, Alex,” Jetta said, lounging back with her bundle of grapes. “If ’ee tries to ’urt mein Chef, we will send ’im back to the ’ell ’ee came from.”

Coming from Jetta, that was refreshingly reassuring.

Miles returned to the bleachers a few minutes later, both eyes still in his head. I looked him over three times before doing a quick perimeter check. Nothing strange, but I couldn’t deny the gut instinct that told me something bad was coming.

Blue Eyes was a little candle flame in the darkness, and even though I didn’t know for sure if Miles really was Blue Eyes, I couldn’t let him be snuffed out.





Chapter Twenty-five




I sat by my window on the night of the job, waiting for the signal. My fingers jittered against the windowsill and my feet sweated in my shoes, despite the cold outside. Dad snored in the room down the hall, and if he was snoring, that meant both he and my mother were asleep. In the room next to mine, Charlie mumbled something about sugarcoated chess pieces. All they had to do was stay asleep for the next two hours, and everything would be fine.

I’d double-and triple-checked with Art to make sure the job was (mostly) safe and would definitely be over in two hours. I still didn’t know exactly what the job was, or what I was supposed to do.

But then I realized I didn’t care. I was going to enjoy tonight’s adrenaline rush if it killed me. I wanted to be a teenager. I wanted to sneak out at night (not while under the impression I was being kidnapped by Communists) and do things I wasn’t supposed to. I wanted to do them with other people. Real people. People who knew there was something different about me and didn’t care.

Art’s van rolled up at the end of the street, flashing its headlights. As quietly as I could, I removed the screen from my window, set it against the wall, climbed into the flowerbed outside, and slid the storm window shut behind me. Just like a nighttime trip to Red Witch Bridge. I set off down the slush-streaked street, squinted to make sure it was actually Art in the driver’s seat, then climbed into the passenger side.

“Okay, now we have to go get Boss,” Art said.

I buckled myself in. “Where are we going?”

“Downing Heights.” Art smiled a little. “I know you love it there.”

“Oh, but I do,” I mumbled. “Tell me we’re not going to Celia’s.”

“Nope. But first we have to get Boss, and he definitely doesn’t live in Downing Heights.”

Silent houses flicked by. In the distance, expensive Lakeview houses rose like dark mountains. But around us, each house was less friendly than the last. Suddenly my dirt-colored hovel of a home seemed so much nicer than before.

We turned a corner and the houses became downright scary. Like, Bloody Miles trying to murder me scary. I wouldn’t have come down this way even at high noon.

Art stopped in front of a two-story house that looked like staples held it together at the corners. Shingles were missing all over the roof, half the windows had the glass broken out of them, and the porch sagged in the middle. Garbage littered a front lawn enclosed by a rusted chain-link fence. Miles’s blue truck sat in the driveway, next to an aging Mustang that looked like it might be worth a lot of money if anyone tried to take care of it.