Made You Up(56)

Miles rolled his eyes. “For . . . I don’t know, for not telling you it was Beaumont?”

“And?”

“And for making you put IcyHot in his underwear.”

“It was cruel.”

“So that makes you think it was my idea? I don’t come up with this stuff; I just do it for people.”

At the look I gave him next, his hands shot up in surrender. “Sorry, sorry, really—all right, if you’re not going to talk to me, will you at least listen?”

“Depends on what you have to say.”

Miles looked around to see if we were alone, then took a deep breath.

“I have some stuff I need to tell you, because I feel like . . . like I owe it to you. I don’t know why I feel like that, and I don’t like feeling like that, but there you go.”

I was surprised, but didn’t say anything. Miles took another deep breath.

“First of all—and if I don’t tell anyone about you, you can’t tell anyone about this—my mom is in a psychiatric hospital.”

Was I supposed to be surprised? Confused? I didn’t think he’d actually tell me. But now I didn’t have to feel bad about the imbalance of secrets between us. “What? No. You’re lying.”

“I’m not. She’s in a hospital up north in Goshen. I visit her once a month. Twice if I can manage it.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes. Again, you never believe me. I don’t understand why someone would lie about that. I’m trying to make things better, but if you aren’t going to listen then I’ll stop talking—”

“No, no, sorry, keep going,” I said quickly.

Miles gave me a shrewd look. “You’re going to shut up and listen?”

“Yes. Promise.”

“Well, since I know you want to know what she’s in for—it’s nothing. She’s always been a little . . . off-kilter . . . but never bad enough to be committed. Never bad enough to stay in there. But denying that you’re crazy tends to make people think you’re more crazy—”

I made an understanding noise.

“—and that was how my dad convinced them at first. Said she denied it all the time. First he told them her bruises and the black eyes and the busted lips were all her fault. That she caused them in fits of depression and rage, that she was bipolar and he didn’t trust her anymore. And of course as soon as she heard that, she was furious, which made it worse.” He made a disgusted sort of noise in the back of his throat. “And then . . . the lake.”

“The lake?”

“He threw her in a lake, ‘rescued’ her, and told them she tried to commit suicide. She was hysterical. No one bothered to look for evidence against him. That’s when I started running jobs for people, and now I take all the late shifts I can at work, and forget the underage work laws, because I don’t care. I’m getting her out of that place when I turn eighteen in May, and I need the money for her, so . . . so she has something, you know? Because my father’s not gonna give her anything, and I can’t let her go back to that house.”

Miles stopped suddenly, eyes focused on a spot to the left of my head. Unease filled my stomach, the kind you get from suddenly knowing a whole lot more about a person than you thought you ever would.

“So. So are you—”

“Not done yet,” he snapped. “Sometimes I have trouble understanding things. Emotional things. I don’t understand why people get upset about certain stuff, I don’t understand why Tucker doesn’t try to be more than he is, and I still haven’t figured out why you kissed me.”

Okay. I could’ve died then. Just crawled on the floor and died.

“Have you heard the term alexithymia before?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“It means ‘without words for emotions.’ Except it’s more than that. It’s almost a mental disorder, but there’s a sort of scale. The higher your alexithymia score, the more trouble you have interpreting emotions and things like that. My score isn’t as high as some, but it’s not the lowest.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So, sorry if I come across callous sometimes. Or, I don’t know, defensive. Most of the time I’m just confused.”

“So does that mean you don’t care about the people you hurt when you run those jobs?” I asked.