Made You Up(59)

The problem lies in getting yourself out of Christmas, because when you come out of it, you have to redefine the lines between reality and imagination.

I hated that.

After New Year’s, a few days before we were due back at school, I asked my mother if I could go to Meijer with her. She gave me a strange look, but didn’t ask why until I packed up a piece of our second attempt at a Black Forest cake.

“Miles works at Meijer. I wanted to see if he was there today.”

Charlie demanded to go with us, and when we got into the supermarket, I held the plate of cake in one hand and steered Charlie toward the produce section with the other while Mom got a cart and went to shop.

I’d been in Meijer plenty of times since I was seven, of course. The deli counter hadn’t changed at all, and the lobster tank was right in the same place. The lobsters still crawled over one another in their desperate search for escape. I propelled Charlie toward the tank, and she watched the lobsters as intently as I used to. The only difference was she never tried to set them free.

Despite the rush of post-holiday shoppers in town, the place was curiously empty. I worried that Miles wasn’t working, but then a door behind the counter swung open and he walked out.

“Hey! You are here!”

Miles froze like a cat caught in a flashlight beam.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked.

I balked. “Shopping, of course. Bit of a rude question to ask a customer, don’t you think?” I passed the piece of cake over the glass case. “I hope you can keep this back there somewhere, or eat it really quick. Just think of it as an extra Christmas present. It’s a Sch . . . Schwarzw. . . .”

Miles laughed. “Schwarzw?lder Kirschtorte,” he said. “A Black Forest cake. Did you—?”

“Charlie and I made it,” I said, motioning over my shoulder to where Charlie stood, munching on a black knight.

Miles frowned over my shoulder. For a fleeting moment I wondered if he thought she looked like the seven-year-old me, standing next to the lobster tank with a seven-year-old him, asking for help in freeing the lobsters. Would he remember that, if I asked him?

Part of me was too scared to find out.

“She’s cute at first,” I said, “but trust me, it wears off once she crowns herself the pope and declares the bathroom ‘religious grounds.’”

“She’s done that before?” Miles asked.

“Oh yes. Several times. Last time I tried to take a shower, in fact. You could hear her screaming about blasphemers all the way down the street.”

Miles laughed again—I was almost used to the sound by now. I looked back at Charlie, whose attention had started to wander. “I, uh, came to see if you were here, thought you’d like that cake. . . .” Suddenly there was nothing left to say. I was bothering him, I knew it. And why had I decided to bring him food at work? He plucked the cherry off the cake and stared at me as he chewed. I wished I had put more cherries on that slice. The whole jar of cherries. I could watch him eat a whole jar of cherries.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what was happening to me?

I tugged hard on my hair and turned away, but he said, “Hey, wait, before you go. . .”

I turned back. He rubbed his neck, looking off to the side, and didn’t say anything right away.

“I have another proposition for you,” he said, and at the look on my face, he quickly added, “Not like the last one. This isn’t a job, I swear. There’s, ah, something I wanted to ask you. You said that you couldn’t find anything else about Scarlet and McCoy? My mom went to school with both of them and I figured, if you wanted to . . . uh . . .”

“Yes?”

Miles took a deep breath, held it in with his chest puffed out, and looked at me warily. Then he let the breath out and said, “Do you want to meet her?”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“You know that monthly trip I was telling you about? I’m going up there again before school starts. I could pick you up on the way. It’s almost an eight-hour round trip, though, so if you don’t want to, that’s okay—”

The more words that came out of his mouth, the more his face fell like he thought it was a bad idea. I let him run out of steam before I couldn’t take his pitiful expression anymore and had to stifle a laugh.

“Yeah, I’ll definitely go.” I never thought I’d get such a golden opportunity to talk to his mom. There was no doubt she’d have whole treasure troves of information about Scarlet and McCoy.