Made You Up(66)

I stole glances at Miles whenever I could, wondering why it still shocked me that he was the boy from the lobster tank. I simultaneously wanted to kiss him and hit him for leaving.

Pressure built behind my eyes, a lump formed in my throat. I couldn’t let him see me cry. He’d scoff at me or roll his eyes—he didn’t seem like the kind of person that suffered tears gladly, and I didn’t suffer anyone making fun of mine.

“You okay?” he asked after a half hour of silence.

“Yeah.” My voice was definitely too high. Tucker would mock me so much.

“Hungry?” He scanned the horizon. “How does Wendy’s sound?”

“Sure.”

He drove into the Wendy’s parking lot, to the drive-through. I picked out the cheapest sandwich on the menu. When he pulled around to the window to pay, I fished my money from my pocket.

He took one look at it and pushed it away. “I don’t want it.”

“I don’t care, I have money, so take it.”

“No.”

I flung the ten-dollar bill at him, and he snatched it up and flung it back. This sparked a money-throwing war, which ended when Miles paid for our food, passed the drink carrier and bags to me, and then folded up the ten dollars and wedged it under my thigh. I scowled at him.

He backed into the parking space so we could sit in the bed of the truck and have a grand view of the highway. It wasn’t much warmer in the cab, and stretching our legs seemed like a good idea.

“You’re so skinny, I don’t know how you’re not turning blue,” I said as I settled against the cab, sandwich in hand. Miles had already devoured half his french fries—the kid could definitely eat when he had food in front of him.

“It’s this jacket,” he said between fries. “So warm.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“My Opa—sorry, again, grandpa—had it from World War II. He was a pilot.” Miles took a bite of his sandwich. “We lived with him in Germany. He gave me some of his things before he died. Uniforms and old newspapers, medals, all sorts of stuff.”

“So, after the war, he stayed in Germany?”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t come back to America. Did he like it there, or something?”

Miles stared blankly at me for a second, and then he laughed. “Oh, you thought—no, no, Opa wasn’t in the United States Air Force. He was in the Luftwaffe.”

All the heat drained from my body.

“Well, don’t look so shocked. I told you he was German.”

“But that’s a U.S. bomber jacket.”

“Yeah, he got it from a U.S. pilot,” Miles replied, and at my horrified expression, added, “What? He didn’t kill the guy! They were friends! Why are you freaking out; you’re supposed to be the history buff—you of all people should know that not all Nazis wanted to be Nazis.”

I knew. Oh, I knew. That didn’t stop me from being scared of them.

“You would’ve liked Opa. He was very down-to-earth.”

“So is that why everyone calls you ‘the Nazi’ at school?”

“No. No one knows about Opa. They call me that because when I first started school here, I still had my accent, I liked to speak German a lot, and when I started running jobs, they thought it’d be a funny nickname. After a while, it stuck.”

“Oh.” I lowered my blushing face to my french fries. “So, um. What was the real reason you guys came back to the States? Your mom was acting sort of weird about it.”

Miles curled his lip at his sandwich. “Cleveland. He wrote her letters for a long time, trying to persuade her to come back. I know she wanted to go, but Opa made sure she remembered why we were there. And when he died, it was the perfect excuse to leave.” He rolled his eyes. “What’d she talk to you about?”

“Huh?”

“When I went to the restroom,” Miles said. “What did my mom say to you?”

“Nothing important. Mom stuff.”

Miles gave me a look that said he knew that much already, and he didn’t want to ask the question again.

“She asked if you were doing okay in school. What people thought of you . . . if you had friends . . . if you were happy . . .”

Miles stared down at his sandwich, waiting.

“And I, you know, told her.”

“Told her what?”