Made You Up(74)

He lifted my hand and held it against his chest. “I told you I’d be careful, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

Celia wiped her eyes and shuffled toward the door.

“What’s she doing?” Miles rose from his seat. I pulled him back down again.

“Let her go,” I said. “She’ll be back.”

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, Celia wandered back into the gym, her eyes redder and puffier than when she’d left. She sat down on the very end of the bottom row of the bleachers and stared at her hands. She looked . . . broken. Like the crazy bitch in her had finally died and left a shell behind.

June was right. I needed to talk to her.





Chapter Thirty-eight




She tried to go down one of the back hallways after the game.

I didn’t figure it’d be hard to stop her. Two words and she’d turn and pounce on me. But when I threw open the doors and called out her name, she looked over her shoulder, eyes wide, like she was afraid I was the one going to kill her.

And then she ran.

I chased her. I guess being a cheerleader had its perks— she was in better shape than me. But I knew where she was going. When we hit an intersection, Celia turned right and I kept going straight. I came out on the west side of the school, jumped down the handicap entrance ramp, and made it to the northwest corner in time to catch Celia in the stomach with my arm. My momentum slammed her into the wall.

“Stop . . . running . . .” I said, panting. She glared at me, rubbing the shoulder that had hit the brick.

“I . . . have to . . . ask you something . . .”

“So ask me,” she snarled.

I took a deep breath. “McCoy. What’s going on . . . with McCoy?”

Celia’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“Look, I know about your mom. And I know about McCoy. I know he calls you down to his office all the time, and he’s obsessed. If . . . if he’s doing something, you should tell someone about it.”

For half a second, real recognition flashed across Celia’s face. But then her expression twisted and she bared her teeth.

“You don’t know anything about me.” She pushed me back. “Get out of my face. And don’t mention Rich Dick McCoy or my mom to me again.”

She shoulder checked me hard enough to make me stumble backward and almost lose my footing. I thought about following her again, questioning her until she admitted that something was going on, that she needed help, but I already knew.

I’d taken something she loved. She would never trust me.





She’s not crazy at all, is she?

My sources say no

She’s just . . . alone.

Most likely

But she never wants anyone around.

Reply hazy try again

She doesn’t want help. Why doesn’t she want help?

Cannot predict now





Chapter Thirty-nine




The running theme of January seemed to be to make Celia’s time a living hell. Evan and Ian forced her to pick up trash they’d knocked over. Theo had her clean the popcorn and hot dog machines for an entire week. Jetta made her jump into the pool in her clothes to get dive bricks that Jetta herself had thrown in, when the swimming team was standing less than ten feet away.

Celia never did anything to stop this. In fact, the only times she did get angry enough to put her foot down were the times I mentioned McCoy to her.

By mid-February, I began wondering what the club could possibly have against Celia that justified the things they did to her. Yes, she was a bitch. Yes, she’d done horrible things to people—or so I’d been told.

Miles and I didn’t join in, but we didn’t stop it, either, and that made me feel like we had. Whenever Celia saw us, whenever I’d catch her watching us after a quick kiss in the gym or holding hands in the hallway, I could swear she was about to burst into tears.

“They can do what they want to her,” Miles said one day at the end of February, after the triplets had made Celia carry all the fishy-smelling towels to the laundry without a cart. She accidentally dropped some into the pool and had to get into the water to get them. Miles and I stood with our backs against the tiles. Miles was staring at the water with his nose turned up.

As Celia climbed back out of the pool, she looked at us—at Miles.