UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Mono was my cover story.
Everyone believed me. Everyone except Miles, Tucker, and Art. Art, because he’d carried me during my episode. Tucker, because his parents were doctors and he could tell when someone didn’t actually know the symptoms of mono.
Miles, for the obvious reasons.
I did my perimeter check three times while I hid Erwin behind his bushes on the front walk, and my eyes were drawn again to the roof, where the men in suits monitored the parking lot. It took me a few minutes to realize that public high schools didn’t have men in suits watching their parking lots. I took a picture of them. I wasn’t sure if the pictures would help anymore, but doing it made me feel better. Like I was doing something to help myself. Like that was still possible.
I still had so much make-up work—and no clue how to do most of it. When I slouched into the cafeteria after fourth period, I spent the hour doing homework instead of eating. I didn’t have to check my food because I didn’t eat my food.
I saw that damn snake hanging from the damn opening in the ceiling again on my way to seventh period. I arrived late, but Miles had already finished the lab by himself and, by some miracle, agreed to let me copy his results. I flipped open my notebook, glanced warily at Ms. Dalton, and began copying.
Miles watched me. When I got suspicious and looked up, he just quirked his eyebrow and kept staring. Like a bored house cat. I snorted and kept writing.
He followed me after class, hovering silently on my right side. The cat waiting for attention. Anyone else would have sparked a cascade of paranoia, but he didn’t.
“Sorry you had to do that lab alone,” I said, knowing full well that it had been no trouble for him. “Those results look like—”
“So where were you, really?” he cut me off. “I know it wasn’t mono.”
I stopped, looked around, waited for some kids to pass us. “It was mono.”
Miles rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and my IQ is twenty-five. Really, what were you doing?”
“Having mono.” I gave him the you-really-shouldn’t-push-this-any-further look, but apparently Miles Richter didn’t understand everything, because he scoffed and moved in front of me, blocking my path.
“Yes, the symptoms of mono include reacting to things that aren’t there, screaming for no reason at all, and flailing on the ground like you’re about to be ax murdered.”
My face flushed with heat. “It was mono,” I whispered.
“You’re schizophrenic.”
I stood there, blinking stupidly.
Say something, idiot!
If I didn’t, he’d have no doubt.
Say something! Say something!
I turned and walked away.
I wanted to shoot Miles in the kneecaps more than ever. Accusations about my mental state were the cherry on top of the I-framed-you-for-setting-someone-on-fire sundae. The dickiest of dickery. I could go to jail for the fire thing—not only was Celia’s dad a lawyer, but her family was loaded. We were so poor my mother took three quarters of my paycheck every week to supplement the family income.
Theo assured me that, if Miles really was the one running the job to set Celia’s hair on fire, he wouldn’t have let me take the fall for it. Not something that serious.
I didn’t know if I believed her. Some of the things Miles did for money were pretty out there. He’d actually abducted someone’s ex-boyfriend’s beloved golden retriever.
After that I avoided him. I tried to avoid Celia, too. She walked around the school complaining about “attempts on her life.” She glared at me constantly and flipped her hair whenever I was near, highlighting how short she’d been forced to cut it. Even Stacey and Britney seemed a little wary of Celia now, as if she’d set the fire herself.
I didn’t talk to Miles for most of the week. Not even in our lab on Wednesday, when I broke our watch glass, spilling chemicals all over the table. Miles bent down to pick up the pieces. Then, since our lab was ruined, he fabricated data that ended up being more accurate than anyone else’s.
When I walked into the gym at the end of the day on Thursday, Art and Jetta sat playing cards on one end of the bleachers. Miles was stretched out on the row above them, his battered notebook open over his face. The cheerleading squad practiced on the other side of the gym, their voices echoing off the walls.
As I approached the club, Art leaned back and nudged Miles in the ribs.
“Hey.” I sat down beside Jetta. A solid two feet separated us, but it still counted.
“What’s up?” said Art. “Did anyone say anything to you about the fire?”
Miles lifted the edge of his notebook and peeked out. When our eyes met, he groaned.
“Not really. Weird looks, but not much else. I didn’t do it.”
“We know. Celia did,” said Art.
I stared at him. “What?”
“Celia did it to herself. We went back and interrogated her.”
“You . . . you interrogated her? What’d you do, threaten to take her makeup off and reveal her secret identity?”
“Mein Chef said ‘ee would shave ’er eyebrows off.” Jetta smiled brightly. “Among uzzer zings. She told us everyzing—she set ze fire ’erself, Stacey and Britney had ze water, and she blamed eet on you.”
Mein Chef? Was—was she talking about Miles? I looked up at him, but he only grunted.
“It’s a good thing Stacey and Britney put her out when they did,” said Art. “If they’d let her burn, you’d’ve been in deep shit.”
“Oui,” said Jetta. “Deep sheet.”
Miles groaned again. I whipped around. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Maybe I don’t want to tell you,” he snapped. He sat up long enough to procure a pen from thin air and jot something down in his notebook. The side of his left hand was smeared with black ink from his pinkie to his wrist. Maybe his notebook contained a list of his mafia jobs. Or all the people who owed him money. Maybe—ooh, maybe it was a hit list.
Bet I was on there a couple hundred times.
Calculus homework by itself was a bitch, but when you added the screams and giggles of the East Shoal cheerleading squad, it became unbearable. I plowed my way through a half hour of derivatives before the cheerleaders quieted and the coach addressed them.
“So, ladies,” said Coach Privett, a forty-something squat gym teacher with scraggly dark hair. “Basketball season is here, and it’s time to pick another cheer captain. Hannah put in her two cents, and I agree with her.”
“Who is it?” someone called. The whole group giggled.
Coach Privett said, “Drumroll, please,” and the girls pounded their feet on the floor.
Art and Jetta stopped their card game long enough to shoot the cheerleaders dirty looks. Miles flopped onto his side in annoyance.
Celia sat among the cheerleaders, like a hyena in front of a bloody haunch of meat. She had that deadly obsessive look in her eyes that girls got when they knew what they wanted and were going to do anything to get it.
The same look she had whenever she laid eyes on Miles. Which made no sense to me. What girl in her right mind would be obsessed with Miles? I wasn’t even obsessed with him. Me, who thought he might be Blue Eyes, and who had come to the unfortunate conclusion that even if he wasn’t Blue Eyes, I still didn’t mind noting the way he raked his hair to the side when it fell over his forehead, or how he stretched his legs out exactly twenty minutes into each class.
At least my attention to him was because I couldn’t get away from him. Celia had to have a different reason.
Coach Privett clapped her hands together. “Aaaand . . . the new cheer captain is . . .”
They sucked in a collective breath.
“. . . Britney Carver!”
A ripple ran through the girls, and then lots of cheering and clapping and Britney squealed and stood and made a little bow.
Celia did not cheer, and she did not clap. Her entire face flushed with color as she gazed at her alleged best friend with cold-blooded murder in her wide, rabid eyes. I could imagine it as a cartoon—Celia’s teeth turning into fangs and steam blowing out her ears as she grabbed Britney around the neck and throttled her until Britney’s eyes popped out of her head.
When Coach Privett concluded the meeting and the cheerleaders dispersed, Celia still stood there, hands balled at her sides, jaw clenched. Her eyes made a quick sweep of the gym and saw me watching her. I looked down at my book. She turned and stomped across the gym and stood underneath the scoreboard.
Was it possible for someone to act the way she did because that was just the way she was? Or was there always a reason? I’d like to think, if someone saw me acting strangely, they wouldn’t assume it was because I was a bad person. Or they’d at least ask if something was wrong before they made the decision.
“Boss, are we done here?” Art asked.
Miles, who had fallen asleep, jolted awake and mumbled something about going home. We gathered up our bags and headed to the exit. I was the last one out, and right before the doors closed, the yelling started.
But it wasn’t Celia’s voice.
I jerked around in surprise and stuck my head back into the gym. Standing under the scoreboard with Celia, her back to me, was a woman in a sharp business suit, her blond hair waving down to the middle of her back. I glanced over my shoulder; Miles and the others were still walking, too far away to have heard.
Celia’s head was down, both hands up by her ears, like she was ready to block out everything around her.
“I thought it would be okay . . .” she said. “I thought . . .”
“That you had the situation under control?” The woman’s voice was sickly sweet with an undercurrent of poisonous. I had heard that voice before, at the volleyball game on the first day of school.
“I did,” Celia whined. “I don’t know why . . . I knew they were going to pick me . . .”
“But they didn’t. You want to explain that?”
“I don’t know!” Celia fisted one hand in her hair. “I did everything exactly like you told me! I did it all right!”
“Apparently not,” said the woman. “You wasted your time with that stunt you pulled at the bonfire. You’ve undermined yourself, and you’re ruining my plans. Where do you expect to go now?”
“I don’t even like cheerleading. And Britney’s my friend—”
“Your friend? You call that bitch your friend? You need to do something about her, Celia. You need to show her that she doesn’t deserve that position.”
Celia whimpered something unintelligible.
“And then you go around thinking a boy will make this all better,” the woman snapped. Blood-red fingernails tapped against her arm. “You’ve known him for five years and he’s hardly looked at you. He threatened to shave your eyebrows off! He’s an obstacle, Celia! One you need to remove.”
“No, he’s not!”
“I’m your mother—I know these things!”
Her mother?
Celia was crying now. She turned away from her mother to wipe her eyes, smudging her ugly mascara tears. Something slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor, making her jump. Her cell phone.
When she bent down to get it, she saw me. Her eyes opened wide.
I ran from the gym as fast as I could.