“Of course.” Mr. Gunthrie gave Miles another sharp slap on the back. “Take as much time as you need. I’m sure you’ve got this all memorized anyway, haven’t you?”
Miles gave him a wry smile and left.
Chapter Eleven
Tucker found me after lunch and reassured me that Miles had been running a job.
“A job? What, like the mafia?”
“Sort of.” Tucker leaned back against the wall outside the cafeteria. “People pay him to do things. Usually revenge stuff. You know, steal someone’s homework and paste it on the ceiling. Put dead fish in someone’s glove compartment. Stuff like that.”
“So what was he doing this morning?” I asked.
Tucker shrugged. “You usually don’t know until it happens. One time he hid a hundred water balloons full of grape juice into Leslie Stapleford’s locker. When she opened it, there were toothpicks or something that popped all the balloons and set off a chain reaction. Ruined everything she had.”
Note to self: Stand to side of locker door when opening.
“Did you hear the announcement today?” Tucker asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, about McCoy hiring someone to fit the scoreboard with gold plating?”
“Yeah. I told you he was crazy, right? I heard he does some weird stuff at home, too.” He said it with a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Like mowing his lawn, and trimming his peonies.”
“Peonies?” I balked. “God, he really is a freak.”
Tucker laughed. The cafeteria doors beside him swung open and Celia Hendricks walked out with Britney Carver and Stacey Burns. I stepped back, slightly behind Tucker.
“What’s funny, Beaumont?” she asked with a sneer, as if he’d been laughing at her.
“None of your business, Celia.” All humor left Tucker’s face. “Don’t you have a Makeup Addicts Anonymous meeting to get to?”
“Don’t you have a Cult in a Closet to get to?” she shot back. “Oh, wait, I forgot, you have no friends. My bad.”
The tips of Tucker’s ears turned pink and he glared at her, but didn’t say anything else.
“God, Beaumont, you’re so weird. Maybe if you acted like a normal person once in a while—”
“I’m his friend,” I cut in. “And I think he’s perfectly normal.”
Celia looked me up and down, her eyes lingering on my hair. And then she huffed and stomped away without another word.
“You didn’t have to say that,” Tucker mumbled.
“Yeah, I did,” I replied.
There is no force in high school more powerful than one person’s blunt disagreement.
The rest of the day passed without a hitch. Miles did not acknowledge my presence. I did not acknowledge his.
Miles’s locker was still glued shut when I left for the gym.
The entire west side of the school was for extracurriculars. The gym, pool, and auditorium were all connected by hallways that ran behind them and a large rotunda at their center, linked to the rest of the school by a main hall. Lining the rotunda were huge glass cases filled with trophies the school had won over the years: athletics, music competitions, color guard. There were pictures in black and white of the winning teams alongside some of them.
The picture that caught my attention didn’t have a trophy and wasn’t from a competition. It was a framed newspaper clipping. Someone had taken a bright red marker to the girl in the picture, partially obscuring her face, but I could tell she was pretty, blonde, and wearing an old East Shoal cheerleader’s uniform. She stood next to the scoreboard, which looked brand-new.
Beneath the picture was the caption: “Scarlet Fletcher, captain of the East Shoal cheerleading squad, helps introduce ‘Scarlet’s Scoreboard,’ a commemoration of the charity and goodwill her father, Randall Fletcher, has shown toward the school.”
The picture was framed in gold and set up on a tiny dais like it was sacred.
I spotted Miles on the other side of the rotunda. He was standing outside the concession stand, talking to a kid I’d never seen before. As I watched, they made a quick exchange. Miles gave the kid something thin and gold and got a handful of cash in return.
“What was that?” I asked, stomping up to Miles as soon as the kid had walked away. “It looked very much like Mr. Gunthrie’s fountain pen. I’m not ruling out the possibility that you’re an accomplished pickpocket.”
Miles raised his eyebrow as if I was a very amusing puppy.
“So that’s the only reason you drank that awful stuff this morning? So you could steal a teacher’s pen? For money?”
Miles shoved his hands into his pockets. “Are you done now?”
“Lemme see.” I tapped my chin. “Yep, all done. Asshat.”
I started to walk away.
“Alex. Wait.”
I turned back. It was the first time he’d said my name. He held a hand out. “Well played,” he said.
Oh no. No, we were not doing this. I hadn’t spent ten minutes gluing his locker shut just to admit it to him. So I arched my own eyebrow and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The corners of his lips twisted up right before I walked away.
It can’t be him. It’s not him, is it?
Cannot predict now
I know I’ve asked you a dozen times already, but . . . just . . . yes or no?
Concentrate and ask again
You only have twice as many positive answers as negative and noncommittal—how does this keep happening? It’s not him, is it?
Better not tell you now
You said that one before. I’m going to ask one more time: He’s a jerk, so he can’t be Blue Eyes, right?
Reply hazy try again
Reply hazy my ass.
Chapter Twelve
The transition from Hillpark to East Shoal was significantly easier than I’d expected. It was the same basic high school garbage wrapped in a slightly different skin. The only difference was that everything at East Shoal was completely insane.
There were several things I learned that first month.
One: The scoreboard really was a school legend, and Mr. McCoy really was dearly, dearly in love with it. McCoy had his own brand of crazy: he continually reminded everyone of “Scoreboard Day,” when we were all supposed to bring in an offering of flowers or lightbulbs for the scoreboard, as if it was a wrathful Mayan deity that would kill us if we disobeyed. Somehow, he managed to cover this insanity with a mask of good test scores and even better student conduct. It seemed like, as far as the parents and teachers were concerned, he was a perfect principal.