Made You Up

by Francesca Zappia

  Miles looked around to see if we were alone, then took a deep breath.

  “I have some stuff I need to tell you, because I feel like . . . like I owe it to you. I don’t know why I feel like that, and I don’t like feeling like that, but there you go.”

  I was surprised, but didn’t say anything. Miles took another deep breath.

  “First of all—and if I don’t tell anyone about you, you can’t tell anyone about this—my mom is in a psychiatric hospital.”

  Was I supposed to be surprised? Confused? I didn’t think he’d actually tell me. But now I didn’t have to feel bad about the imbalance of secrets between us. “What? No. You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. She’s in a hospital up north in Goshen. I visit her once a month. Twice if I can manage it.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes. Again, you never believe me. I don’t understand why someone would lie about that. I’m trying to make things better, but if you aren’t going to listen then I’ll stop talking—”

  “No, no, sorry, keep going,” I said quickly.

  Miles gave me a shrewd look. “You’re going to shut up and listen?”

  “Yes. Promise.”

  “Well, since I know you want to know what she’s in for—it’s nothing. She’s always been a little . . . off-kilter . . . but never bad enough to be committed. Never bad enough to stay in there. But denying that you’re crazy tends to make people think you’re more crazy—”

  I made an understanding noise.

  “—and that was how my dad convinced them at first. Said she denied it all the time. First he told them her bruises and the black eyes and the busted lips were all her fault. That she caused them in fits of depression and rage, that she was bipolar and he didn’t trust her anymore. And of course as soon as she heard that, she was furious, which made it worse.” He made a disgusted sort of noise in the back of his throat. “And then . . . the lake.”

  “The lake?”

  “He threw her in a lake, ‘rescued’ her, and told them she tried to commit suicide. She was hysterical. No one bothered to look for evidence against him. That’s when I started running jobs for people, and now I take all the late shifts I can at work, and forget the underage work laws, because I don’t care. I’m getting her out of that place when I turn eighteen in May, and I need the money for her, so . . . so she has something, you know? Because my father’s not gonna give her anything, and I can’t let her go back to that house.”

  Miles stopped suddenly, eyes focused on a spot to the left of my head. Unease filled my stomach, the kind you get from suddenly knowing a whole lot more about a person than you thought you ever would.

  “So. So are you—”

  “Not done yet,” he snapped. “Sometimes I have trouble understanding things. Emotional things. I don’t understand why people get upset about certain stuff, I don’t understand why Tucker doesn’t try to be more than he is, and I still haven’t figured out why you kissed me.”

  Okay. I could’ve died then. Just crawled on the floor and died.

  “Have you heard the term alexithymia before?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “It means ‘without words for emotions.’ Except it’s more than that. It’s almost a mental disorder, but there’s a sort of scale. The higher your alexithymia score, the more trouble you have interpreting emotions and things like that. My score isn’t as high as some, but it’s not the lowest.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. So, sorry if I come across callous sometimes. Or, I don’t know, defensive. Most of the time I’m just confused.”

  “So does that mean you don’t care about the people you hurt when you run those jobs?” I asked.

  “I’m not sociopathic; it just takes a while for me to process. I’m pretty good at turning off my guilt when I don’t want it. But I can’t stop. It’s an easy way to get money, it keeps anyone from getting too close to me, and I feel . . . safe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that when I’m the one doing everyone else’s dirty work, and everyone is afraid of me, I feel safe. I control what happens and to who.”

  “Whom,” I mumbled, and to my surprise, he smiled.

  “Right. Whom.”

  I got the feeling the smile wasn’t only because I had corrected his grammar. I wondered if he’d ever told anyone any of that before, and then wondered about his mother, in Goshen, and exactly how he planned to get her out while his dad was still around. I wondered what he would do if his little dictatorship over the school ever crumbled.

  I peered back into the trophy case. Scarlet’s picture screamed at me.

  “I might know something about what’s going on with Celia,” I finally said. I told him everything I knew about Celia, Celia’s mother, McCoy, Scarlet, and the scoreboard. How Tucker had been helping me look up information about it, but we’d reached a dead end.

  “I know McCoy doesn’t like you, and Celia does,” I added. “And that . . . worries me. I think they’re both really unstable. McCoy needs some kind of psychiatric help, and I don’t think he’s going to get it. I don’t think he even knows, or cares. And I know—I know—it’s like, I’m the crazy girl, making up crazy stories, why would you listen to me, but if you could just do me a favor and . . . watch out.”

  He stared at me. Blinked.

  Then he nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll be careful.”

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  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Celia’s second suspension wasn’t announced, exactly, but everyone in the school knew the details. Thanks to her lawyer of a father (and some unforeseen intervention from Satan himself, because who else would come to her rescue?), Celia wasn’t expelled. That was the bad news. The good news was that she’d be gone for the rest of the semester. The other bad news was that the semester was only ten more days. And the entire club saw the other other bad news coming from a mile away: when the semester was up, Celia would be back, and she’d be doing community service.

  The only person who didn’t seem to like the good news or the bad news was Principal McCoy, who only became more short-tempered and irritable after Celia was gone. His morning announcements were short and curt, and he didn’t say anything about the scoreboard. In the afternoons, he could often be found outside the gym watching the club work. I knew Miles was a big boy who could take care of himself, but if there was ever a time to put my finely honed sense of paranoia to good use, it was now.

  During those ten days, the school went back to relative normality. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit in the air, or the thought of a two-week vacation, but everyone seemed a lot more lighthearted, in spite of finals. Presents were exchanged. I saw small people dressed in red and green flitting between classrooms. I made everyone in the club Christmas cards and attached a Greek drachma from the 1800s to each one, unsure if they’d think it was stupid.

  I gave Miles his first, to see how he’d react. I fixed my goggles on my face at the lab table as he weighed the card in his hand. Then he opened it up as if it had a bomb inside.

  He pulled the coin out and studied it. “A drachma? Is . . . is it real? Where’d you get it?”

  “My dad’s an archaeologist. He picks up stuff all over the place.” And the coins were one of the things he’d brought home that I knew were real.

  “But this could be worth a lot of money,” said Miles. “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “Don’t feel too special.” I pulled out the test tubes and test tube rack we’d need for our lab. “I put them in the cards for everyone in the club.”

  “But still. How do you know this isn’t worth hundreds of dollars?”

  “I don’t, but I assume my dad wouldn’t give it to me if it was worth a lot of money.” I shrugged. “I have a bunch of stuff like that.”

  “Did you ever think that maybe he
gives it to you in spite of the fact that it’s worth a lot?”

  “Do you want it or not?” I snapped.

  Miles dipped his chin and stared balefully at me over his glasses, shoving the coin deep into his pocket. He turned back to the card.

  “Did you make this?” he said. “Why’s it only in green?”

  “Charlie’s on a green binge right now. It was the only color I could find.”

  He scanned what I’d written inside the card. Dear Asshole: Thank you for keeping your word and believing me. It was more than I expected. Also, I’m sorry you were inconvenienced by my gluing your locker shut at the beginning of this year. However, I am not sorry that I did it, because it was a lot of fun. Love, Alex.

  When he finished reading, he did something so surprising that I almost dropped the Bunsen burner and set the kid across from me on fire.

  He laughed.

  Our neighbors turned to stare at us, because Miles Richter laughing was one of those things that the Mayans had predicted would signal the end of the world. He wasn’t particularly loud about it, but it was Miles laughing, a sound no mortal had ever heard before.

  I liked it.

  “I’m definitely keeping this.” Miles went to get his black notebook. He slid the card into it and came back to the lab table, where he continued to be completely oblivious to the staring and happily helped me start the lab.

  The club seemed to really enjoy their gifts, even before I explained what the drachmas were. Jetta, who knew Greek, spoke it for the rest of the day. The triplets also wanted to know how much their coins were worth, and if they could pawn them.

  “Probably, if you can find the right person,” I said, “but I’ll hunt you down if you do.”

  The club had a thing about giving one another gifts. Jetta, who planned on moving back to France someday to become a fashion designer, made everyone scarves. Art handed out amazingly realistic wooden figurines he’d made in shop class. (Mine looked like a long-haired Raggedy Ann doll.) The triplets actually sang a Christmas carol they’d composed themselves. Miles walked into the gym about five minutes after they’d finished, holding a large white box filled with giant cupcakes. Everyone gorged themselves while we watched the basketball practice. I didn’t eat mine; I stacked it on top of the scarf and the figurines in a pile next to my backpack, with the excuse that I’d eat it later. I probably wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t trust Miles. He just wasn’t as attuned to food poisons as I was.

  Afterwards, the triplets started singing again, but this time they treated Miles to a nice round of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”

  I got one other gift, and at first I wasn’t sure if it was really a gift or a misplaced piece of sidewalk. A fist-sized chunk of rock sat on my desk without any explanation. I couldn’t really blame the person who left it—I’d left one of my drachmas and a card full of apologies on Tucker’s desk—but he could’ve at least explained what kind of message a rock was supposed to send.

  But I kept it, partly because I was curious and partly because I’d never been one to throw away gifts.

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  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Christmas at the Ridgemont house was a lot like Christmas everywhere else. It was the only time of year my parents bought a lot of stuff. Most of what we got were things that had gone on sale after Christmas last year. Charlie didn’t notice and I didn’t care, because most of it was clothes anyway, and if they fit, they fit. Our presents appeared beneath the tree, both Charlie’s and mine, with cards from Santa.

  Every year on Christmas Eve, Charlie and I made Mom and Dad go out to dinner by themselves, and we made sure they went somewhere they’d actually eat the food and enjoy themselves. It meant my dad was happy and my mother was out of my hair.

  At my request, Mom bought the ingredients for a Black Forest cake. Charlie got carried away eating the cherries while the cake was in the oven, but luckily we still had enough to cover the top edge. It looked delicious, and was guaranteed 100 percent poison- and tracer-free, which I was ecstatic about.

  Sometimes it felt like I only got happy this way around Christmas. The rest of the year, I wondered if the point of Christmas was just spending money and getting fat and opening gifts. Indulging.

  But when Christmas finally comes, and that warm, tingly, mints-and-sweaters-and-fireplace-fires feeling gathers in the bottom of your stomach, and you’re lying on the floor with all the lights off but the ones on the Christmas tree, and listening to the silence of the snow falling outside, you see the point. For that one instance in time, everything is good in the world. It doesn’t matter if everything isn’t actually good. It’s the one time of the year when pretending is enough.

  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. “Schwarzwälder 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 h
e 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.

  And . . . oh, shit.

  I swayed on the spot. This was about more than Scarlet or McCoy. He wanted me to meet his mom. I’d just agreed to meet his mom.

  He perked up, but still looked apprehensive, like if he said, “Really?” I was going to say, “No.”

  “I’ll have to ask first,” I said, “but I should be able to. When are you going?”

  “Saturday. I leave pretty early in the morning, so . . .”

  “Don’t worry about it; I’m an early bird.” I saw my mother rounding the corner, heading for the lobster tank and Charlie. “There she is now, I can ask her.”

  “No, that’s—you don’t have to—” But I’d already waved her over.

  “Miles invited me to go with him to visit his mom,” I said.