“And what business would a rich kid like you have suing a poor kid like me?”
The end of Miles’s skewer hit the ground next to the fire. He turned his full attention on me. “What makes you think I’m rich?”
I shrugged. “You’re a brat? You’re an only child? Your shoes are always polished?” It was true—his shirt was always wrinkle-free, his tie straight, his pants sharp and ironed, and his shoes were blacker and shinier than anyone else’s. And his hair, let’s not even get started on his hair, because he had hair that looked like he’d walked right out of the shower every morning and artfully styled it to dry in the most amazingly messy way. Like good-looking bed head, if that’s even possible. Whatever he was, he certainly took pains to make himself look nice.
“My shoes are always polished?” he said incredulously. “That’s why you think I’m rich? Because I like shiny shoes?”
I shrugged again, heat seeping into my face.
“And sometimes there’s a good reason why someone’s an only child, so don’t even go there.”
“Fine!” I held up my hands. “Sorry, okay? You’re not rich.”
Miles turned back to the fire. Another silence blanketed us, but this one wasn’t awkward, either. Just really, really heavy. Like one of us should have kept talking until we ran out of things to say.
“Exactly how good are you with history?” Miles asked, his tone back to bland and unaffected.
“That depends. There’s a lot of history—what do you want to know?”
“Everything,” he said, but before I could ask what the hell that meant, he added, “Who was the fourteenth president of the US?”
“Franklin Pierce. The only president from New Hampshire.”
“What was his second child’s name and what did that child die from?”
“Ben—no, Frank—Robert Pierce. Frank Robert Pierce. Died of . . . typhus.”
“At what age?”
“Uh . . . four? Five? I can’t remember. Why are you so interested in an obscure president’s second child?”
Miles shook his head and looked away. But he also smiled. Weird, lopsided, more of a smirk than a smile, really, but it got the point across. How smart was he? A genius, but in what? It seemed like he was good at everything— he helped Theo with calculus, he could destroy chemistry without blinking, he slept through his A+ in English, and everything else seemed to bore him. He knew the name Huitzilihuitl. (And, more importantly, how to pronounce it.) He knew everything.
Except the truth about me. And I needed to keep it that way.
I locked my eyes on the fire, but was quickly distracted by the Jaws of Life couple; clothes were being removed, and if Miles’s expression was anything to go by, they were going to get skewered if it went any further.
A second later it didn’t matter. The noise from the deck swelled toward us, and before I could consider running, Celia Hendricks slid onto the bench beside me and someone else slid in on Miles’s other side, and the five inches between us disappeared. We were smashed together, my shoulder in his armpit, his arm braced behind us, my legs nearly on top of his. Seemingly everyone from the back deck made a ring around the fire.
I froze. I’d never been this close to so much of a person. Except Charlie. I didn’t even let my mother get this close to me.
Miles’s neck and ears had gone red. This must have been torture for him, too. Because of the people crowding us, I probably looked like I’d thrown myself at Miles, and he probably looked like he wanted it.
“Well. This is awkward,” said Miles.
The triplets laughed somewhere behind us. Miles and I twisted to find them at the same time. His jaw smacked my forehead.
He groaned. “God, is your head made of steel?”
“Why, too hard to bite through, Jaws?” I sniped back, rubbing my forehead. The triplets were already on their way, blond blurs in the crowd.
A hand dug into my ribs.
“Hey guys!” Celia flashed two rows of white teeth. “How d’you like the party?”
“It’s . . . um . . . great,” I said as Miles grabbed my leg and pulled it over his, shifting my weight off his rib cage. I lost my balance, and he grabbed my leg again to steady me. The leg in question had turned to jelly.
Kids crowded all along the back of the bench, barricading any escape. I barely kept myself from punching Celia. I didn’t realize I was squeezing myself closer to Miles until he coughed and tilted his chin up to avoid my head.
The scent of tobacco and wood shavings filled my nose. His jacket. It was the kind of smell I’d only previously caught off my parents’ pipe-smoking, dirt-digging history colleagues. I was close enough to him to get a clear whiff of something else . . . pastries. And one more. Mint soap. It was like someone had mixed together all the best-smelling things in the world and made Miles bathe in them.
“Get me out of here,” he muttered. The arm he’d been holding out behind me dropped, and his hand brushed down along my side. Hairs shot up all over my body. Miles’s face went red. “Sorry . . . arm was getting tired . . .”
We were nose to nose. Straight nose. Square jaw. Clear eyes. Yes, I thought, yes, very cute. Cuteness confirmed.
“I’m going to try to find a way out,” I said breathlessly, twisting around. My task was made much harder by Celia, still trying to get Miles’s attention.
And also by the flicker of light behind Celia, the pungent smell of burning hair, and someone yelling, “YOU’RE ON FIRE!”
Chapter Fifteen
The two seconds between the realizations that I wasn’t on fire and Celia was were a very blissful two seconds.
Celia screamed and batted at herself, making it hard to see if the fire had caught her hair or her clothes or both. Someone ran up behind her and dumped a bucket of water over her head, dousing her. She stood motionless for a moment, the ends of her hair curled and black, her makeup running in streaks down her face.
“WHO DID IT?”
Everyone stared at her. She’d been sitting too far from the fire for it to reach her, hadn’t she? The back of her sweatshirt was as singed as her hair. She didn’t seem hurt, though. She seethed, eyes roving through the crowd, until she zeroed in on me.
I had my camera pointed at her. I’d gotten it out before I realized that her burning hair was not a delusion.
“You were right next to me!” she screeched.
I shoved my camera into my pocket and tried to retreat, but the bench hit the backs of my knees. “You think I did it?”