Another flood of anger shot through my limbs. “It doesn’t matter—it’s the principle of the thing!”
“No it’s not, not when you suddenly decide it’s bad because it’s Beaumont!”
We glared at each other for a minute, until Art coughed. My arms tightened.
“You’re an asshole,” I said, looking away.
“Takes one to know one,” Miles muttered back.
Chapter Twenty-six
The next morning, Miles actually showed up at my house. But I let seven o’clock come and go and asked Dad to drive me to school. He’d noticed something was wrong when I’d done a nosedive into my cereal without even checking it for trackers first. When he asked, I said that I hadn’t been able to sleep.
Still, as soon as we hit the school parking lot, I was wide awake.
He dropped me off at the main entrance. I did a perimeter check, took note of the men—real or not real?— standing on the roof, and shouldered my backpack. I got the overwhelming feeling that people were staring at my hair. When I looked around, no one was even paying attention to me.
Miles was at the lockers, standing in front of his open door, stuffing books in. When I opened my locker, a crisp fifty-dollar bill fluttered to my feet. I scooped it up and shoved it at Miles.
“I don’t want it.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Well, that’s too bad, because it’s yours.”
“I’m not taking it.” I threw the bill on top of his books.
“It’s fifty dollars. Surely you could use that for something.”
“Oh, I bet I could. Thing is, I won’t.”
“Why, because of a misplaced sense of morality?” Miles spat. “Trust me, Beaumont doesn’t deserve your guilt.”
“Who are you to decide that?” I tried very hard not to punch him in the face or kick him in the crotch. “You don’t like him because he’s a better person than you are. He doesn’t resort to stealing and sabotage just to get other people to listen to him.”
Miles looked like he was keeping himself from saying something nasty, but he shook his head and tucked the fifty into his back pocket.
As I walked to class, all I could think about was why I had ever wanted to kiss him. But then I heard the unearthly shrieks coming from Mr. Gunthrie’s room. A large group of students had formed outside the door. I shoved my way through and jumped to the side in case of projectiles.
Celia was back, her fingers tangled in Stacey Burns’s ponytail, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her hair, once blond, was now grass green. Britney Carver stood on Stacey’s other side, trying to pry Celia’s fingers away. Celia swung forward and planted her fist in Stacey’s face with a crunch.
Claude Gunthrie tossed a few freshmen out of the doorway and sprinted into the room, grabbing Celia around the waist and lifting her off her feet.
“GET OFF ME! YOU FUCKERS DID THIS! I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!”
“We didn’t do it!” Stacey yelled back, blood dripping from her lip. “Let me go!”
“Someone grab her arms!” Claude grunted under Celia’s weight. “She’s gonna—AUGH—”
Celia elbowed him in the face.
“WHAT?” Theo shot up and lunged for the arm Celia had hit Claude with, looking prepared to rip it off.
“WHAT’S GOING ON? BREAK IT UP, ALL OF YOU!”
As if he had the hands of God, Mr. Gunthrie thundered into the room, took Celia’s collar in one hand and Stacey’s in the other, and lifted them off their feet. They both looked so thoroughly shocked when he put them back down, they fell quiet and let each other go.
“CLAUDE, TAKE BURNS TO THE NURSE. HENDRICKS, YOU’RE COMING WITH ME.” Mr. Gunthrie paused a moment, sizing Celia up, and then said, “WHY DID YOU DYE YOUR HAIR GREEN?”
Celia began screaming again and Mr. Gunthrie had to lock his arms around her to drag her from the room. Stacey, clutching her jaw, marched out without Claude. Claude, sporting a bloody nose, followed. Theo managed to slip out of the room with him.
I sank into a seat. Had Stacey and Britney really dyed Celia’s hair green, or was it another one of Celia’s stunts to draw attention to herself?
The whispers got louder. Miles walked in, looking a little put off by the half-empty room and everyone in the wrong seats. He sat down without acknowledging me.
Cliff and Ria were back at Ria’s desk, snickering and glancing at the door every few seconds. Then Ria’s face went so red and Cliff began laughing so hard that I turned and looked, too.
Tucker hobbled into the room, bowlegged. Deep bags ringed his eyes and both hands scrubbed at his uncombed black hair. His tie hung loose around his collar and his shirt was untucked. He gingerly lowered himself into his seat, wincing as he settled, and began scratching himself all over.
I slid out of my seat and hurried across the room. “Are you okay?”
Are you okay? is probably one of the top five stupidest questions ever. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s easier to use a tiny bit of common sense. However, in the current situation I could think of nothing better to say, because “I am so sorry for putting IcyHot in your underwear” is not the first thing you want to tell a person who does not, in fact, know that you were the one who put IcyHot in his underwear.
Tucker folded his hands in his lap as if he’d finally realized he looked like a rabid monkey. “No,” he said. “I woke up this morning and felt like I was on an acid trip. I’m itching all over and I don’t know why.” He leaned closer, shifting around uncomfortably in his seat. “And it feels like someone set my underwear on fire.”
I pressed my fist to my forehead, my stomach twisting itself into knots.
“I know what happened,” he began. I stared at him in horror, but he kept going. “Not the specifics, but I know what happened and why. And I know it was Richter. I know it was him, because he’s the only person who could get in and out of my house in the middle of the night without tripping the alarm. At least, he’s the only person who would do it for the sole purpose of screwing with me.”
Tucker shot a glare over my shoulder at Miles. “Look at him; he’s not even subtle about it. He’s staring right at us now.”
I didn’t look. “It can’t be that bad, right? What happened?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. My alarm went off an hour late, and everything’s been going wrong since. I got halfway to school and my car broke down.” Tucker paused for a moment to absentmindedly scratch his chest. “There was more than one person helping him, I think— Richter never did understand cars—probably someone in that club . . .”