My throat tightened and my heart swelled painfully in my chest. Please don’t let this be a delusion. Please let this be real. Here it was, finally and for certain, my proof. My first, completely real, not at all imaginary, friend was here. I’d found him, or he’d found me, or something.
He was real, I could touch him, we breathed the same air.
Miles chose that moment to walk back in, looking calmer than he had when he’d left. I tried not to stare as he sunk into his seat, but my brain scrambled to pull together fragments of memory, to put the boy from the lobster tank beside the boy in front of me now.
June said something to him in German, and a reluctant smile took over his face. He might’ve been confused about what he felt for other people, but it was obvious he knew exactly what he felt for his mother.
She was his reason.
It’s him.
Cannot predict now
No, I’m not asking, I’m telling. It’s him. But what if . . .
Yes
What if he doesn’t remember?
Concentrate and ask again
Oh, sorry. I mean . . . it’s like, if a tree falls in a forest but no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound? If he doesn’t remember, did it happen? I know June said we were there together, but she wasn’t with us. No one was.
Most likely
So you’re saying it did happen? But . . . but if I’m the only one who remembers the details . . .
If I’m . . .
Chapter Thirty-two
On the drive home, I huddled into my coat, going over everything we’d found out. It would be wrong to assume that something wasn’t going on, that I was blowing all this up in my head. Something really was wrong with McCoy, and if we were the only ones who knew about it, we had to do something. But who would believe me? Who would believe Miles?
I stole glances at Miles whenever I could, wondering why it still shocked me that he was the boy from the lobster tank. I simultaneously wanted to kiss him and hit him for leaving.
Pressure built behind my eyes, a lump formed in my throat. I couldn’t let him see me cry. He’d scoff at me or roll his eyes—he didn’t seem like the kind of person that suffered tears gladly, and I didn’t suffer anyone making fun of mine.
“You okay?” he asked after a half hour of silence.
“Yeah.” My voice was definitely too high. Tucker would mock me so much.
“Hungry?” He scanned the horizon. “How does Wendy’s sound?”
“Sure.”
He drove into the Wendy’s parking lot, to the drive-through. I picked out the cheapest sandwich on the menu. When he pulled around to the window to pay, I fished my money from my pocket.
He took one look at it and pushed it away. “I don’t want it.”
“I don’t care, I have money, so take it.”
“No.”
I flung the ten-dollar bill at him, and he snatched it up and flung it back. This sparked a money-throwing war, which ended when Miles paid for our food, passed the drink carrier and bags to me, and then folded up the ten dollars and wedged it under my thigh. I scowled at him.
He backed into the parking space so we could sit in the bed of the truck and have a grand view of the highway. It wasn’t much warmer in the cab, and stretching our legs seemed like a good idea.
“You’re so skinny, I don’t know how you’re not turning blue,” I said as I settled against the cab, sandwich in hand. Miles had already devoured half his french fries—the kid could definitely eat when he had food in front of him.
“It’s this jacket,” he said between fries. “So warm.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“My Opa—sorry, again, grandpa—had it from World War II. He was a pilot.” Miles took a bite of his sandwich. “We lived with him in Germany. He gave me some of his things before he died. Uniforms and old newspapers, medals, all sorts of stuff.”
“So, after the war, he stayed in Germany?”
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t come back to America. Did he like it there, or something?”
Miles stared blankly at me for a second, and then he laughed. “Oh, you thought—no, no, Opa wasn’t in the United States Air Force. He was in the Luftwaffe.”
All the heat drained from my body.
“Well, don’t look so shocked. I told you he was German.”
“But that’s a U.S. bomber jacket.”
“Yeah, he got it from a U.S. pilot,” Miles replied, and at my horrified expression, added, “What? He didn’t kill the guy! They were friends! Why are you freaking out; you’re supposed to be the history buff—you of all people should know that not all Nazis wanted to be Nazis.”
I knew. Oh, I knew. That didn’t stop me from being scared of them.
“You would’ve liked Opa. He was very down-to-earth.”
“So is that why everyone calls you ‘the Nazi’ at school?”
“No. No one knows about Opa. They call me that because when I first started school here, I still had my accent, I liked to speak German a lot, and when I started running jobs, they thought it’d be a funny nickname. After a while, it stuck.”
“Oh.” I lowered my blushing face to my french fries. “So, um. What was the real reason you guys came back to the States? Your mom was acting sort of weird about it.”
Miles curled his lip at his sandwich. “Cleveland. He wrote her letters for a long time, trying to persuade her to come back. I know she wanted to go, but Opa made sure she remembered why we were there. And when he died, it was the perfect excuse to leave.” He rolled his eyes. “What’d she talk to you about?”
“Huh?”
“When I went to the restroom,” Miles said. “What did my mom say to you?”
“Nothing important. Mom stuff.”
Miles gave me a look that said he knew that much already, and he didn’t want to ask the question again.
“She asked if you were doing okay in school. What people thought of you . . . if you had friends . . . if you were happy . . .”
Miles stared down at his sandwich, waiting.
“And I, you know, told her.”
“Told her what?”
“The truth. Did you think I would lie to your mom?”
“No, but what exactly is ‘the truth’?”
“Well, it was pretty easy,” I said, annoyed now. “People think you’re a jerk—”
Miles snorted derisively.
“—because they don’t know you, and you don’t let them. And I said yes, you do have friends—”