“Stop . . . running . . .” I said, panting. She glared at me, rubbing the shoulder that had hit the brick.
“I . . . have to . . . ask you something . . .”
“So ask me,” she snarled.
I took a deep breath. “McCoy. What’s going on . . . with McCoy?”
Celia’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Look, I know about your mom. And I know about McCoy. I know he calls you down to his office all the time, and he’s obsessed. If . . . if he’s doing something, you should tell someone about it.”
For half a second, real recognition flashed across Celia’s face. But then her expression twisted and she bared her teeth.
“You don’t know anything about me.” She pushed me back. “Get out of my face. And don’t mention Rich Dick McCoy or my mom to me again.”
She shoulder checked me hard enough to make me stumble backward and almost lose my footing. I thought about following her again, questioning her until she admitted that something was going on, that she needed help, but I already knew.
I’d taken something she loved. She would never trust me.
She’s not crazy at all, is she?
My sources say no
She’s just . . . alone.
Most likely
But she never wants anyone around.
Reply hazy try again
She doesn’t want help. Why doesn’t she want help?
Cannot predict now
Chapter Thirty-nine
The running theme of January seemed to be to make Celia’s time a living hell. Evan and Ian forced her to pick up trash they’d knocked over. Theo had her clean the popcorn and hot dog machines for an entire week. Jetta made her jump into the pool in her clothes to get dive bricks that Jetta herself had thrown in, when the swimming team was standing less than ten feet away.
Celia never did anything to stop this. In fact, the only times she did get angry enough to put her foot down were the times I mentioned McCoy to her.
By mid-February, I began wondering what the club could possibly have against Celia that justified the things they did to her. Yes, she was a bitch. Yes, she’d done horrible things to people—or so I’d been told.
Miles and I didn’t join in, but we didn’t stop it, either, and that made me feel like we had. Whenever Celia saw us, whenever I’d catch her watching us after a quick kiss in the gym or holding hands in the hallway, I could swear she was about to burst into tears.
“They can do what they want to her,” Miles said one day at the end of February, after the triplets had made Celia carry all the fishy-smelling towels to the laundry without a cart. She accidentally dropped some into the pool and had to get into the water to get them. Miles and I stood with our backs against the tiles. Miles was staring at the water with his nose turned up.
As Celia climbed back out of the pool, she looked at us—at Miles.
“Put those in the laundry room,” Miles called to her.
Celia nodded. Miles was the only person she’d take orders from without cursing under her breath or glaring.
“Hey, Green Queen!” Evan, Ian, and Jetta came out of the locker rooms in bathing suits.
“What are you doing?” Miles asked, glancing at his watch. “It’s six.”
“Which means there’s plenty of time to swim before we have to close!” Ian climbed the diving board.
“Mein Chef! Alex! You should come swimming wiz us!” said Jetta, floating over to the side of the pool and looking up at us.
“Yeah! Boss, come on!” Ian cried before diving.
“No,” said Miles. “I hate getting wet.”
“That’s what she s—” Evan began, before being dunked by his brother.
“You know I don’t like swimming,” said Miles when Jetta wouldn’t stop giving him a very hurt-puppy-dog look.
“Zen we should play your game. I ’ave someone.”
Miles fought a smile for a few seconds, but lost in the end. They started a game of twenty questions in German. I didn’t know what they were saying, but I was pretty sure Miles was dragging the game out on purpose. When it was just him and Jetta, he could find any excuse not to speak English.
I was glad he had Jetta to talk to, but I was missing out. There was a whole other person inside him I couldn’t see because I didn’t speak his language.
When the game was over—Miles made it to fifteen questions before guessing correctly—Jetta lifted her arms toward him and wiggled her fingers.
“I’m not getting in,” he said one last time, and Jetta admitted defeat and swam away.
“Don’t tell me you can’t swim,” I said.
Miles scoffed. “Of course I can swim. If I couldn’t swim I’d be dead by now,” he said. Then, softer, “My dad used to take me fishing with him when I was little. You know, most sons fish with their dads; that’s a nice family bonding experience, right? Well, add the attention span of a flea with ADHD, a bit of booze, and a large body of water, and you end up with a dad who thinks it’s fun to throw his kid off the boat and watch him swim for shore.”
“Like he did to your mom?”
He nodded. “He got me first.”
“That’s awful,” I whispered. “You could have drowned! Or gotten really sick—there’s all sorts of bacteria in lakes— or . . .”
“Or gotten pulled under by something I couldn’t see?” Miles offered quietly. “Yeah, that was the best part. He knew I was scared of the things in those lakes. Bastard.”
The smell of algae and pond scum.
“That was the day before my mom and I went to Germany,” he went on. “She realized that Cleveland had done something and came looking for me. We stayed in the car that night, and the next day she decided we were leaving. We only went back to the house for a minute, for our passports. Then straight to Meijer so she could grab stuff she thought we’d need, and finally to the airport.”
I hugged him, something I’d been doing a lot lately, sometimes because I could, most of the time because he seemed like he needed it.
So far, no one had tried to do anything to Miles. I’d hardly seen McCoy at all since the new semester started, and Celia didn’t seem to have it in her to hurt anyone. Whenever I caught her staring, I only had to look at her to get her to go away again. But she was always hovering, like a ghost waiting for someone to join her on the other side.
Miles had been taking fewer and fewer of his mafia hit man jobs, and it was clear that he didn’t have enough occupying his mind. He frequently paced the length of the gym, wrote so often in his notebook that he had to get a new one, and would occasionally start his sentences in the middle of a thought. His limp went away, but he wore his sleeves rolled down and came to school one day with a black eye. His mood infected the club like a disease; nothing ran smoothly anymore. And soon his gloom infested the whole school.