Made You Up (23 page)

Will he be okay?

Outlook not so good

Can I do something to make him okay?

Very doubtful

. . . can I do anything?

Don’t count on it

I
saw what Miles had meant when he’d said people would start paying him to do ridiculous things. In chemistry, someone gave him thirty dollars to call Ms. Dalton a Coke-sucking whore in German, which of course she didn’t understand. He got twenty dollars to put tape on the bridge of his glasses, wear too-short pants, and don argyle socks for three days. Cliff, the asshole, paid Miles fifty dollars to be able to deck him in the jaw, and one punch turned into several punches and a kick to the gut. The triplets speculated that Cliff had been aiming for the genitals, but Miles’s incessant stare had thrown him radically off target.

Every day he threw away another piece of his pride and dignity for a few dollars, but I couldn’t stop him.

I don’t think anyone could have.

“R
IDGEMONT.” Mr. Gunthrie slapped his newspaper down on his desk.

“Yessir?”

“I AM TIRED OF THAT DAMN LIGHT FLICKERING.”

The light over my desk flickered as he said it, mocking him.

“Do you want me to do something about it, sir?” I asked. I could hardly keep my eyes open. My dreams had been less than restful lately.

“I DAMN SURE DO. THE MAINTENANCE MEN HAVE REPLACED THE LIGHT THREE TIMES. GET UP THERE AND TELL ME WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.”

I wasn’t about to ask him why he didn’t just ask the
maintenance guys to check. While the rest of the class turned back to their work, I climbed onto my desk and lifted away the ceiling tile next to the light. Putting my hands on either side of the opening and standing on tiptoes, I looked up into the darkness.

“Something’s gnawed on the wiring.” I squinted into the dim space, trying to focus on the frayed wire. It hadn’t just been gnawed on—it had been completely ripped in two.

Something near my head hissed.

I turned and saw the python there, its tongue flicking out at me. I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have time for this. Damn delusions needed to leave me the hell alone.

I ducked my head back down but kept my hands up for balance. Something touched my arm, but I ignored it. “Hey, Miles, you wanna give me a boost? I think there are mice or something up here. I might be able to see it better.”

Miles turned, rose halfway out of his seat, and looked up at me.

The snake hissed again.

I looked at the snake. I looked at Miles.

The snake. Miles.

The snake.

Miles.

“Alex.” He held up a hand. “Don’t. Move.”

Several kids screamed; desks shifted and scraped against
the floor as they jumped up and ran from the room. Mr. Gunthrie shot out of his seat, cursing loudly and yelling about snakes and Vietnam.

The python coiled down my arm, passed behind my head, and wrapped over my left shoulder and across my chest. It looped itself once around my waist, then down my left leg. Its body spilled out of the ceiling like scaly water, lighter than it looked.

“Holy shit.” Miles stood fully now. “Holy shit, Alex, it’s the snake.”

“You can see it?” I hissed the words out through my teeth.

“Yeah, I can see it.”

“What do I do?”

“Uh—let me think—” He pressed his palms to his forehead and spoke rapidly. “They can live over twenty years—feed on large rodents or other mammals—average about twelve feet but can reach nineteen—” He groaned loudly and spoke even faster. “Trinomial name is
python molorus bivittatus
, can be domesticated, nonvenomous, can kill a child when they’re young and crush a full-grown man when they’re older—”

“Miles! Shut up!” My voice rose an octave, my heart pounding against my ribs. The snake shifted against me. I fought the urge to scream.

“Someone call Animal Control!” Theo cried.

“No, that’ll take too long!” Tucker was suddenly beside me. “It’s hungry. C’mon, Alex, you have to get down from there.”

“How do you know it won’t”—I shivered as the snake’s waving head brushed my calf—“kill me?”

“It’s hungry,” Tucker insisted, avoiding the question. “I can help get him off; you have to come down here.”

“Him?” I squeaked.

“Please, please get down! It’s going to be okay.”

“God, Beaumont! What the hell is wrong with you?” Miles shoved Tucker out of the way and held out a hand. I slowly lowered my left hand from the ceiling to reach out and take his.

“No more facts,” I whispered.

“No more facts,” Miles agreed. “Go slow—step down.”

I moved slowly.

The snake hissed.

“Tucker!” I waved my other hand, the one attached to the arm that had the snake’s tail wrapped around it. Tucker looked surprised, but took my hand. “Where are we going?”

“The janitors’ closet,” he said.

“Lead, lead.”

We headed toward the door, passing stunned classmates and a freaked-out Mr. Gunthrie.

I crushed their hands. We shambled out into the hallway and toward the stairs.

“I think you’re breaking my fingers,” said Miles.

“Shut up.”

As we painstakingly descended the stairs, they kept up a steady stream of small talk. We stopped at the bottom and took our time turning, then set off for Tucker’s Cult in a Closet. The snake weighed on me like the heaviest piece of clothing I would ever wear.

“So, um, Miles.” I squeezed his hand harder. “Have I said how much I really don’t want to be stuck in Crimson Falls? But I’m pretty sure my mom is going to put me there anyway, and this situation made me realize the direness of that whole thing. . . .”

“Crimson Falls,” Miles repeated. “What’s Crimson Falls?”

God, we were not about to play this game. “The psychiatric hospital. Where your mom is.”

“Alex, the hospital is called Woodlands. Where’d you get Crimson Falls?”

I sucked in a breath under the snake’s weight, trying to keep calm. “That’s what the sign out front said. It said Crimson Falls.”

“The sign in front says Woodlands.”

Panic gripped me. Made Miles panic.

“Hey,” he continued quickly, “what’d you do with my Christmas present?”

“What present?” I breathed out. “The cupcake? I ate it.”

“No, not the cupcake—oh dammit, I forgot to explain.” He flexed his hand in mine. “I left it on your desk before we got out for Christmas break.”

“The rock? The one that’s been sitting in my locker all semester?”

“Yeah.”

“That was you?”

“It’s a piece of the Berlin Wall. I thought you’d like it.”

I looked over at him, felt the snake constrict again, and could only say, “Shut up.”

“God, Alex, I am so sorry,” Tucker breathed. “I never thought this would happen—I thought it would die soon. . . .”

“Do you even have a club in that closet, Beaumont?” Miles growled.

“No! Of course not! You seriously think I have friends?” Tucker shot him a glare over my head. “You have a club. I have a python. You can stop rubbing it in my face now, all right?”

“Both of you! Shut. Up.”

Somehow we made it to the janitors’ closet. Tucker
hurried to the back of the small room and pulled open a freezer. The snake swung its head up, tasting the air. Tucker pulled a whole frozen raccoon from the freezer. He dangled it near the snake, and then tossed it on the floor.

The snake slithered off me.

I stumbled back and fell on my butt in the middle of the hallway.

Miles backed out of the room and turned to me.

“You gave me a piece of the Berlin Wall,” I whispered.

“What?”

“You gave me a piece of the
Berlin Wall
.”

“Yeah, Opa gave it to me. I’ve had it for a really long time, and I thought you’d like—”

“MILES.” I grabbed the front of his shirt and hoisted myself up to his level. “YOU GAVE ME A PIECE OF THE SYMBOL OF THE DOWNFALL OF COMMUNISM IN EUROPE.”

“I—well, yeah—”

“Crimson Falls isn’t Crimson Falls.”

“No, it’s—”

“I almost got killed by a fucking snake.”

“Yeah—”

“I think I’m going to faint.”

My hands fell away from his shirt, blood rushed to my head, and the world went black.

I
spent the rest of first period and all of second in the nurse’s office, watching Animal Control pass through the hallway. I had to answer a lot of questions, then talk to my dad on the phone. (Apparently my mother thought I’d hallucinated the snake, but then she found out half my English class was now paranoid as hell, and the other half was so excited they couldn’t stay in their seats.) Miles helped Tucker get rid of the snake food fridge, but they refused to tell me exactly how they snuck it out past the teachers and Animal Control. Miles looked grim. Tucker was sweating.

“What’d you have to do, kill someone?” I asked. “Did you have to hide a body, too?”

They glanced at each other. Tucker pulled on his collar. “Not exactly.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Miles said at the same time.

I decided to leave that one alone.

I went back to class during third period and was bombarded with requests to retell the story. It was so bad that the teacher decided we weren’t learning anything and we got a free study period instead.

The problem with retelling the story was that it made me relive it, and I didn’t want to remember the feeling of coming close to having my ribs crushed. I didn’t want to remember how that python had gone from fake to real in five seconds. Looking back on an event and realizing how easily you could have died—without even comprehending the deadliness of the thing that killed you—was a little like getting a bucket of ice water thrown in your face. Mostly harmless, but no less shocking.

I spent my lunch period combing my food for poison and thinking about how I could have been gone forever.

Poof. Kaput.

Forget college—bye-bye, all the other years of my life.

I would have died in this lobster tank.

I
was working at Finnegan’s on Friday when a swarm of East Shoalers stormed the place. Everyone from the club to Cliff and Ria showed up, cramming every corner of the restaurant.

Finnegan himself always stopped by on Friday nights, and this royally screwed me over because I couldn’t take pictures or do my perimeter checks or my food inspections. He sat in his office and made sure we were doing what we were supposed to. He was an average-looking guy—average height, average build, average black-brown hair and gray- blue eyes. He reminded me of a vulture, his neck too long and bent at odd angles.

Miles wandered in and took a seat with the rest of the club. Gus slid his burger and fries through the kitchen
window before I could ask for it.

“Thanks,” Miles said when I set the food in front of him. Art and Jetta sat across from him, the triplets at the next table over.

“Sorry I can’t stay and talk,” I said. “Finnegan’s here. He’ll crucify me if it looks like I’m not working.” I tugged on Miles’s white shirtsleeve with two fingers as I said it. A sorry replacement for a kiss, but the best I could do under Finnegan’s watch.

“Pretend like we’re ordering something else,” Theo said. “And answer this question: You’re going to prom, right?”

Miles rolled a french fry between his thumb and index finger.

“I—no, I can’t.” I pulled out my notepad and pretended to write something down. “I have to work that night.”

“Oh, but Jetta could make the perfect dress for you,” whined Theo. “Please? Please go. Ask off work. I did, and I never ask off.”

“I really can’t, Theo; I’m sorry.” I didn’t have the money for it, and neither did Miles.

“Don’t look now,” Art whispered. “Cliff’s giving you the evil eye.”

In my peripheral, I noticed Cliff and Ria staring at me from a few tables over.

“They can do what they want,” I said. “They probably
just want to make some more jokes about me being a snake charmer.”

I didn’t expect anything else from them at this point. After the snake incident, I saw them in the cafeteria, reenacting what had happened for their friends. According to them, I’d fainted straightaway, and Miles had tried to beat the snake to death while it was still wrapped around me. A-plus performances, really, but if they were going to make fun of my near-death experience, they could have at least gotten the details right.

I ignored them and returned to the counter, pretending to look for another notepad but actually searching for the Magic 8 Ball. Was that snake real every time I saw it, or only sometimes? Were there other things I had thought were hallucinations, but were actually real? Even if the answer to that one was
yes,
it wasn’t like the 8 Ball could tell me exactly what they were. . . .

The 8 Ball’s usual spot beside the register was empty. I grabbed Tucker. “Hey. Where’s the 8 Ball?”

“What?”

“The 8 Ball. Finnegan’s Magic 8 Ball. I can’t find it.”

Tucker gave me a weird look, said, “Finnegan doesn’t have a Magic 8 Ball,” and hurried off.

I stared at the countertop and let that sink in. I’d used that 8 Ball so many times I couldn’t remember all the
questions I’d asked it. And I’d never once suspected it of being a hallucination. It didn’t even seem like a hallucination. There was nothing strange about it. The blue water wasn’t purple or orange or green. It never said strange things. It was just an old Magic 8 Ball, red scuff mark and all. It was just there.

I looked up. The restaurant was a living, breathing creature, ready to eat me alive. I braced my hands against the edge of the counter and took a few deep breaths.

“Alexandra!” Now Finnegan was leaning forward in his computer chair, craning his vulture neck around the office door to see me. “Get back to work!”

I scrambled for my water pitcher. Tucker was already going around with the Coke and tea. I nodded as I passed him, refilling drinks on the way. When I stopped at Cliff and Ria’s table, everyone there was strangely cordial to me. I liked it that way. It was like they didn’t really notice me. I ignored them and they ignored me. Good.

Until I turned to move on to the next table. My foot caught on something. I stumbled. The water pitcher, after sloshing its contents across my front, caught me in the jaw. Pain throbbed through my lip, and coppery blood spread across my tongue.

I cursed and pushed myself up. Laughter arced over my head. Cliff pulled his foot back under the table.

Then Miles rose from his seat and dragged Cliff out of his, slamming him back against the table. Ria and the others cried out as their glasses rattled.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Miles growled. Every muscle in his hands and arms stood out, strained, his jaw tight. This was worse than yelling. This was even worse than in English class. His glasses had slipped down his nose, and he nailed Cliff to the table with an unrelenting stare. “When are you going to stop? What did she do to you?”

“Chill out, Richter—”

“YOU FUCKING CHILL OUT, CLIFFORD.” Miles slammed him against the table again. “If you’ve got a problem with anyone, it’s me. So deal with me.”

I stood, grabbing my water pitcher. “Miles, stop. He’s not worth it. It’s not a big deal.”

Miles’s eyes flickered over to me. “He hurt you.”

I touched the spot on my lip where I’d bitten myself. My fingers came away bloody. “I’ll be fine. I bit my lip. It was an accident.”

Miles looked less than thrilled, but he released Cliff.

“Damn, Richter. You know your girlfriend is screwy in the head, right?” Cliff tugged on his collar. “But I guess you’re used to that, huh? I figure you like her because she reminds you of your dear old
Mutter
.” He paused and folded his arms, getting a serious, concentrated look on his
face. “It’s really kind of creepy, when you think about it, because that means that you want to fuck your mom.”

I felt the shock wave move through the room. It started with Miles, knocking him slightly backward, seeming to ripple through every last inch of him. It silenced the rest of the restaurant. I saw Tucker in the far corner, forgetting that he was refilling someone’s tea and letting the cup overflow.

In the world of high school insults, it was actually pretty tame, but Miles’s reaction made it terrible. Even Ria seemed scared. The muscles in Miles’s throat worked as though he was trying to speak or swallow, but his lips pressed together so tightly they turned white. He closed his eyes.

“Miles,” I said.

He exhaled sharply through his nose, opened his eyes, and reached out for me.

Cliff punched him in the ear.

Miles gasped and staggered to the side, clutching his head. I dropped the water pitcher and threw myself at Cliff before he could get another hit in. The next thing I knew, I had Ria grabbing at my hair and shirt, and Cliff trying to pry me off. Then Art was there, holding off two other football players from joining the fray, and Jetta and the triplets and Tucker jumped in around him, trying to help me, and the whole place went to hell.

Eventually, someone grabbed me underneath the arms
and lifted me right out of the fight. I was set on my feet behind the counter, and turned to see Gus—big, potbellied Gus, the cigarette still clamped between his lips. He nodded, looking worried.

Pitying.

I hated that look.

He trundled off to break up the fight, leaving a fuming Finnegan in his wake. Finnegan’s face went from red to purple to white. Plates shattered. Drinks flew across the room. Blood dripped from my lip.

Finnegan only got two words out before he apparently lost the ability to speak.

“You’re fired.”