I turned back. It was the first time he’d said my name. He held a hand out. “Well played,” he said.
Oh no. No, we were not doing this. I hadn’t spent ten minutes gluing his locker shut just to admit it to him. So I arched my own eyebrow and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The corners of his lips twisted up right before I walked away.
It can’t be him. It’s not him, is it?
Cannot predict now
I know I’ve asked you a dozen times already, but . . . just . . . yes or no?
Concentrate and ask again
You only have twice as many positive answers as negative and noncommittal—how does this keep happening? It’s not him, is it?
Better not tell you now
You said that one before. I’m going to ask one more time: He’s a jerk, so he can’t be Blue Eyes, right?
Reply hazy try again
Reply hazy my ass.
Chapter Twelve
The transition from Hillpark to East Shoal was significantly easier than I’d expected. It was the same basic high school garbage wrapped in a slightly different skin. The only difference was that everything at East Shoal was completely insane.
There were several things I learned that first month.
One: The scoreboard really was a school legend, and Mr. McCoy really was dearly, dearly in love with it. McCoy had his own brand of crazy: he continually reminded everyone of “Scoreboard Day,” when we were all supposed to bring in an offering of flowers or lightbulbs for the scoreboard, as if it was a wrathful Mayan deity that would kill us if we disobeyed. Somehow, he managed to cover this insanity with a mask of good test scores and even better student conduct. It seemed like, as far as the parents and teachers were concerned, he was a perfect principal.
Two: There was a cult entirely dedicated to discussing preexisting conspiracy theories and determining if they were true. They met in a janitors’ closet.
Three: The cult was run by Tucker Beaumont.
Four: Mr. Gunthrie, the most in-your-face teacher in the school (because of the yelling, see), was nicknamed “The General” because of his penchant for going on war-related rants and wielding his treasured golden fountain pen as a weapon. He’d done two tours in Vietnam, and he had a long family history of war-related deaths, which rendered me almost incapable of not calling him Lieutenant Dan.
Five: Twenty years ago, as the senior prank, someone had let the biology teacher’s pet python loose. It had escaped behind the ceiling tiles, never to be seen again.
Six: Everyone—and when I say everyone, I mean absolutely, positively everyone, from the librarians to the students to the staff to the oldest, crustiest janitor—was piss-down-their-legs scared of Miles Richter.
Of all the crazy things I heard about East Shoal, that was the only thing I couldn’t believe.
Chapter Thirteen
I must have set a record. With the backpack-pushing and the assignment-ripping and all the general childishness that occurred between me and Miles, it only took him a month to banish me to work in the concession stand with Theo.
I was fine with this because a) I liked Theo better than him, b) I was less paranoid when he wasn’t around, and c) I didn’t have to sit in a gym full of people I didn’t know. It didn’t take me long to get used to Theo—she was so good at getting things done that I figured if she wanted to hurt me, she would’ve done it by now.
I thought I had a lot of homework, but Theo’s back should’ve broken from the size of her bag.
“Seven AP classes, plus I’m retaking the SATs and ACTs because I know I got cheated last time,” she said. “I keep all the other stuff I need over here in this pocket, and then my first-aid kit is in this pocket. . . .”
“Why do you have a first-aid kit?” I asked.
“When you have two brothers like mine, someone’s always getting hurt.” She shoved her physics book onto the counter and opened it up.
“I don’t know how you do that,” I said. “Do you go home after club and do homework all night?”
She shrugged. “Not most of the time. I work graveyard shifts at the Showtime. You wouldn’t believe how late people come in to watch movies.” She paused, then said with a sigh, “My parents make me.”
“Why?”
She shrugged again. “That’s just the way it is. They’ve always been like that. They wanted me to take all these AP classes, too.”
“They made you join the club, too?”
Theo grinned. “No. None of us voluntarily joined the club. Except Jetta. Evan and Ian and I got put here when we snuck laxatives into the chili at lunch two years ago.” She laughed. “So worth it.”
I snorted. Theo was okay. “How’d everyone else get here?”
“They found Art with some weed in the bathroom, but he’s the best wrestler we’ve got, so instead of suspending him from the team, they sent him here.”
“I didn’t peg Art as a pot smoker.”