I turned and walked away.
I wanted to shoot Miles in the kneecaps more than ever. Accusations about my mental state were the cherry on top of the I-framed-you-for-setting-someone-on-fire sundae. The dickiest of dickery. I could go to jail for the fire thing— not only was Celia’s dad a lawyer, but her family was loaded. We were so poor my mother took three quarters of my paycheck every week to supplement the family income.
Theo assured me that, if Miles really was the one running the job to set Celia’s hair on fire, he wouldn’t have let me take the fall for it. Not something that serious.
I didn’t know if I believed her. Some of the things Miles did for money were pretty out there. He’d actually abducted someone’s ex-boyfriend’s beloved golden retriever.
After that I avoided him. I tried to avoid Celia, too. She walked around the school complaining about “attempts on her life.” She glared at me constantly and flipped her hair whenever I was near, highlighting how short she’d been forced to cut it. Even Stacey and Britney seemed a little wary of Celia now, as if she’d set the fire herself.
I didn’t talk to Miles for most of the week. Not even in our lab on Wednesday, when I broke our watch glass, spilling chemicals all over the table. Miles bent down to pick up the pieces. Then, since our lab was ruined, he fabricated data that ended up being more accurate than anyone else’s.
When I walked into the gym at the end of the day on Thursday, Art and Jetta sat playing cards on one end of the bleachers. Miles was stretched out on the row above them, his battered notebook open over his face. The cheerleading squad practiced on the other side of the gym, their voices echoing off the walls.
As I approached the club, Art leaned back and nudged Miles in the ribs.
“Hey.” I sat down beside Jetta. A solid two feet separated us, but it still counted.
“What’s up?” said Art. “Did anyone say anything to you about the fire?”
Miles lifted the edge of his notebook and peeked out. When our eyes met, he groaned.
“Not really. Weird looks, but not much else. I didn’t do it.”
“We know. Celia did,” said Art.
I stared at him. “What?”
“Celia did it to herself. We went back and interrogated her.”
“You . . . you interrogated her? What’d you do, threaten to take her makeup off and reveal her secret identity?”
“Mein Chef said ’ee would shave ’er eyebrows off.” Jetta smiled brightly. “Among uzzer zings. She told us everyzing—she set ze fire ’erself, Stacey and Britney had ze water, and she blamed eet on you.”
Mein Chef? Was—was she talking about Miles? I looked up at him, but he only grunted.
“It’s a good thing Stacey and Britney put her out when they did,” said Art. “If they’d let her burn, you’d’ve been in deep shit.”
“Oui,” said Jetta. “Deep sheet.”
Miles groaned again. I whipped around. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Maybe I don’t want to tell you,” he snapped. He sat up long enough to procure a pen from thin air and jot something down in his notebook. The side of his left hand was smeared with black ink from his pinkie to his wrist. Maybe his notebook contained a list of his mafia jobs. Or all the people who owed him money. Maybe—ooh, maybe it was a hit list.
Bet I was on there a couple hundred times.
Calculus homework by itself was a bitch, but when you added the screams and giggles of the East Shoal cheerleading squad, it became unbearable. I plowed my way through a half hour of derivatives before the cheerleaders quieted and the coach addressed them.
“So, ladies,” said Coach Privett, a forty-something squat gym teacher with scraggly dark hair. “Basketball season is here, and it’s time to pick another cheer captain. Hannah put in her two cents, and I agree with her.”
“Who is it?” someone called. The whole group giggled.
Coach Privett said, “Drumroll, please,” and the girls pounded their feet on the floor.
Art and Jetta stopped their card game long enough to shoot the cheerleaders dirty looks. Miles flopped onto his side in annoyance.
Celia sat among the cheerleaders, like a hyena in front of a bloody haunch of meat. She had that deadly obsessive look in her eyes that girls got when they knew what they wanted and were going to do anything to get it.
The same look she had whenever she laid eyes on Miles. Which made no sense to me. What girl in her right mind would be obsessed with Miles? I wasn’t even obsessed with him. Me, who thought he might be Blue Eyes, and who had come to the unfortunate conclusion that even if he wasn’t Blue Eyes, I still didn’t mind noting the way he raked his hair to the side when it fell over his forehead, or how he stretched his legs out exactly twenty minutes into each class.
At least my attention to him was because I couldn’t get away from him. Celia had to have a different reason.
Coach Privett clapped her hands together. “Aaaand . . . the new cheer captain is . . .”
They sucked in a collective breath.