I picked up the first pair of underwear and uncapped the IcyHot. As I worked, I watched Miles out of the corner of my eye as he yanked the bedcovers back and harnessed the sleeper to the bed with the bungee cords, from his shoulders to his ankles. Then Miles upended the bag of black specks— fleas?—over the sleeper’s head.
“Okay, I’m done,” I whispered. I slid the drawer shut again.
“Now pick up every pair of underwear you can find on the floor and shove them under the dresser.” Miles began setting the alarm clock on the bedside table.
With my index finger and thumb, I played a sort of crane game and picked up pairs of underwear, touching them as little as possible. I made a pile next to the dresser and shoved it under with my foot.
“The sleeping pills should wear off before the alarm goes,” said Miles. I handed him back the IcyHot. “All we have to do is get out of here.”
I crept over to the bed to get a better look at our poor, unsuspecting victim.
I froze.
“Oh my God, Miles.”
“What?”
“It’s Tucker!”
He looked so innocent in his Einstein T-shirt and pajama pants covered in atoms—and I’d put IcyHot in his underwear—
“Calm down!” Miles grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the room. We hurried down the stairs and back into the foyer, where Angela waved to us from the living room. Then we were out on the porch. Miles locked the door and reset the security system, and we ran to the van. Art waited in the front.
“You dick!” I said once the doors were closed and Art stepped on the gas. I punched Miles’s arm with all the anger welling up in me. “You didn’t tell me it was Tucker!”
“Would you have done it if I had?” Miles asked.
“Of course not!”
“Yeah, but you’re fine doing it if it’s anyone else.” Miles shoved his glasses up to rub his eyes. “Bit hypocritical, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you.” I crossed my arms and glared out the window. Awful guilt roiled in my stomach. “You should have told me.”
“Why? Because you feel bad for him? Because he follows you around like a dog? He’s never going to know you helped. He’s going to be flustered and uncomfortable, and you’ll be fifty dollars richer.”
Another flood of anger shot through my limbs. “It doesn’t matter—it’s the principle of the thing!”
“No it’s not, not when you suddenly decide it’s bad because it’s Beaumont!”
We glared at each other for a minute, until Art coughed. My arms tightened.
“You’re an asshole,” I said, looking away.
“Takes one to know one,” Miles muttered back.
Chapter Twenty-six
The next morning, Miles actually showed up at my house. But I let seven o’clock come and go and asked Dad to drive me to school. He’d noticed something was wrong when I’d done a nosedive into my cereal without even checking it for trackers first. When he asked, I said that I hadn’t been able to sleep.
Still, as soon as we hit the school parking lot, I was wide awake.
He dropped me off at the main entrance. I did a perimeter check, took note of the men—real or not real?— standing on the roof, and shouldered my backpack. I got the overwhelming feeling that people were staring at my hair. When I looked around, no one was even paying attention to me.
Miles was at the lockers, standing in front of his open door, stuffing books in. When I opened my locker, a crisp fifty-dollar bill fluttered to my feet. I scooped it up and shoved it at Miles.
“I don’t want it.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Well, that’s too bad, because it’s yours.”
“I’m not taking it.” I threw the bill on top of his books.
“It’s fifty dollars. Surely you could use that for something.”
“Oh, I bet I could. Thing is, I won’t.”
“Why, because of a misplaced sense of morality?” Miles spat. “Trust me, Beaumont doesn’t deserve your guilt.”
“Who are you to decide that?” I tried very hard not to punch him in the face or kick him in the crotch. “You don’t like him because he’s a better person than you are. He doesn’t resort to stealing and sabotage just to get other people to listen to him.”
Miles looked like he was keeping himself from saying something nasty, but he shook his head and tucked the fifty into his back pocket.
As I walked to class, all I could think about was why I had ever wanted to kiss him. But then I heard the unearthly shrieks coming from Mr. Gunthrie’s room. A large group of students had formed outside the door. I shoved my way through and jumped to the side in case of projectiles.
Celia was back, her fingers tangled in Stacey Burns’s ponytail, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her hair, once blond, was now grass green. Britney Carver stood on Stacey’s other side, trying to pry Celia’s fingers away. Celia swung forward and planted her fist in Stacey’s face with a crunch.
Claude Gunthrie tossed a few freshmen out of the doorway and sprinted into the room, grabbing Celia around the waist and lifting her off her feet.
“GET OFF ME! YOU FUCKERS DID THIS! I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!”
“We didn’t do it!” Stacey yelled back, blood dripping from her lip. “Let me go!”
“Someone grab her arms!” Claude grunted under Celia’s weight. “She’s gonna—AUGH—”
Celia elbowed him in the face.