“I might be the only one who thinks something bad is going on,” I said.
“Maybe you should talk to her,” June said. “She might not think she can ask for help. Or she may not know how.”
Wonderful—talking to Celia, one of my favorite things. Even if I wanted to, how could I get near her? Talking to anyone just seemed to make her angry, and we weren’t exactly best friends.
“Keep her away from me, while you’re at it,” Miles said.
June laughed. “Oh dear, you’ve always had trouble talking to girls.”
Miles turned red.
June looked at me. “When we were living in Germany, there was a nice girl who would ride down to the farm and talk to him. She brought him cake for his birthday. He never spoke more than three syllables to her, and he never accepted the cake.”
“She knew I didn’t like chocolate,” Miles mumbled, turning a deeper shade of red and sinking into his chair.
That was a lie. He’d eaten the Black Forest cake I’d brought him.
“You lived in Germany?” I said, looking between the two of them. “On a farm?”
June’s eyebrows shot up and she looked at Miles. “You haven’t told her?”
“No, he hasn’t told me.”
June frowned at Miles, who shrugged.
“Well, we moved there when Miles was seven. And we came back a few months after his thirteenth birthday.” June turned back to me. “He was so upset, but after my father died we couldn’t stay anymore.”
The airy way she said it made me think there was more to it than that, that she was skirting something important, but she didn’t continue. Miles glared at the wall with his arms crossed.
“You seemed to make friends okay,” June said.
“Right, Tucker Beaumont, the one kid in middle school who didn’t make fun of my accent,” Miles spat. “Great friend.”
“I like accents,” I said quietly.
“So do most other people, when they’re coming from hot chicks and tan guys with muscles and nice smiles. Not when they’re coming from a scrawny know-it-all with clothes that don’t fit and no possible way to relate to other kids his age.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Neither could June, apparently. She put a hand up to her mouth and looked around as if she was searching for a misplaced book.
“I’m going to the restroom,” said Miles suddenly, pushing himself out of his chair. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
When the double doors swung closed behind him, June lowered her hand.
“Did he tell you why I’m here?” she asked.
I nodded.
“He said it was because of his father, didn’t he?”
Nodded again.
“It was. At first. I didn’t want to leave Miles with him, and I fought to get out of here. It would have been better for Miles if I had been there, but I can’t deny that this has helped me. I feel . . . more stable now. Still angry, but stable. And when I do leave, I’ll be able to do what I couldn’t before.”
She paused and glanced at the door again.
“Alex, if I ask you a few questions, will you do your best to answer them honestly?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Does he have any friends? I know he’s not the easiest to like, and I know he thinks people are . . . well, cumbersome to deal with, but there’s someone for everyone, and I didn’t know if. . . .” She paused and looked at me hopefully.
“I think he has friends,” I said. “Everyone in the club is his friend. But I don’t think he knows it.”
June nodded. “Second question. Do people think he’s . . . unpleasant?”
I would have laughed if June hadn’t been so serious. “Most people do. But that’s only because they never get to know him, and he never lets them. I think he likes it better that way.”
June nodded again. “I don’t know if you can answer this last one, but . . . .” She took a deep breath, much the same way Miles had before asking me if I wanted to come here. “Is he happy?”
That one caught me. Was he happy? Was I qualified to answer that? It seemed that the only person who knew if Miles was happy was Miles.
“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “Being here today— this is the happiest he’s seemed in a while. But back home, at school . . . I’d say his happiness is probably on the low side.”
June’s face fell. “The only reason I ask is because he tries so hard. When he’s not at school, he’s working, and all he ever does is save money. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him spend a dime on anything he didn’t absolutely need. Even when he was little, he wouldn’t accept things that people tried to buy him.”
June sighed and relaxed back into the couch. “All he ever seemed to want was knowledge—numbers to crunch, history to learn, information to file away and use later . . .”
“He always carries around a black notebook with him, and he’s writing in it all the time.”
June smiled. “Ah, the notebooks. I got him started on those. Cleveland, his father, never liked the idea that his son was smarter than he was. He would get angry when Miles would correct him. I’ve always been afraid that Cleveland might have beaten that out of him, his love of teaching people. I told him to write what he knew in the notebooks instead of saying it out loud, and if he’s still doing that, then his father hasn’t changed him much at all.”
I wanted to ask more, but I didn’t want to give away the fact that I’d actually read the notebook. A different route, then.
“So what’s he been saying about me?”
June laughed. “All good things. He’s been very worried that you don’t like him.”
“He’s been worried I don’t like him?” I couldn’t imagine Miles caring what anyone thought of him, least of all me. We’d been breaking into arguments all year, teetering on a seesaw of perpetual imbalance, because he was always either one way or the other. Miles the Jerk or Miles the Seven-Year-Old.
Oh God, I thought. What if he told her about the kiss?
He must have.
What did she think?
What did he think?
Better not tell you now.
“He remembers you,” said June, and my stomach gave an odd stunted flop.
“Remembers me?”
“The girl who wanted to set the lobsters free. That was the day we left for Germany. I was shopping for a few last-minute things, and he wanted to talk to you. He liked your hair.”