Miles tapped me on the shoulder. Just the tip of his index finger, just a jolt; I jumped.
“Don’t keep them waiting,” he said, slipping past me.
At the scorer’s table stood five kids laughing together. One of them was a girl I recognized from English; she had a pair of pencils spiking out of her messy blond bun. The two boys standing next to her were so identical I couldn’t tell them apart. I’d never seen the other two, but every one of them stood at attention when Miles walked up. I hovered awkwardly behind him.
“This is Alex,” he said without any sort of greeting. “Alex, this is Theophilia.” He motioned to the girl from English class.
“Just Theo,” the girl replied, glaring at him.
“—and these are her brothers, Evan and Ian.” He motioned to the two identical boys, who grinned in unison.
“To reduce confusion, we’re triplets.” Theo thrust out a hand, very businesslike. “And please don’t call me Theophilia.”
“No worries,” I said, staring at her hand—guilt had made me shake Miles’s, but I had no good reason to go near hers. “My parents wanted two boys—they named me after Alexander the Great and my sister after Charlemagne.”
Theo put her hand down, apparently not at all offended by my refusal to shake it, and laughed. “Yeah, my parents wanted boys, too. Instead they got two idiots and a girl.”
“Hey!” Theo’s brothers cried in unison. She dropped the clipboard and faked a punch toward their crotches. Both boys recoiled. I knew how genetics worked—even normal identical twins didn’t look as identical as Theo’s brothers. My fingers tightened around my camera.
Miles rolled his eyes and went on. “And this is Jetta Lorenc and Art Babrow.”
Jetta shot Miles a dimpled smile, shoveling her mass of curly hair back over her shoulder. “Eet is nice to meet you,” she said, holding out a hand like she’d wait as long as it took for me to shake it.
I didn’t. “Are you French?” I asked instead.
“Oui!”
Foreign. Foreign spy. French Communist Party acted on Stalin’s instructions during part of World War II. French Communist spy.
Stop it stop it stop it
I turned to Art, a black kid who was a foot and a half taller than me and whose pecs were about to burst out of his shirt and eat someone. I gave him a two on the delusion detector. I didn’t trust those pecs.
“Hi,” he rumbled.
I waved weakly.
“This is the rest of the club,” Miles said, gesturing around to all of them. “Theo, concession stand. Evan and Ian, bleacher duty.”
“Aye aye, Boss!” The triplets saluted and left for their posts.
“Jetta, net and ball carts. Art, get the poles.”
The other two departed as well. I relaxed once they were all gone, even though I still had Miles to deal with. Miles, who turned to the scoreboard controls and forgot about me.
“So what do I do?” I asked.
He ignored me.
“MILES.”
He turned, sporting the Magnificent Quirked Eyebrow.
“What do I do?”
“You’re going to go up there”—he pointed at the empty bleachers—“and shut up.”
Was there some kind of law about drop-kicking assholes in the face? Probably. They always had laws against things that really needed to be done.
“No,” I replied. “I think I’ll go sit over there.” I pointed to a spot a few feet from where he had, then marched off to sit there. I crossed my arms and glared at him until he and his eyebrow looked away. Then I yanked all the ruined books out of my bag, piled them beside me, and started my homework.
When the volleyball team entered the gym, I paused homework to snap pictures: Jetta and Art setting up the volleyball net like pros; Theo manning the concession stand; Evan and Ian scouring the bleachers for trash; the volleyball team looking perky and athletic in their spandex.
The only thing missing was Miles. But he was probably circling somewhere, destroying villages and hoarding gold in his mountain lair.
I cracked my neck and returned to calculus. Homework was a bitch, especially since this year I’d be doing it in the free time I had between school, work, and community service. Not to mention I still had to look for scholarships and fill out college applications. And visit my damned therapist twice a week.
But I had to do it. Had to get it right this time. No screwups with my medicine, however much I hated the stuff. No distractions. I didn’t have time to worry about what other people thought of me, yet I had to—if I seemed too on edge, too paranoid, it wouldn’t matter what my grades were. If anyone decided I was crazy or dangerous, I could say good-bye to a future and hello to the Happy House.
Miles walked back into the gym and settled himself at the scorer’s table. For half a second he turned, stared up at me, and quirked that eyebrow, before facing the Spandex Squad again. The base of my skull tingled. I hadn’t thought about it before—why hadn’t I thought about it before? Miles. Miles was a genius. Miles liked to screw with people.
Miles didn’t seem to particularly like me, and I’d been antagonizing him all day. It would be easy for him to figure me out. Especially if I kept staring at him like I had in chemistry. Maybe I could head him off. Tell him about it before he found out, then beg for his silence or something.
Or you could grow some balls, said the little voice. That was probably the best option.
I turned my attention to the scoreboard. McCoy had made at least five different announcements about it today, and during each one somebody would mimic him and everyone would laugh.
“There’s an urban legend about that scoreboard, you know.” Tucker appeared next to me, holding a Coke. I looked around. The bleachers were already full. How did that happen? I glanced over my shoulder, expecting someone to be standing there with a knife.
“Really?” I asked absentmindedly, doing a belated perimeter check. “Somehow I don’t find that surprising.”
Cliff Ackerley and a few other football player types stood at the foot of the bleachers, holding up signs for Ria Wolf, who I gathered was the starting setter. I spotted Celia Hendricks on the edge of a bigger group of students who didn’t look like they were putting any effort toward actually watching the game. Parents filed into the gym from the rotunda, holding popcorn and hot dogs and wearing shirts that read “Go Sabres!”
“What a ridiculous sport,” said a woman near me, her voice laced with acid. “Volleyball. They should call it ‘sluts in spandex.’”