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I didn’t bother to tell them I don’t believe in urban legends.”
“Maybe they figured if the legend was true, the witch would get you out of their way.”
“Richter! Find anything?” I recognized Cliff’s voice.
Miles looked back and sighed.
“Want to mess with them?” I asked.
I pulled him down the hill with me and we stood at the other end of the bridge, in the darkness of the trees where the others couldn’t see us. “Okay, all you have to do is yell at the top of your lungs.”
“Right now?”
“Right now. Like you’re being attacked.”
Miles took a deep breath and yelled. Cliff and the others jumped, but didn’t move. Miles’s voice died out.
“Come on, Richter, we know you’re trying to—”
I screamed. A good ear-shattering, chainsaw-killer, bloody-murder scream. Cliff stumbled backward, fell over, and had to scramble to his feet again. Ria screeched. The other two fled to their car, followed by Cliff and Ria, and peeled away. Miles and I stood there for another few moments, silent and waiting. The cold bit at my cheeks.
“Do you do this all the time?” Miles asked finally.
“No. Just today.” I smiled.
He stared at me.
“What?” I said.
“Why are you here?”
“I told you—I’m the witch.”
“How are you the witch?”
I sighed and swung my arms back and forth, wondering if I should tell him. He had that look on his face again, like he understood what was going on in my head.
Around us, the wind rustling the trees sounded like thousands of voices.
“Psithurism,” Miles said, looking up at the forest around us.
“What?”
“Psithurism. It’s a low whispering sound, like wind in leaves.”
I sighed again. The wind blew his mint-soap-and-pastries scent toward me.
“I had a bad week a while back,” I said finally, “when I was at Hillpark. I snuck out of the house at night because, y’know, I thought that Communists were kidnapping me. Came down here screaming my head off. Apparently I scared some potheads. My parents found me sleeping under the bridge the next morning. They were mortified.”
“Because you slept under a bridge? ‘Mortified’ isn’t the word I’d use.”
“I was naked.”
“Oh.”
“They were angry, too. At least, my mother was. Dad was worried.”
“Were you okay? The potheads didn’t do anything to you?”
“No, I scared the crap out of those guys.”
“That wasn’t that long ago, then. How’d the story get around so fast?”
I shrugged. “Beats me. People communicate surprisingly well when they’re scared—they just don’t communicate the right things.”
The breeze ruffled the leaves over our heads. Psithurism. I’d have to remember that. I desperately wanted to ask Miles about his mom, but I knew this wasn’t the time. I sat down in the middle of the gravel road and patted a spot next to me.
“Cars rarely come down this way,” I said.
Miles sat down. He folded his long legs and balanced his arms on his knees, bunching his bomber jacket up around his ears. The breeze had mussed his hair; I balled my hands in my lap to keep from reaching over and putting it back in place.
“I didn’t see you at Finnegan’s tonight,” I said.
“I didn’t get a shift at the store today. Went home after school.”
Didn’t get a shift. Like he wanted one.
“I don’t understand you,” I said, the realization hitting me at the same time I said it.
Miles leaned back on his hands. “Okay.”
“‘Okay’?”
He shrugged. “I don’t understand you, either, so I guess we’re even. But I don’t understand most people.”
“That’s weird.”
“How so?”
“People aren’t hard to understand, except you. And you’re so smart, I figured you had everyone on your puppet strings.”
He snorted. “Puppet strings. Never heard it described like that before.”
“I want to know what you do when you’re not at school or work or running jobs. Where do you even live?”
“Why does it matter?”
I sighed again. He made me sigh a lot. “You’re an enigma. You walk around doing stuff to people for money, and everyone’s afraid to look you in the eye, and I’m pretty sure you’re part of a mafia. You don’t strike me as the kind of person who has a place to live. You’re just there. You exist. You are where you are and you have no home.”
The moonlight reflected off his glasses and lit up his eyes.
“I live a couple streets away from here,” he said. “The Lakeview Trail subdivision.”
Lakeview Trail was one of those half-and-half subdivisions— half pretty new houses like Downing Heights, half run-down hovels with crumbling sidewalks, like mine. I had a good feeling which side of the subdivision Miles belonged to.
“I’m not home most of the time. When I am, I try to sleep.”
“But you don’t.” He was always tired. Always sleeping through first period. Always falling asleep over his meal at Finnegan’s.
He nodded. “Most of the time I think about things. Write stuff down. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“I guess.” I became aware that we were staring at each other. And had been for a while. I noticed and looked away, but Miles didn’t. “It’s rude to stare at people.”
“Is it?” He sounded serious. “Tell me if I’m doing something weird. Sometimes I can’t tell.”
“What is up with you lately? Why are you being so nice?”
“I didn’t realize I was.” His face remained completely neutral. Except for that infuriating eyebrow.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to ask. “So you don’t think it’s creepy? My schizophrenia?”
“That would be stupid.”
I laughed. I fell back into the gravel and laughed, my voice carrying up through the trees and into the sky. His response made me feel free. That was what I came down to Red Witch Bridge to feel anyway, but I’d never expected any help from Miles.
In a weird way, it felt like he belonged here. He belonged in the land of phoenixes and witches, the place where things were too fantastic to be real.
He leaned over and looked down at me. He seemed more confused than anything.
