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“You named your bike Erwin?”
“Sure, why not?”
“After Erwin Rommel? You named your bike after a Nazi?” Miles narrowed his eyes at me. Erwin’s back half swung at his side.
“My dad got him from the African desert. Plus, Rommel was humane. He got an order straight from Hitler to execute Jews, and he tore it up. And then he traded his family’s protection for his own suicide.”
“Yeah, but he still knew what he was doing and who he was fighting for,” said Miles, but without conviction. “I thought you were scared of Nazis?”
My step faltered. “How did you know that?”
“You’re a history buff; I assumed that whatever you were scared of would come from history, and Nazis were pretty scary.” The corner of his lips twisted up. “There’s that, and whenever someone calls me a Nazi, you get this look on your face like I tried to kill you.”
“Oh. Good guess.” I gripped Erwin’s handlebars tighter. We rounded the back of the school and headed for the Dumpster behind the kitchen doors. I could smell tobacco and wood shavings and suspected Miles’s jacket. He wore it every day now. He pushed the top off the Dumpster and we tossed Erwin’s halves inside, closing the lid on my poor bike forever.
“Why does being called a Nazi make you so mad?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t know why anyone would be happy about it, but I thought you were going to rip Cliff’s teeth out the other day.”
He shrugged. “People are ignorant. I don’t know.”
He knew. Miles always knew.
As we turned back toward the gym, he said, “Heard you’ve been on some sort of scavenger hunt with Beaumont.”
“Yep. Jealous?”
It sort of slipped out. I was too paralyzed to say anything else. He didn’t know about the library, did he? He couldn’t know that I’d found out about his mom.
But then he snorted loudly and said, “Hardly.”
I relaxed. “What is everyone’s problem with him? I don’t think he’s that bad, honestly. Yeah, he’s got a Cult in a Closet, but he’s really nice. He hates you, but doesn’t everyone?”
“He actually has a reason to hate me, though. Everyone else does it because it’s expected.”
“What reason?”
Miles paused. “We were friends in middle school,” he said. “I thought he was a decent guy because we were both smart, we got along well, and I was new and he didn’t make fun of my accent. But when we got here, I realized—he lets other people walk all over him. He’s got no ambition. No drive, no end goal.”
And what kind of ambition do you have? I thought. The kind where you see how effectively you can kill someone’s puppy?
“He’s smart,” Miles continued, “he’s really smart. But he doesn’t put it to use. He could have as much leverage as I do, but he sits around with his stupid conspiracies and does his little chemistry equations and obsesses over girls who won’t look twice at him.”
“Like who?”
“Like Ria.”
“Tucker likes Ria?” How did I not know that?
“Since I’ve known him. If he had any sense, he would’ve tossed out that romanticized idea of her he’s had for so long and gotten to work doing something useful.”
“So you ditched him,” I said.
“Well . . . yeah.”
“You ditched your friend—your only friend—because he didn’t want to help you control the school.”
Miles’s lips tightened into a thin line. “No, not that . . .”
“Because he’s got no ambition? No ‘end goal’?”
“Yeah.”
I scoffed at him. He looked over at me with the Magnificently Quirked Eyebrow, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.
“You’re a jerk,” I said, walking off.
Miles went ahead to the pool while I searched the storage rooms behind the gym for extra towels for the swimmers. I had to walk past the gym doors to get there, and I stopped when I heard voices inside.
“You’re not giving her the support she needs,” said a sickly-sweet voice.
“I’m trying. I swear, I’m trying.”
McCoy. Talking to Celia’s mother.
So there was a connection between them. I couldn’t let this pass me by. I ducked into the gym and under the bleachers, checking the scaffolding for microphones as I climbed through to the other side. McCoy stood before the scoreboard, his gray hair disheveled, his suit wrinkled. I crouched down as far as I could and turned my camera on, pointing it toward McCoy and the woman who stood with her back to me. Today, her blond hair was done back in a tight braid.
“I know she’s your daughter,” McCoy said, “but she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She’s not like you were.”
“Celia is as smart as any of these idiots. She needs more focus, is all,” drawled the woman. “She needs to get her head out of the clouds and see what’s really important. What I’m handing her on a silver platter.”
McCoy raised his hands pleadingly. “I want this to be easy. I want to be there for her.”
Celia’s mother scoffed. “Please, Richard. If you really want to help her, you’ll show her this is about her future. Continuing the legacy I left her. She has potential to be the best.” She paused, chewing on her words. Her bright nails tapped against her arm. “She failed in cheerleading. Surely you can do something about that?”
“I can’t give Celia that spot just because she threw a tantrum. It’ll have to be something else.”
“Fine, then do something about the boy! Remove the distractions!”
“Richter is a problem. I don’t understand what she sees in him. Or what she thinks is going to happen. He wants nothing to do with her.”
“It doesn’t matter what he wants. As long as Celia wants him, we have problems.”
McCoy sighed. “I can only help as long as she doesn’t try to fix the problem on her own. I have everything she needs.”
“I’m glad you’re putting that principal position to good use.” Celia’s mother’s voice went sweet again. “Thank you, Richard. For everything.” She reached out to stroke his face. Then she strode past him, out of the gym. He waited a minute, then followed.
I retreated underneath the bleachers, shut my camera off, and tried to make sense of what I’d just heard.
