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I shook my head.
“It means ‘without words for emotions.’ Except it’s more than that. It’s almost a mental disorder, but there’s a sort of scale. The higher your alexithymia score, the more trouble you have interpreting emotions and things like that. My score isn’t as high as some, but it’s not the lowest.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So, sorry if I come across callous sometimes. Or, I don’t know, defensive. Most of the time I’m just confused.”
“So does that mean you don’t care about the people you hurt when you run those jobs?” I asked.
“I’m not sociopathic; it just takes a while for me to process. I’m pretty good at turning off my guilt when I don’t want it. But I can’t stop. It’s an easy way to get money, it keeps anyone from getting too close to me, and I feel . . . safe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when I’m the one doing everyone else’s dirty work, and everyone is afraid of me, I feel safe. I control what happens and to who.”
“Whom,” I mumbled, and to my surprise, he smiled.
“Right. Whom.”
I got the feeling the smile wasn’t only because I had corrected his grammar. I wondered if he’d ever told anyone any of that before, and then wondered about his mother, in Goshen, and exactly how he planned to get her out while his dad was still around. I wondered what he would do if his little dictatorship over the school ever crumbled.
I peered back into the trophy case. Scarlet’s picture screamed at me.
“I might know something about what’s going on with Celia,” I finally said. I told him everything I knew about Celia, Celia’s mother, McCoy, Scarlet, and the scoreboard. How Tucker had been helping me look up information about it, but we’d reached a dead end.
“I know McCoy doesn’t like you, and Celia does,” I added. “And that . . . worries me. I think they’re both really unstable. McCoy needs some kind of psychiatric help, and I don’t think he’s going to get it. I don’t think he even knows, or cares. And I know—I know—it’s like, I’m the crazy girl, making up crazy stories, why would you listen to me, but if you could just do me a favor and . . . watch out.”
He stared at me. Blinked.
Then he nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll be careful.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Celia’s second suspension wasn’t announced, exactly, but everyone in the school knew the details. Thanks to her lawyer of a father (and some unforeseen intervention from Satan himself, because who else would come to her rescue?), Celia wasn’t expelled. That was the bad news. The good news was that she’d be gone for the rest of the semester. The other bad news was that the semester was only ten more days. And the entire club saw the other other bad news coming from a mile away: when the semester was up, Celia would be back, and she’d be doing community service.
The only person who didn’t seem to like the good news or the bad news was Principal McCoy, who only became more short-tempered and irritable after Celia was gone. His morning announcements were short and curt, and he didn’t say anything about the scoreboard. In the afternoons, he could often be found outside the gym watching the club work. I knew Miles was a big boy who could take care of himself, but if there was ever a time to put my finely honed sense of paranoia to good use, it was now.
During those ten days, the school went back to relative normality. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit in the air, or the thought of a two-week vacation, but everyone seemed a lot more lighthearted, in spite of finals. Presents were exchanged. I saw small people dressed in red and green flitting between classrooms. I made everyone in the club Christmas cards and attached a Greek drachma from the 1800s to each one, unsure if they’d think it was stupid.
I gave Miles his first, to see how he’d react. I fixed my goggles on my face at the lab table as he weighed the card in his hand. Then he opened it up as if it had a bomb inside.
He pulled the coin out and studied it. “A drachma? Is . . . is it real? Where’d you get it?”
“My dad’s an archaeologist. He picks up stuff all over the place.” And the coins were one of the things he’d brought home that I knew were real.
“But this could be worth a lot of money,” said Miles. “Why are you giving it to me?”
“Don’t feel too special.” I pulled out the test tubes and test tube rack we’d need for our lab. “I put them in the cards for everyone in the club.”
“But still. How do you know this isn’t worth hundreds of dollars?”
“I don’t, but I assume my dad wouldn’t give it to me if it was worth a lot of money.” I shrugged. “I have a bunch of stuff like that.”
“Did you ever think that maybe he gives it to you in spite of the fact that it’s worth a lot?”
“Do you want it or not?” I snapped.
Miles dipped his chin and stared balefully at me over his glasses, shoving the coin deep into his pocket. He turned back to the card.
“Did you make this?” he said. “Why’s it only in green?”
“Charlie’s on a green binge right now. It was the only color I could find.”
He scanned what I’d written inside the card. Dear Asshole: Thank you for keeping your word and believing me. It was more than I expected. Also, I’m sorry you were inconvenienced by my gluing your locker shut at the beginning of this year. However, I am not sorry that I did it, because it was a lot of fun. Love, Alex.
When he finished reading, he did something so surprising that I almost dropped the Bunsen burner and set the kid across from me on fire.
He laughed.
Our neighbors turned to stare at us, because Miles Richter laughing was one of those things that the Mayans had predicted would signal the end of the world. He wasn’t particularly loud about it, but it was Miles laughing, a sound no mortal had ever heard before.
I liked it.
“I’m definitely keeping this.” Miles went to get his black notebook. He slid the card into it and came back to the lab table, where he continued to be completely oblivious to the staring and happily helped me start the lab.
The club seemed to really enjoy their gifts, even before I explained what the drachmas were. Jetta, who knew Greek, spoke it for the rest of the day. The triplets also wanted to know how much their coins were worth, and if they could pawn them.
“Probably, if you can find the right person,” I said, “but I’ll hunt you down if you do.”
