“I’d like...”
Just effing say it, Luke Stone.
“Luke?”
I shake my head at the concern in Milo’s voice. My teeth chatter. Goose bumps layer my skin.
“I don’t know if I’m reading this right. If you’re interested.” I inhale deeply. “But would you like to go with me to the winter formal?”
“With you?” Milo repeats. Not angry. Not ready to report me for harassment.
To be certain.
The jolt in my stomach is nauseating. I nod a little too happily. “With me.” I step closer, wait to see if he backs away. He doesn’t. My cold fingers cautiously slide to his wrists. He turns his hands over, palms out—giving me permission. I take them in mine. I whisper, “As my date.”
Something hopeful shines in Milo’s eyes.
“Your date?”
I’m still shivering. But I focus on the curl of Milo’s mouth.
“Would you like to go to the winter formal as my date?”
“Um.”
“It’s okay if, like, you don’t want to. Or that’s not your thing? Maybe I’m not your ‘thing,’ which is super cool. No sweat.” My rambling has hit an all-time high.
“No.”
“No,” I repeat, sadly.
Dad’s so wrong. Rejection isn’t okay. Rejection effing sucks.
“Wait, not like that,” says Milo with a nervous laugh. “You are. My thing, I mean. Wow, that came out wrong.”
A grin sneaks over my lips. “It didn’t.”
“I’ve had a thing for you since forever.” His laugh is perfect—not too loud; the nose-scrunching kind.
“Really?”
His eyes clench shut, quiet breaths sneaking past his lips. He’s that Milo-shade-of-red again. “I didn’t think you...”
“Yeah. Definitely. I’m kind of bad at all of this.”
I free one of my hands to brush hair away from his forehead. He doesn’t flinch away.
A sudden snap of wind attacks us, and I howl, “Damn, it’s cold out here!”
But Milo takes my other hand in both of his. He squeezes tight, all his warmth tingling up my arms. Headlights shine over us, passing cars ignoring our existence.
Nothing to see here. Just a boy asking another boy to a dance.
“I’ve always wanted to...” Milo’s words die on a breath. On a nervous smile.
I return it, bigger, with slow-lifting eyebrows.
“Wanted to...?”
He licks his lips. Another wave of crimson darkens his skin.
And now it’s just a boy—Milo—standing on his toes to lean up and quietly ask if he can kiss another boy—me.
I let him.
It’s not one of those cinematic kisses. Not even a Netflix one. Our noses bump, I’m still shivering but then...we fall into it. The barest press of cold lips. I cautiously tuck a hand behind his head, a thumb behind his ear. Milo smiles against my mouth to let me know it’s okay. His hands squeeze mine and my fingers undo Dad’s perfectly-styled haircut.
Even in the cold, this feels like melting candy in my palm. Like the crest of summer.
Kissing Milo—my first real kiss—is finishing a race I didn’t know I was running until now.
* * *
“Well?”
Dad doesn’t allow me two seconds to warm up once I’m back in the shop. My toes are numb. I’m sniffling. But my mouth buzzes with heat. My head’s ready to explode.
I kissed Milo.
Bonus: I’m going to winter formal with Milo.
“Luke Zion Stone,” Dad says impatiently.
Finally, I look at him. And grin. I nod sharply, twice. The Luke Stone stamp of approval.
Dad crows, already tapping away on his phone.
“What’re you doing?” I ask.
Dad flops into his chair. “I have to tell the other parents about how I got my son his first real date.”
“No.”
“Wait ’til I post photos of us shopping for suits on the community board.”
“Dad, you will not—”
“Should we get Milo flowers? Do you think he likes flowers?”
I groan loudly but Dad ignores me. His thumbs are moving slowly, tongue between his teeth as he types. No doubt, he’s already trolled Milo’s social media accounts for photos to post on his support group’s community page. He’s probably already found a suit and tie to match Milo’s eyes. I hope he doesn’t brag about how he gave me The Talk and a pack of glow-in-the-dark condoms that look like light sabers.
Yeah, my seventeenth birthday was an epic tragedy, but this is going to kill me.
Not before I walk into winter formal holding Milo’s hand.
Not before I kiss him again.
I sweep as Dad laughs while typing. Old-school music fills the shop like it does every day.
Eventually, Dad says, “Your mom would’ve loved to have seen this” quietly with a sad smile.
“Think so?”
He nods, twice. “She’d be so proud of you.” Then, softer, he says, “I’m so proud of you.”
I look away. A familiar sting assaults my eyes. But I’m hard-core smiling.
When I’m done cleaning, I text Milo all the Pinterest ideas Dad’s already found for suits. I also text Aiko and Skyler about having a date, but I don’t tell them who. They’re going to be insufferable when they find out they failed as matchmakers.
Milo texts back a link to a photo of a Star Wars tie that I immediately reject.
He also sends a selfie of his newly-wrecked hair. I’m not ashamed I did that. I text him back a heart-eyes emoji.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Dad’s standing in the middle of the shop. Prince is playing overhead.
I cock my head at him. “What?”
“If you’re going to impress Milo, we’ve got to perfect the Stone Shuffle.” Dad’s already bopping side-to-side. “I can’t have you shaming our name.”
I laugh so hard, the tears finally come. I don’t try to hide them, and Dad smiles like it’s okay.
I can’t believe this. Out of all people, Dad found me a date to the winter formal. A boy that I like. That Dad has met and likes, too. Dad loves me enough to ensure I have a great night with Milo.
I shake my head, still laughing. “Thanks, Dad.”
* * *
A ROAD OF ONE’S OWN
by
Kate Hart
Cass is already waiting for them at the Tote-a-Poke in Poteau. The gas station chain exists, with the exception of one store, solely within the boundaries of LeFlore County, Oklahoma, on the edge of the Ouachita Mountains. If Eliza weren’t dreading their destination so much, she might find the landscape comforting: it’s similar to the Ozarks she’s grown up in, the hills just a little lower, with more sky in between.
But she’s been dreading this entire trip, really, and agreed to tag along only out of spite. Her boyfriend, Nathan—ex-boyfriend, she reminds herself for the millionth time—is on a “guys only” road trip to Arizona before all their friends leave for school. Eliza doesn’t want to go to the Grand Canyon with the boys any more than she wants to go with Nathan back to college in Texas, but it’s the principle of the thing.
So when Keri and Rosa and Mindy decided to launch a counterprotest, Eliza played along, because a guys only road trip is bullshit and they know it. Keri is calling it the GROSS Club, after the old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, with Get Rid of Slimy girlS altered to Sexist boyS instead. Mindy suggested “Sisterhood of the Traveling Van,” which was vetoed immediately, and Rosa has admonished them that the gender binary is a patriarchal construct in the first place.
Eliza is just calling it a bad idea at this point. If she’d known Mindy’s cousin, Cass, was coming along, she never would have agreed, but there’s no way to argue against including her. They’re
driving to the Rockies, and Cass needs a ride back for her sophomore year at the Colorado School of Mines, maybe the most badass and intimidating college name Eliza’s ever heard. So, while the Tote-a-Poke in Poteau, Oklahoma makes an excellent tongue twister, it’s the last place she wants to be, and its approach is twisting her stomach into knots.
“What does that even mean?” Keri’s in the driver’s seat of the minivan they’ve borrowed from her parents. “How do you tote a poke? Or is it like ‘totem pole’?”
“A poke is a bag,” Mindy says. She pronounces it baig, her accent a little flatter and stronger than the others’. “Like a grocery sack.”
“In what language?” Rosa demands.
“In English. Okie English, anyway.” Mindy is from Oklahoma, but moved to Arkansas when her parents divorced. She points as they pass the Choctaw Travel Plaza. “Maybe it’s a Choctaw thing, I dunno.”
The word alone re-reminds Eliza that the last time she saw Cass, she made a huge fool of herself. She tries to wash the feeling down with a swig from her water bottle, but it’s difficult to swallow.
“How do you say ‘gas station’?” Keri asks.
“In Choctaw?” Mindy snorts. “I can only say three things: ‘hello,’ ‘thanks,’ and ‘I am Choctaw.’”
“Wait, are you really?”
“Yeah, believe it or not.” She gestures at her dirty-blond hair. “Chahta sia hoke. I have a membership card and everything.”
Eliza’s mouth falls open. If she’d known, she could have asked all sorts of questions to avoid looking like an idiot in front of Cass again.
“I wish I had a card,” Keri says. “Then when I say ‘y’all’ and people stare, I can hand it over and introduce them to the concept that both Korea and immigration exist.”
“Ha,” Rosa says, “me too. Mine’ll say ‘Yes, I am Latina. No, I cannot do your Spanish homework.’”
“Okay, but you totally can do my homework,” Mindy says.
“Yeah, until Señora Brazos is like, ‘Where did you learn Costa Rican slang in an Iberian textbook?’”
“That only happened once.”
“Your destination is on the right,” the navigation app announces, and Keri turns at the black-and-yellow sign. “Tote-a-Poke, Poteau, Oklahoma.”
“Thank god,” says Rosa. “I have to pee like crazy.”
The girls pile out and Mindy hugs her cousin, who’s waiting out front with a backpack and half a corn dog. “I’m glad y’all are here,” Cass says, careful not to get mustard in Mindy’s hair. “That a-hole over there has been watching me like a hawk.”
A large man stares from beneath the hood of a car he’s not fixing. Eliza bristles, remembering Nathan’s warnings—that a car full of young girls is creep bait, that she needs to be careful, that she’d better pack the mace her dad gave her when they left for Texas last year. She doesn’t want to have to use it, not just for the obvious reasons, but because she doesn’t want Nathan to be right. About anything.
“And this is Eliza,” Keri says, making introductions.
Eliza jerks back to the conversation with an awkward wave. “Hi.”
“Hey.” Cass’s eyes hold hers a little longer than necessary, but no dislike, or even recognition, registers on her face. Then she tosses her corn dog in the trash. “So where are we heading today?”
“Hopefully Palo Duro,” Mindy says. “It’s about seven hours—if we make good time, we can get there by dark.”
Cass snaps in her direction, somehow making finger guns look cool. Eliza has never felt cool in her life, and here’s Cass on a ninety-five-degree day, looking effortlessly amazing in tight jeans and honest-to-god cowboy boots, a sleeveless Zeppelin shirt with a strappy black bralette underneath, dark hair twisted upon her head, on her way back to a cool school in a cool state while Eliza...
Okay but she didn’t make you wear khaki shorts, Eliza interrupts herself. The other girls aren’t cool-cool but they all match, in their plastic shorts left over from cheerleading camps of days past. She looks down at her MDA Muscle Walk shirt. At least it’s not band camp.
Keri claps her hands together. “Let’s get your bags in.”
“I just have the one.” Cass hoists it onto one shoulder. “It can ride wherever.”
“Oh good,” Keri says. “We’re pretty crowded.” The van is crammed with camping gear, another fact making Eliza’s anxiety flare. She’s been camping lots of times—just never without Nathan. He loves the outdoors, revels in roughing it, and it’s always been easier to let him set up camp and cook the food and do the dishes and...
And all I’ve really done is lay out sleeping bags and gather kindling. Part of her wants to reject the hobby entirely, to cut it out of her future the way she wishes she could cleanly excise him. But the boys already took bets that we won’t last a day. So screw that.
“Oh man, I thought I was gonna pop,” Rosa says, emerging from the store with a bright red ICEE.
“You are not drinking that in my parents’ car,” Keri says.
Rosa shrugs. “I’ll chug it here.”
Eliza heads inside for her turn in the bathroom and sends a quick text home, updating on their progress. When she returns, Cass is already wearing headphones in the back, while Rosa clutches her head in the middle seat, cussing the world’s worst ice cream headache. “You want to drive? Or risk getting covered in red barf?” Keri asks.
Eliza shakes her head. “Let Mindy drive. I’ll take my chances.”
* * *
Back on the interstate, the land levels out quickly, forests dwindling into small clumps of gnarled trees, then down to rolling plains. Signs along the roadside announce their crossing of each tribal border: Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Kickapoo, Citizen Potawatomi. Eliza has never understood the designations. The highway patrol still gives tickets all over the state, a fact Nathan learned from speeding on the Cherokee Turnpike to Tulsa. She’s not sure who’s really in charge of each area, but there are specific headquarters and health centers and other tribal businesses that make clear they’re moving through distinct territories.
“Prague?” Rosa reads aloud.
“It’s pronounced ‘prayg,’” Mindy says.
Rosa laughs. She’s been making fun of all the unusual town names: Tenkiller. Weleetka. Okemah. Wewoka. “Bowlegs?”
Mindy doesn’t answer, but Keri leans forward. “Listen, Tica.”
She doesn’t finish, but they all know what she’s implying: Rosa hates when the Mexican kids at school make fun of her Costa Rican accent, so she should knock it off. Trying to lighten the mood, Eliza says, “You wouldn’t believe how much the people at UT made fun of us for being from Arkansas.”
“As if Texans have much room to talk,” Cass says, crossing her arms on the back of the middle seat. “You’re already in school?”
Eliza twists around to answer. “Yeah, but back at the U of A. I transferred at semester.”
“Your boyfriend too?”
She forgot that Cass met Nathan last summer too. “No, he’s still at UT. And he’s not my boyfriend anymore.”
“Oh,” Cass says, eyes widening. “I thought y’all were basically married.”
“So did he,” Keri pipes up. “That was the problem.”
The other girls have known Nathan as long as they’ve known Eliza, but Keri, who met him later, has fully taken Eliza’s side, and Eliza is grateful. Even her own parents are mourning the loss, and her sister sobbed when she broke the news. “I didn’t want to do the long-distance thing, either,” she adds.
Cass nods and starts to ask another question, but Keri interrupts. “This trip still needs a name. Cass, what should we call our all-girl road trip?”
Cass thinks for a moment. “Get Your Dicks Off Route 66?”
The whole van erupts in laughter, except for Mindy, who says, “I can’t use that as a hashtag,” w
hich makes everyone laugh harder.
“What about ‘A Road of One’s Own?’” Eliza asks, when they calm down.
Mindy frowns. “I don’t get it.”
“Virginia Woolf?” Cass asks. “As in, who’s afraid of?”
Rosa pats Mindy on the head. “She didn’t take AP Lit. A Road of One’s Own it is.”
* * *
Somewhere west of Oklahoma City, they stop at a rest stop and Cass takes over driving. Mindy insists Eliza take shotgun, since she hasn’t ridden up front yet. “What do you want to hear?” Cass asks, handing over her phone.
“I’m easy.” Eliza tries to give it back.
Cass waves her off. “You do it. I never read and drive.”
“Me neither.” Scrolling through, Eliza’s surprised to recognize many of the artists, and finally spies the blue and white cover of an album she loves.
“Ooh, good choice,” Cass says, to her huge relief. “Who’s navigating?”
“Eliza is,” Keri says from the back. “Front seat responsibility.”
Eliza considers claiming that it’ll make her carsick, but decides to just suck it up. How hard can it be to type in a destination?
Surprisingly hard, it turns out. Several hours, albums and hundreds of passing windmills later, the app tells them to turn south, and soon it’s insisting they’ve reached their destination—only there’s no state park in sight. “There’s a sign for Antelope Flats,” Cass says, pulling off the road. “But that’s not what we want, right?”
“I have no idea.” Eliza’s face burns.
Keri is asleep, but Rosa leans forward, pulling out her own phone to check their route. “Um, this says we’re way off course,” she says, showing them her screen. “The park is over here.”
“At least it’s not too far,” Cass says.
“I mean, it looks close, but...” Rosa adjusts the display. “There’s no roads going straight through. It’s another hour and a half.”
“It’s what?” Mindy squawks, waking Keri up.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry—” Eliza glances out the window at the fading light. “I don’t know what—”
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