by Jen Klein
“You look nice,” says Ella. “Where are you going?”
“Oh, just out. Maybe downtown or something.” Yep, my half-truths have devolved into whole lies. Perfect. Especially since Ella’s already clocked the fact that I’ve spent extra time on things like hair and makeup and wardrobe choices…
“If you give me ten minutes, I’ll go with you.” Ella starts to get up, but I shake my head.
“No.” Ella’s eyebrows dart together in the middle, and I hasten to explain…or rather, to lie. “I mean, I don’t have any real plans. I think I’m going to read for a while in the coffee shop.” I don’t want to tell her the truth. I don’t want to share this day with her, with anyone. I don’t want to share Milo with her.
All I’ve done is share Milo with her.
Ella looks hurt, but there’s nothing I can do about it. She’s not invited on my road trip back to friendship that might actually be some sort of half-assed date.
Annette waves a hand at me. “You’ll be back before tonight, right?”
“Yes,” I tell her, mostly believing it.
“There’s a house party out by Sugar Mountain. You guys should come. This girl from the restaurant is in a band. They’re gonna play.”
“Sounds fun.” Just not as fun as hanging with Milo.
“Everyone will be in college or older,” Annette continues. “But you guys are cool. You can handle it.”
“Okay.” I shrug. “Maybe.”
Or maybe not.
I give them both a tiny wave and head out.
Milo asked me to meet him at the theater. He was planning on walking from his family’s sublet. I said I could pick him up at home, but he wanted to grab his paycheck. God forbid the good people of the Zeus! payroll company make their way into the twenty-first century and the wonderful world of direct deposits.
I cruise into the nearly empty parking lot. My music is cranked, and I’m bopping along by myself when Milo swings out of the low brown building. His purple bandanna is on his head, and—from this distance—he has returned to looking like a pirate. Every inch a tall, thin, angular marauder of the high seas. “All you need is a hoop earring,” I tell him when he slides into my car.
“Excuse me?”
“To complete the look.” I turn the engine as he buckles himself in. “And maybe a parrot.”
“Ah, your pirate thing.” He gives me a knowing nod. “I forgot how much you like those.”
“Excuse me, I didn’t say I like them. I’m merely implying that you resemble one.” I pull out of the parking lot and onto the road, wondering if we’re flirting. I used to know when I was flirting with a boy, but now—with this boy—I’m all turned around.
“See, and here I was thinking you liked them.” Milo reaches into his pocket and whips out another bandanna, this one pink. “I thought you might get a wild hare and want to be a pirate yourself.”
I have no desire to be a pirate, but the idea of wearing a pink bandanna to match his purple one is kinda…I don’t know. Cute. Like a weird version of wearing someone’s class ring in the fifties. It makes me go warm inside. I hold out my hand, and Milo plops the bandanna into it. “I can’t put it on until we’re stopped.” I place it on my lap. “But your wild hare has been accepted.”
I drive us down the hill from the theater, past campus, and onto the road that leads toward Greensboro. We’re both silent until we reach the outskirts of town and the speed limit goes up by ten. Milo reaches over and taps me on the knee. “Wild hare. I never understood that expression.”
“It means doing something out of the ordinary, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but what’s the symbolism of it? Where does the expression come from?”
I consider. “I think it’s like if your pet bunny goes berserk one day and jumps out of its cage and foams at the mouth. Like everything is different. Instead of having your normal life, now you have this wild hare.”
“Wait, what?” Milo moves in his seat. I glance over to see that he’s turned to face me. “You think it’s H-A-R-E, hare?”
“Well…yeah.” Am I wrong? “What else would it be?”
“It’s H-A-I-R. Like on your head.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“But your crazy rabbit analogy does?”
Okay, so maybe that’s not right after all. Except…“Well then, how would yours work?”
“You know, like if your hairstyle is normal, but then you have one strand that is all crazy and sticking out. A wild hair…” He trails off into laughter, the kind that’s so infectious that I’m laughing too. It takes a minute before both of us can pull ourselves together. Finally, Milo speaks again. “Neither of them makes sense.”
I’m so caught up in the amusement of the conversation, which is followed by a much more normal talk about our schools that rolls into a debate about which one has the most ridiculous mascot (mine is an otter; his, a marching apple), that we’re passing through Yadkinville before I remember why I wore this particular outfit today. “Hey, Milo, do you like what I’m wearing?”
He looks over at my little slip dress, topped with a thin cardigan and made more casual by a pair of white Vans. “This feels like a trap.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Sure. I like your outfit.”
“Thank you.” I flourish a hand over my body, as if I’m showing off a new car to a game-show contestant. “Milo, what color is my dress?”
“Blue.” He says it so fast that I know he’s two steps ahead of me.
“Gray!” I reach over and flick him on the arm. “You know it’s gray!”
“It’s definitely blue.” I glance away from the road and over at him in time to see the sly look he’s throwing at me. “Just like it was the night I met you.”
I laugh again—not only because it’s ridiculous, but also because my heart is light and hopeful at the reminder that Milo saw me that night, that he paid attention. That even now he remembers it. That means something, right?
It takes two full hours to drive to Greensboro, but it feels like much, much less as I pull into a parking lot in front of a large brick building. We go through a set of frosted glass doors to the lobby, where Milo insists on paying our small “requested donations.” As we walk over the polished wooden floors into the gallery itself—a large, open space partitioned by white walls—the first exhibit we run into features large painted quilts with hand-embroidered details. I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re haunting depictions of abandoned houses, occasionally stitched across with phrases. “I like those,” I tell Milo.
But he only nods. His expression has gone still and dark. “Are you okay?” I ask him.
He looks startled. “Yeah, sorry. I just…” He stops, looking around the space. “This place is really cool.”
“It is.” Truth be told, it’s way cooler than me. All big and airy, with spotlights hung on ceiling tracks, pointing at the exhibits on walls or displayed on tables. There are collages and jewelry and textured sculptures. Everywhere I look, there are things that I just don’t understand. I look at Milo. “You could have an exhibit too. Your photography would be perfect here.” His eyes go lost and unfocused. I immediately know I’ve said the wrong thing, and hurry to make it better. “I mean, you could try. You’re talented and—”
“You don’t know that.” The words sound harsh, but his voice doesn’t. “You’ve only seen me take pictures. You haven’t seen the pictures themselves.”
“True.” I try to make sense of how and why I am completely positive that Milo is amazing and special. “But the way you look at the world—it’s not like everyone else. So when you capture pieces of it, you have to do it in a way that’s unique and interesting. That has to translate to something beautiful. That has to—” I pause because he’s staring at me. “What?”
“Nothing.” He smiles, and it’s like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, we find Milo’s cousin’s exhibi
t. Her statement says that she works in “mixed media.” What it means is that she makes oil paintings of landscapes, but also sculptures out of wrought iron and tin and found materials. I’m looking at one of her pieces when something jumps out at me. It’s a piece of barbed wire, twisted into the shape of a—
“Doesn’t that mean dishonest man?” I ask Milo, pointing to it.
“I think so.” He leans forward from where he stands behind me, his chest bumping into my shoulder. His artist cousin must be from the vagabond side of the family. “We’re all kind of into our history.”
“How long was your great-grandfather a vagabond?”
I turn to look at Milo, but then I’m so freaking close to his tan skin and dark eyes that it’s too much and I have to turn back to the art. He isn’t just taking photos of something that’s weird and cool. He’s invested in a piece of history that is deep and intricate and personal. Once again I’m faced with evidence that other people have a depth I haven’t figured out.
“About fifteen years. He went back and forth across America. I don’t know how many times.” I keep my eyes trained on the exhibit as Milo’s voice comes from behind me. “He followed jobs because they were a necessity. I don’t think he had a plan.”
I feel an instant bond with Milo’s long-dead ancestor. After all, I know what it’s like to move through life because you have to, because it’s what’s expected of you, and yet not to have a concrete idea of where you’re going.
“Did he ever stop and settle down?” I ask Milo.
“Yes.” Milo glances down at me. “In North Carolina. That’s why my family lives here now. They say it’s the first place he ever felt like he was home.”
I get that part too. The desire to stop and plant your flag in the land you’ve discovered. If you find the place where you belong, why would you ever, ever leave?
We’re both standing there, looking at Milo’s cousin’s artwork, when another customer…or audience member…or whatever the hell you call someone who looks at art…that person walks between us and the exhibit. I take a step backward, and Milo…does not.
I bump right up against him, the full length of my body against the full length of his. He should move backward, because that’s what you do. Or I should move forward, because that’s also what you do. But he doesn’t, and neither do I. We both just stand there like statues.
Except not like statues, because statues are cold and hard and unfeeling, and right now I am anything but that. With Milo’s body leaning against mine so lightly, I feel everything—the rise and fall of his chest, the slight exhale of his breath in my hair, the way my knees are trembling and my skin is going warm—and all I want is to feel even more. I tilt back the tiniest bit, almost like an accident, and I think—I think—that Milo shifts forward. Maybe. Our movements are so subtle that I can’t be certain they’re even happening….
Until he’s gone. Milo takes a step backward, putting space between us, and disappointment floods through me. To be fair, it’s probably good that I can breathe again, because oxygen is a vital part of existence and all that, but I don’t want him to stop touching me—
And then he is touching me again. Not with the length of his body this time, but only the tip of one finger. I feel it on my left shoulder blade, tracing a line straight down—maybe three or four inches—on my back. Before I can react, Milo lifts his finger and replaces it a little to the right. This time, he doesn’t make a straight line but rather a collection of curves, like he’s drawing a picture.
Or writing a word.
It’s what he did on my arm at the train station, but now he’s moving slower. Taking his time.
Milo’s finger loops across the width of my back, tugging against the thin cardigan I’m wearing over my gray (or blue) dress. I stand there, frozen. Feeling his touch like tiny electric charges against my skin. When he reaches the curved edge of my rib cage, he lifts his finger again and drops it lower. I raise my shoulders the tiniest bit, curving my back ever so slightly against his hand. I want to feel him more. I want to feel him everywhere.
But then he stops touching me. He steps even farther back. I ask, because I have to: “What was that?”
“A vagabond symbol.”
“Which one?” Again—just like when he wrote on my arm—it’s much too long and complicated to be a symbol.
“It’s a secret one.” I hear the smile in his voice and turn to look at him, but the moment is gone. He’s pointing to another of his cousin’s pieces. I walk over to look at it, and then we’re back to discussing art. What we don’t discuss is what’s really going on here. Maybe because we’re both pretending it’s not happening.
At least, I am.
Milo doesn’t touch me again for the rest of the afternoon, either at the gallery or when we leave and walk around Greensboro’s downtown area. We end up grabbing dinner at a little sandwich shop, which Milo says does not count as the reasonable meal he promised me. We don’t even get on the road until the sun is setting, so it’s dark when we crest the hill into Olympus. Milo gives me directions to his family’s apartment, and as I pilot us there, I realize I don’t want the day to be over. It’s been too easy and too fun and too different. I’m not tiptoeing over the shards of Ella’s passive-aggressive glass. I’m not pining over Tuck. I’m just…being.
I pull into a spot in front of Milo’s home and put the car in park. I turn toward him and, in an instant, the air changes. It’s alive—like when he was touching me in the gallery, like it’s tingling with anticipation. Like me.
Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe there’s nothing to the air, nothing to the feel of Milo’s fingertip against my back. If there’s one thing I’m consistent at, it’s at misreading cues. Seeing what I want to see instead of what’s really there.
I might never know, because before I can ask if he wants to grab dessert at McKay’s…or thank him for the fun day…or lunge across the seat into his face—
—my cell phone rings.
I check the display. Ella. Of course. I decide not to answer, but before I can decline the call, Milo sees and tells me to go ahead. I’ll feel like a jerk if I don’t. Thus…
“Hello?”
“God, finally.” Ella sounds flustered and hollow, like she’s calling from an airplane hangar or an amphitheater. “Where are you?”
I don’t know if Milo can hear her from the passenger seat, but because it’s a possibility, I answer with the truth. “I’m dropping Milo off at his place.”
Silence. I pull the phone away from my ear and look at the screen. Yep, still connected. I bring it back. “Ella?”
“Can you come get me? Me and Annette, I mean? I’ll text you the address.”
“Wait, what?” My voice scales up, and Milo raises his eyebrows. I beckon him closer so he can listen to the conversation. “Where are you?”
“At that party. Annette can’t drive her car, and I don’t know how. It’s a stick shift. Can you come get us?” She pauses. “Please?”
She sounds…desperate. Ella, always a bastion of confidence, sounds scared and desperate. “Of course,” I tell her. “I’ll leave right now.”
“Thank you.” Her relief comes through the phone. “GPS gets a little wonky near the house. When it tells you to turn left onto Cedar Hills Lane, you have to ignore it and instead take the left two roads later. Try to call if you get lost. The reception sucks up here.”
“Okay.” I hang up and look at Milo. So much for our moment. “And I guess…see you soon too.”
Except that he’s shaking his head. “I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to.” I say it because it’s what you say, but I really hope he doesn’t listen.
And he doesn’t. “It’s dark, and you don’t know the mountains. You’re not driving to Banner Elk with crummy directions.”
“Thank you.” The relief in my voice echoes Ella’s.
The party is half an hour out of Olympus, and by the time we find the house, I’m even more thankful M
ilo is with me. If I’d been out here alone, I don’t know how I would have found this place. As it is, we took several wrong turns, and one time we had to go back to the main road for a cell signal so we could look up the address on the map again.
Loud nineties music pumps from inside as Milo and I navigate our way up the gravel driveway, packed solid with cars. A whole bunch of people are hanging out on the front porch, smoking and drinking. It’s a lot like walking up to Wendell’s party…or to Logan’s party…or to Gretchen’s party. No matter where you are, parties are kind of the same.
I text Ella to let her know we’ve arrived, but I can’t tell if my message goes through, so Milo and I head inside. The music is louder here, and—even though there are a bunch of guitars and a microphone set up in the living room—it’s coming from a set of giant speakers. Milo and I make our way through throngs of drunkards to the kitchen, which features two kegs and a water bong, but no sign of Ella. “You’re welcome to partake,” I yell at Milo. “After all, I drove.”
“That’s okay,” he yells back, scanning the crowd for Ella. “You should have someone sober helping you get home. Maybe over there?”
He’s pointing to a wall of floor-to-ceiling beads hanging across an exit off the kitchen. We push through them to a narrow hallway, where—halfway down—we find Ella sitting on the floor in front of a closed door. “You’re here,” she says to us as a handful of partiers arrive from the other direction. To them, she waves her hand in a shooing motion. “Use the upstairs bathroom.” They depart in a wave of good-natured grumbling, and Ella scrambles to her feet. She gives us a wry smile. “There is no upstairs in this house.”
“Where’s Annette?” I ask.
“Are you okay?” Milo wants to know, which I guess I should have thought to say also, except I’m a little annoyed I’m at yet another stupid party instead of alone in my car with Milo.
