Milo

by Alan Silberberg

  “Milo, the mini hot dogs are wicked!” Marshall seems to figure out that eating stops the itchiness, so he has made a sport out of trying all the stuff that’s in bowls or on trays and is giving me a play-by-play. “And you gotta try these eyeball brownies. Man, I am so glad you made me come!”

  I look over the table full of foodstuff, most of which is made to look creepy. I see pretzel sticks dipped in red frosting with a sign that says bloody fingers, and I see the brownies that Marshall is now eating two at a time decorated with eyeballs on top. There are ghost cookies and a pumpkin-shaped cake, and my stomach is so flip-floppy that I settle for a cup of cider and try to look like this is fun.

  Hillary is off with some girls I don’t know, and I’m shocked she has friends because I never pictured that or saw her at school hanging around with anyone.

  See that? Dabney St. Claire whispers to me, and I have to ask him to speak up because the music got even louder. She’s making conversation. That’s what you do at parties.

  I never thought of conversation as something you have to “make,” which maybe explains why it’s so hard for me to actually talk out loud. Still, I decide to take Dabney St. Claire’s advice, and I wander to the part of the party that seems the quietest and turn to a kid who is dressed as a huge red tomato, who I recognize as a girl who I think is in my Spanish class.

  She is standing by herself too, so I figure this might just work out great.

  “Hola,” I say using all of my Spanish skills at once. “Me llamo Milo.”

  Dabney St. Claire gives me a thumbs-up, which is way better than what the tomato gives me—a look like I am the thing she just stepped in that smells bad.

  A second later the tomato is gone, and I am watching the party like it is on TV at home, only I can’t change the channel or even turn it off.

  The kitchen door is open so I walk inside, and a lady who is either Summer’s mom or a very pretty teacher is filling cups with a punchlike drink that unfortunately has the same look and color of Booger Breath Freezies.

  “Oh, hello,” the lady says once she sees me standing next to her. “Are you lost?”

  “Nope.” And it’s true because any fool would know this is the kitchen.

  She seems really nice but doesn’t talk to me.

  After a few seconds of this silent stuff she wipes her hands on her skeleton apron and looks at me like she’s trying to guess my weight or think what is my favorite color (green!).

  “Hey, have you been to the haunted house yet?” she decides to say to me. “It’s in the basement. It’s really fun!”

  “Cool,” I say, and I let her lead me out of the kitchen and point me to a door with a skeleton on it and words that SAY ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK, and I ask her if I need to sign a waiver, which is what people do before doing dangerous stuff like skydiving.

  The next thing I know, I am walking down a dim staircase and cobwebs touch my face and the sounds of scary music and screams are everywhere. At the bottom of the stairs is a hose or something that puffs a blast of air right at you, and it scares me because it’s such a surprise.

  I am just about to turn around and go back, but the door opens at the top of the stairs and now more kids are coming down, and I decide it’s probably better to just move forward and get this over with.

  First there’s a bowl of eyeballs you have to touch, and even though I know they’re just skinless grapes, it still is pretty gross.

  Next a kid who I bet is Summer’s older brother jumps out of a dark corner waving a fake bloody arm at me, which I admit is scary, not because of the arm, but because of the jumping-out-of-the-corner part.

  There are bright green arrows that point the way, and the haunted house leads on into a small room filled with Day-Glo lightbulbs that make all the white cobwebs glow like they’re radioactive and so do my sneakers and so do the skeletons that drop down from the ceiling. I like this part because my white socks seem to be alive, and I would just hang out here if a kid didn’t shout, “Keep the line moving!” So I walk out of the Day-Glo room and into a pitch-black place.

  Now, I’m not a fan of dark places, but Dabney St. Claire tells me to breathe and so I do, and after a second or two of dark silence where I can only hear some of the music from the party upstairs, a creepy voice from a loudspeaker in the ceiling says, “It’s time to meet Bloody Mary.”

  Then there’s a scream (and it isn’t me).

  Then a spotlight turns on, and there’s a teenager standing in front of me covered in blood and her head is cut open and she holds her own brain in her hands.

  And then there’s another scream, and this one is from me.

  Bloody Mary takes a step toward me and says, “Touch my brain,” and she pushes the gooey red thing right at me and I am frozen stiff and I can’t breathe too good, and I must look scared because Bloody Mary laughs and takes my hand and sticks it right into her brain!

  And even though I know it’s all fake and the brain is just Jell-O, I am already running. And I don’t know how to get out of the basement or how to get away from the party, but I have to. I have to get away. Help me get away!

  And then all the basement lights go on, which erases the haunted house, and I hear kids say, “Awwww, man.” And the lady with the skeleton on her apron is taking me outside through the back basement door. And the stars are so bright and the air so cold that I finally breathe again, and I’m sure I’m not crying but she gives me a tissue anyway. And driving home in the backseat of my dad’s car, on account of he had to be called to come and get me, I don’t talk about anything. And he doesn’t ask.

  tiny breaths

  THE HALLOWEEN PARTY INCIDENT GETS wiped clean as soon as October comes to an end, which thankfully happens really fast. By Monday it’s November, and I’m relieved that Summer has the decency not to ask what happened in her basement. In fact, each time I see her, she stays silent, which makes me feel like we are both sharing the same secret, though I’m not sure which one it is.

  November is great because the days start off chilly, which is something I like because it’s cold enough to see your breath, but only for an hour or so before the sun warms things up.

  When I was really little, I asked my mom why smoke came out of my mouth in the winter. First she smiled. Then she used her mitten to rub the snot from my drippy nose, which just made it all itchy. She told me it wasn’t smoke. She said that letting our breath out is how we make wishes come true and that winter is the best time for wishing because when it’s cold, we actually get to see each wish come out and drift away in the sky.

  Of course, I’m not little anymore, and I know the real reason why I can see my breath has to do with moisture and CO2 and the cold temperature outside. But that doesn’t stop me from imagining that every time I breathe out, I get my wish as I count the seconds it takes for her to drift away from me again.

  the museum of busted stuff

  THE PURPLE NOTE IN MY LOCKER SAYS, MY HOUSE AFTER SCHOOL. WANT TO?

  And so with my sister’s advice about breakups in my head . . .

  . . . I make the journey from the steps of my house, down ten feet of sidewalk, and up the walk to Hillary’s front door.

  The door opens before I can even find the doorbell, which I wasn’t sure I was going to actually ring. “Milo! Fantastic!” And with those words, I know there is no turning back.

  Hillary’s house is much neater than mine, which isn’t saying a lot, seeing as my house looks like a tornado lives there. All those clean surfaces make me a little nervous, but since I’ve never been inside before, I let her show me around like it’s a museum and she’s the tour guide:

  “This is the piano where I take my lessons.”

  “Over here is my mom’s favorite plant that you can’t kill no matter how much you water it.”

  “My dad likes this chair because it leans backward.”

  She shows me the kitchen and asks if I want some fruit. I say no, fighting hard the feeling that tugs at me and says, Go home! becau
se I hate that I am here to break the BIG NEWS about our doomed relationship. Maybe she senses I want to run, which is probably why she opens a bag of chocolate chip cookies and offers me as many as I want, which is three.

  I see pictures on the refrigerator and everyone is laughing and there’s no one missing, which reminds me that we don’t hang anything on our fridge anymore except emergency phone numbers.

  “Look, Hillary,” I say, and my stomach wants to explode. I have to tell her the truth about how I don’t like her.

  She stops what she’s doing (cutting an apple into ten identical slices), and I can tell I have her attention.

  Most kids would look away after someone who started talking didn’t keep talking, but Hillary is different, so she just keeps looking at me with her head tilted to the side. And I don’t say anything and feel awful.

  “Do you want to see my room?” She takes charge again and decides to move things along, and I am actually so glad the tour has restarted that I nod my head yes and then take two more cookies just in case she decides to show me the attic and basement too.

  Walking down the hallway lined with Hillary’s family photographs, I realize there’s a smell in her house, and as soon as I put a finger on it, I really miss it. It’s lemon Pledge, which comes in a can and makes things shiny, and it’s one of those smells that belongs to my mom and it actually makes me feel happy not sad to smell it again—though I am slightly embarrassed Hillary catches me sniffing things.

  Hillary’s bedroom door has a brass nameplate on it like those doors to an office where somebody works. hillary r. alpert it says, and before she opens the door for me, she stands next to it and smiles like she’s proud that her door has the same name that she does.

  “The ‘R’ stands for Rebecca,” she tells me, and I nod like now I know all the secrets of the world.

  Inside it really looks like a museum, like one of those roped-off rooms where they don’t let people inside. First off, her bed looks like there’s no way it’s ever been slept on, and there isn’t one piece of clothing on the floor. Looking around, I see that the desk is arranged like an ad on TV, and the room smells nice—but not girly nice, just nice in the lemon Pledge sort of way.

  “Sit anywhere,” Hillary says, which I’m kind of afraid to do, seeing as the bed is like a frosted cake and I don’t want to be the one to ruin it with my butt.

  While I try to find a sitting-down spot that will cause her room the least disruption, she opens her closet and I see the reason her room is so perfect: Her closet looks like her room threw up in it. Stuff is everywhere—clothes, books, some old toys and games that I bet she hasn’t played with for forever.

  And I smile for the first time since I got to her house.

  I finally decide that the floor is the safest bet, so I sit down and get ready to have my “talk,” and inside I feel lousy even though on the outside I look fine.

  “Are you okay?” Hillary is staring at me. “You look awful.”

  “It’s like this,” I say. “I want you to know I think you’re really nice.” (This is a lie because I don’t think she’s really nice—I think she’s kind of a pain; but my sister says that telling the total truth is the wrong way to go in a breakup.)

  “I think you’re nice too.” She isn’t looking at me anymore—she’s reaching for something under her bed. And for the brief second when she lifts her bedspread, I see that under her bed is like a junkyard of boxes and massive dust balls, and to be honest, I sort of start to like her a little.

  “The thing is,” I continue, knowing that if I don’t say what I have to say, those purple notes are going to be the death of me. “I know you like me and—”

  I can’t even finish my sentence because Hillary Rebecca Alpert is laughing and my face heats up and I know I just made a jerk out of myself.

  “Milo, of course I like you.” Now she stops laughing mainly because I think she sees my own face, which is probably one of terror. “But you think I like you—you know, in a boyfriend-slash-crush kind of way?”

  I know I should deny it and answer the other way, but instead I say, “Well, yeah.” And my face doesn’t feel so red, but I do feel like an idiot. “All those notes . . . and phone calls . . .”

  “That’s called being nice,” Hillary says. “I’m way not ready to like a boy. Not like that, anyway.”

  My fingers are crisscrossed real tight, like I’m praying, but I’m not. I’m just really uncomfortable. But then Hillary does something amazing. She just moves on, kind of like we’d just been talking about turtles or something and not what a bonehead I was. “Want to see something kind of weird?”

  And of course I say yes. Anything to get away from the moment works for me, and that’s when she shows me the box she’s holding in her lap. It’s just a beat-up shoe box and it’s pretty old, which I can see from the tape that holds the corners together and some of the writing on the sides, which is in crayon.

  “You won’t laugh? Promise, okay?”

  And because I was just such a doofus, this is the easiest promise I’ve ever made, and then she slowly lifts off the shoe box top and shows me what’s inside.

  “Creepy, isn’t it?” Hillary asks as I stare into a mangled mess of plastic doll heads and discarded body parts. “I’ve been collecting them forever.”

  I am kind of fascinated by this new thing. Right before my eyes, stuck-up Hillary with her perfect purple notes is turning into a cool person, the kind I might not hang up on the next time she calls to ask if I want to watch TV.

  “I dunno why,” she says, lifting up half of a doll that at one point in time was a whole Barbie but now is just a mess. “I’ve always collected the broken dolls. The ones no one wants anymore.” She twists the torso, and the head of the doll formerly known as Barbie pops off and rolls to my foot. “When I was a kid, I’d make my mom take me to yard sales so I could find the leftover broken pieces. Every weekend. For hours. I was obsessed!”

  Hillary dips her hand into the sea of plastic like she’s fishing for a busted leg or maybe a three-fingered hand. “I know. Total weirdo stuff, right?”

  Even though I think it’s a little strange, I say, “No way. It’s cool.” And then I reach into the box and rummage around and imagine all the dolls that had to die to fill the box. I picture doll family funerals and the sad dollhouses where now a doll dad has to deal with his doll kids and the doll mom who isn’t coming home.

  I tell Hillary this, thinking it will make her think I think her shoe box is a superneat thing, but her reaction isn’t at all what I was hoping for.

  “Milo.” Her voice is softer than before and there’s a pause, so I wonder what’s about to follow. “What was it like . . . you know, with your mom?”

  I’m staring into the box of arms and heads and crooked little legs when I hear the words, and when I look back up, her head is tilted again and she reminds me of Patches when he wants to decide whether he’s going to pee outside or on the couch. At first I can’t believe she’s asked me this—and I really want to get up and run out of her house, slamming each door along the way as hard as I can. But then it’s okay because I realize she really wants to know. . . . And I don’t know why I do it. Maybe it’s the five cookies she gave me or maybe it’s because I feel bad that I thought she liked me and I didn’t like her, but now that she doesn’t, I kind of do.

  Either way, that’s when I start to talk.

  It all happened so fast, I say, and because you’re not paying attention, it’s over before you can even catch on that something huge has just changed everything you ever knew. I tell her it’s like in a movie when they erase some guy’s memory, only they don’t do a good job and he sort of remembers stuff but only kind of. I tell her that’s what the fog is. I stop talking and think Hillary is going to ask me something, but she’s just watching me and I can tell that if I go on or if I stop, she’s not going to care. To be honest, I’m not sure if I’m done or not, but I take a breath and before I know it, more words are coming out
of my mouth.

  I tell Hillary: First came the headaches. Then the afternoon naps. Then she and my dad did a lot of whispering and her smile was always there, like she knew she had to make sure it was what we’d always remember—but what I remember most is that I used to feel different inside.

  Hillary asks if I want to stop. Maybe she sees that I’m shaking just a little bit or maybe deep down she’s a person who is actually really nice and not a brat. But I don’t want to stop, I want to keep talking, so I look down at the rug I’m sitting on and follow the swirly patterns with my eyes like it’s a maze I have to navigate. And then I close my eyes and start talking again. . . .

  To tell the whole story, I have to reach through the fog and push it all aside so I can see again. And it feels bad to think so hard about it all—but no one ever talks about this and there’s a little part of me that wants to listen to the story, so I dig down deep and try. I realize it’s kind of like flying, and in my head I’m going back in time, soaring toward the Fog House, and then I see my old street and there’s Steven Siegel and he’s playing basketball in his driveway and he’s cheating the way he always did by double dribbling and traveling, and then I see my house and I fly inside and I see us—my family—and I just watch it all happen the way it did and it’s as if I’m a ghost watching them, which is kind of creepy but I don’t care.

  There we all are sitting on the blue couch, and we never sit on the blue couch because the blue couch is in the living room and we only sat there if it was a holiday, but that day was a Tuesday and holidays are usually on Mondays or Fridays.

  My parents hold hands and my sister fidgets with her braces and sighs because she’s bored and probably has a hundred things to do, which usually means she wants to go back to her dumb room and talk on the phone with her friends, but she sits there like I do, thinking we’re about to discuss some family “thing,” like whether we really should finally give Patches away or where we should go on vacation this summer and I pray it isn’t camping again because I hated sleeping on the ground and I got poison ivy.