Begin Again(105)
“Oh.” The broadcast program. I’d almost forgotten. “They’re really okay with you being the Knight?”
“Oh, not at all,” says Milo, the pride clear in his tone. “But they’re letting it slide. I think the fancy local internship probably helped.”
The relief rushes like a wave, one that finally settles the fear that’s burned in me ever since I found out I’d put his secret on blast. I’m about to ask him for details, but he’s already grinning at me, poised to give them.
“But the fact of the matter is, I can’t do both. Which means . . . we need a new Knight.” His eyes gleam. “Someone who knows the ins and outs of the show. Someone who can do it justice. Someone a little bit nosy, someone short, someone who makes lengthy PowerPoint presentations about their friends’ major life decisions for fun—”
“Okay, okay,” I say, laughing. “I get the message loud and clear.”
Milo’s smile softens. “So you’ll do it?”
This time I don’t hesitate. I don’t feel the weight of it anymore—not my mom’s legacy. Not the expectations of Connor and his parents. Not the years I spent trying to fit, the years I worried I wasn’t enough, the years I felt like I had to prove myself to other people. Now it’s only a matter of what I have to prove to myself.
“Yeah,” I say firmly. “I’ll do it.”
Milo leans down to kiss me again. I marvel at how easily my body can respond to something it barely understands the edges of yet. How easily it can trust something that feels both certain and wild, something that was never part of the plan.
How suddenly the world can feel wider than it’s ever been, and I’ve never felt more ready to meet it.
Eight Months Later
“Not to be dramatic, but we need to leave immediately.” Shay’s hand is poised on the door to our little off-campus apartment in her autumnal knit sweater and denim skirt. “This is my favorite holiday.”
I reach up and brush off a lingering glitter fleck on her forehead. “But Halloween was yesterday,” I say. And holy moly, do we have a camera roll full of pictures of us all dressed to the nines as Kingdom of Lumarin characters to prove it (save Milo, who wore his normal clothes and claimed he was dressed up as a “reader”).
Shay responds in kind by pulling an errant fake cobweb strand off my purse. “Forget Halloween. We’re about to get free tickets to the most glorious shit show of the year.”
I knit my eyebrows at Shay in confusion and she just says, “You’ll see.”
On our way out Shay knocks on the apartment a few doors down from ours, prompting Valeria to call “Just a sec!” from inside. She joins us a few moments later, her curls and makeup immaculate, no evidence of glitter, cobwebs, or the aftermath of us all eating cold pizza on the floor a few hours ago to be found.
“Hello,” she says cheerfully, leaning down to Shay for a quick kiss.
As they pull away Shay pretends to grouse, “Morning people should be illegal.”
“You and Milo can make it a class-action lawsuit,” says Valeria, glancing down the hall of the apartment to his room. Once Milo decided not to be an RA this year and move off campus, he and Valeria figured it would be easiest for them to move in together. We’ve basically been living in an insufferably adorable state of double dating in this complex ever since.
“But without morning people, who would make our beloved bagels?” I remind them.
Shay sighs. “Touché.”
We cut through one of the outer paths of the arboretum to get to campus, the leaves on the trees tinted gold and rusty orange and flame red, the air sweet and earthy, the dirt paths soft beneath our feet. Fall is the final season I haven’t seen Blue Ridge State in, and I already know it’s going to be my favorite.
“Fancy new trail markers,” Shay notes with a nod.
I beam, taking in the reflective circles in different colors that I helped post on the trees to mark the different trail paths yesterday. Just one of the many little maintenance jobs and improvements we’ve made to the arboretum in the past few months to make it more student-friendly and accessible, a place people can go to get out of their own heads and relax.
Speaking of—“Can I borrow your phone’s fancy camera?” I ask Valeria. “I should snap a few shots for the wilderness volunteer Instagram page.”
“A social media hero,” says Valeria, handing her phone to me. “What would the yellow team do without you?”
I return her slight smirk as I pause briefly to focus on a particularly vibrant branch, the rest of the scenery blurring satisfyingly in the background. I’ve never quite let her off the hook for knowing what the ribbons meant all along. In Milo’s defense, he truly didn’t care enough his freshman year to find out what the fuss was all about. But Valeria was secretly on the blue team coordinating a bunch of the academic-related events half the time—hence why she had that extra white ribbon in her bag in the library that day, and how she got into volunteer student tutoring in the first place.
“Still can’t believe you chose yellow, considering your track record with the elements,” says Shay, gesturing out toward the campus lake just beyond the trees.
“Hey,” I say indignantly. “I’ve only fallen in the lake twice.”