Begin Again(107)
I return his grin, eyeing the cup of Eternal Darkness already in his hand. “That hasn’t kicked in yet?”
“Oh, this?” says Milo, lifting the cup. “This is just so Ava doesn’t kick my ass if we play tag again. That kid’s a live wire. Gotta stay on my toes.”
I lean in closer, staying on my own toes to reach him for a quick kiss, feeling the slight fall chill under my skin warm at his touch. He helps me finish wrapping up the bagels, chatting with Valeria about her application process to add a creative writing minor and teasing Shay about the semi-drunk reenactment she attempted of a Kingdom of Lumarin scene that led to a half-hour-long search for one of her shoes.
Then we split off—Valeria to meet her parents, Shay to meet up with her sister, and Milo to head out with me to the quad, where I already know my dad and Kelly arrived a few minutes ago from the text updates we’ve been sending. Ava spots us before we spot her, beelining from the massive blanket where Kelly’s already laid out fruit and brownies to go with our bagels. Ava collides with Milo first, who lets out a staged oof as he leans down to hug her briefly before she pivots like a puppy and nearly bowls me over with a hug, too.
“I got to take the day off school to visit,” she crows to us, not waiting to see if we’re keeping up when she turns right back around and runs back toward the blanket.
My dad gives me a bear hug and Kelly follows it up with a happy, tight squeeze of her own, her homemade bracelets jingling under her warm flannel. I visited them in Lake Anna just last weekend, so there isn’t too much to catch up on, but Kelly and Ava update me on her science project while my dad and Milo discuss the upcoming annual Thanksgiving game between Blue Ridge State and our rival school. The conversation has an easy ebb and flow I couldn’t have quite imagined before we all met, but seems perfectly natural now.
Eventually Milo splits off to show Kelly and Ava where the public restrooms are, leaving me and my dad to perch with all our stuff. He waits until they’re out of earshot to move closer to me on the blanket.
“How are you feeling?” my dad asks.
It’s a testament to how much we talk now that we can ask each other questions like this—like we’ve dog-eared book pages on each other’s lives, and can jump right back into the middle of them without any context. And as far as book pages go, the next chapter of mine might be a big one.
“Good. But nervous,” I admit.
The feeling is so unfamiliar to me these days that it’s almost a welcome one. I’ve gotten so at ease at the mic for The Knights’ Watch each day that it’s just a happy part of my routine. Now being nervous doesn’t feel like a sign of disaster—it feels like the energy of a new opportunity ahead.
Because today’s show isn’t just going to be The Knights’ Watch—it’s also serving as an audition. A few weeks ago I was approached by a Blue Ridge State graduate who ended up working for a media entertainment start-up looking for new and upcoming talent to develop and spearhead their own content. After I went mildly viral on the alumni page for last year’s slipup, she started tuning in on the days I segmented, and kept at it once I took over. Now she wants to know if I’d be interested in adapting a podcast for a broader audience loosely based on the show—one that she’d produce weekly, and one that comes with the opportunity of possibly expanding into the network’s smaller pool of on-screen talent as well.
It’s been a few weeks since then, and I’ve spent most of them developing a new structure for the potential podcast so I could call the shots on it—a large task, but one I relished taking on, given the experience I already had with building my own version of The Knights’ Watch this year.
The biggest change made to The Knights’ Watch right off the bat was the time it aired. Now instead of six thirty A.M., the show goes live at five p.m., giving callers an opportunity to phone in without having to pry their eyes open to do it. That way we can do a prepared segment either on something timely or an issue multiple students have emailed about, then transition into taking live calls. The same way other Knights had their own focuses, I have mine—and both by design and because my identity isn’t a secret, it’s much more of a dialogue between the show and the listeners than other Knights had in the past.
That said, there are nods to other Knights in my version, too. Because it’s so community-oriented, we have a lot of people calling in for more practical advice and concerns, spanning everything from the work-study program reforms Milo spearheaded to more local on-and off-campus causes like my mom once did. And we still update students on campus goings-on at the beginning of each broadcast; I used to think I wouldn’t enjoy that part as much, but I’ve come to understand that being ingrained in what’s happening here is part of being able to effectively help. So the heart of the show is still there, even if it looks a little different on the outside now.
But the higher-ups from the start-up listening to my broadcast today aren’t listening so much for the format as they are to get a sense for me and my on-air personality. It’s a test to see what I might be able to do for them—not just for the podcast they’re considering me for, but the potential beyond it.
I’m feeling confident, but I think part of that is because I am not so worried about the stakes now as I was when the idea of doing this really scared me. Now that I’ve started to deal with that fear and rely on the experience under my belt, I understand those goals I made weren’t meant to be a road map. They weren’t meant to fit neatly in that perfectly packaged memoir I always pictured writing one day, everything decided for me, everything pressed into place. The reality is that nothing about this is going to be linear. It’s all going to evolve in its own time.