Begin Again(21)

“Eh,” says Milo. “We’ll just make her sign an NDA and threaten to kidnap her firstborn if she rats on us. It’s fine.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I say quickly.

“I know,” says Milo, his eyes momentarily so intent on mine that my cheeks somehow burn even hotter. I chalk it up to embarrassment. I can’t believe I had no idea it was him. “It’s fine. Besides, even if you did tattle, nobody on campus outside our dorm’s floor knows my name.”

I back up toward the door. “Okay. I’ll just, uh . . . head back and never speak of this again?”

Milo taps the mic, one ear pressed to a headphone, the other still bare and listening to us. “You can stick around if you want.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t . . .”

But I would. Now that I’m here in this room that’s clearly older than all three of us combined, it’s like I can feel some echo of the energy in it. In the musty smell of the carpets, in the dim, moody lighting from the overhead lamps, in the way everything in here feels muffled and contained and . . . safe.

Shay nudges the chair next to her with her foot. I almost don’t take it. This all has a kind of surreal quality to it, like I stumbled into a dream, or maybe one of my mom’s. I sit down, acutely aware that somewhere on that wall of photos her eyes are watching me.

“You work on the show, too?” I ask Shay as she fires up a laptop and Milo busies himself with the mic.

“A few times a week, for extra work-study hours. I help consolidate the stuff the school sends so Milo can write it up. Mostly I just look at listener emails and questions.”

I end up sliding Milo’s jacket on anyway, only because it will become abundantly clear just how braless I am if I don’t. It’s soft and flannel and has that distinctive woodsy citrus smell that makes me want to pull my knees up to my chest and burrow into it.

Shay pulls up the account and I let out a low whistle at the 173 unanswered emails.

“Oh, that’s just left over from New Year’s. We had listeners email about their resolutions.” I almost blurt out the words “I remember that” before Shay adds, “I keep meaning to go through and delete them, I just . . . I don’t know. Felt weird.”

“Weird how?” I ask.

“Like, some of them are kind of . . . personal? I don’t know. I should probably just clear them out.”

We’re interrupted by Milo tapping the bottom of a travel mug, sucking down the last dregs of his coffee. He blinks a few times, still trying to wake himself up. “I should have brought a second,” he groans.

Shay rolls her eyes. “You’re on in two,” she reminds him, tapping the print button on her screen, where there’s a bare-bones outline that says things like “weather 27 high 19 low clear skies” and “parent banquet date switch feb 22” and “trivia ribbons-tbd.” Before I can zero in on that last bit, a dusty old printer in the corner whirs to life, and Milo plucks the sheet from it.

“What would I do without you?” he asks.

“Deeply alarm our peers. Are you ready?”

Milo slides the panel to the recording booth shut, gazing mournfully into his empty coffee mug. “As I’ll ever be.”

He turns a dial and I hear the notes of a Bruno Mars song coming to a close—in between the radio show and the other occasional student programs on the station, the station just plays Top 40 hits from the past few years—and the telltale ding ding ding! that always chimes in to introduce the show. Milo sits up straight on his stool, and the transformation is so immediate that it almost seems like a trick of the light. His eyes brighten, his back straightens, and the wryness in his voice has an electric kind of energy to it that makes him impossible not to watch.

“Well, I’d say good morning, but we’re kicking off today’s broadcast with news that yet again a bunch of you opted to bring back ‘Hot Dog Breakfast Wednesday’ in the latest student dining hall poll,” says Milo, easing into the top of the show like he’s sliding on an old favorite sweater. “Your efforts succeeded, you monsters. So, very bad, possibly cursed morning to you all. And with that, the weather . . .”

For the first few minutes we both watch him in hushed silence. The way he takes the bare bones and riffs off them (“The parent banquet has been rescheduled to February twenty-second, which will henceforth be known as our one and only Student Sobriety Day”), making jokes about campus goings-on (“I have been told to remind you all that the arboretum is a place of learning, not a place of cavorting; but whoever is cavorting there, for the love of god, I hope you brought a decent coat”), talking into the mic with the warmth of a close friend.

But the moment he really comes alive is when he’s discussing ongoing efforts for the school to reform its work-study program, a common thread he follows up on every week. He leans into the mic with his full body, muscles tense and eyes alight with a new energy.

“If anyone else is keeping score out there, we’re on day five million and fifty-two of the administration ignoring that its overblown tuition hikes have caused the work-study applicants to outnumber the available positions for the program,” he says, his voice just as engaging as before, but with an edge. “To everyone who signed the online petition for the school to freeze tuition hikes and expand the work-study options to more local businesses, thanks. To everyone who didn’t, you’re dead to me. And probably also too rich to know this is even a problem, so I will accept an apology by way of a free sandwich or car.”