Begin Again(22)

It’s not the first time this morning I’ve had to muffle a laugh. It’s like watching Gammy Nell tend to the themed crusts on her pies or Connor scanning the soccer field to figure out which teammates are open—someone clearly in their element, and enjoying every moment of it.

But watching him also makes me ache in a way I’m not used to anymore, at least not with such a full and immediate force. There was a time this made me happy, too. Using a platform and connecting with people in real time, whether it was talking at school assemblies or helping host the town’s annual talent show for kids or even the few times my mom let me “guest spot” on her radio show growing up. There was a time when I assumed I’d be doing that kind of thing my whole life.

“The brave one of us,” my mom used to brag to her coworkers, which seemed silly to me at the time. With her unapologetically blunt humor, willingness to navigate hot topics with guests, and relentless commitment to local causes, she was the bravest person I knew. She was a breath of fresh air on the radio, the host people tuned into every morning to wake them up and make them laugh, to set a tone for the morning that would follow them through their whole day. She was far from conventional, and she was beloved for it.

But she had stage fright of her own. She never wanted to make any appearances outside of radio, preferring the focus and quiet of being behind the mic. I was the one who dreamed even bigger; I was the one who dreamed so big that as a kid I felt limitless, like there was so much potential in the future that I could run in any direction and never meet the edge of it.

Now I can’t even bring myself to use my real name on a column for a high school I don’t go to anymore.

I wait for the ache to fade the way it normally does. These past few years it’s been more of a phantom feeling than a real one. But if anything it seems to spread deeper, claiming back old territory, making me unsettled in my skin.

“Wow,” I whisper to Shay, trying to pull myself out of it. “He’s so good at this.”

An understatement if there ever were one, but Shay just nods.

“He only just pulled out of the biology major last semester.” She turns back to the laptop monitor. “I’m guessing he’ll apply to the broadcast program here.”

I nod back carefully. Milo’s identity as the Knight isn’t just a secret for school tradition, then. If the broadcast and journalism heads don’t love the idea of this radio show, being publicly known as the host of it probably won’t put any points in his favor.

“Makes sense,” I say. “Why would he major in bio when he can do this?”

Shay clicks back into the overflowing inbox, but I don’t miss the way her smile falters in the light of the laptop screen. “Biology was Harley’s major, too. I think he was gonna follow him to med school or something. They were super close.”

Don’t overstep, says that part of my brain that knows all too well what will happen if I do. Don’t get involved. So even though I am itching to ask Shay for more details about this Harley-Milo-Girlfriend situation, I lean over her shoulder and decide to make strangers’ business my business instead.

“Let’s knock out some of the resolution emails while he’s at it.”

Shay blows out a breath. “I would,” she says, her eyes skimming the inbox. “I just don’t know what to say to people.”

I scan the subject lines like I’m running diagnostics on strangers’ brains. “I can answer some of them.”

“You really want to?”

I flex my fingers over her keyboard. “Let me at ’em.”

Since the emails are anonymous, I fall into a familiar rhythm, answering them with the same ease I answer my “Bed of Roses” column. Except the more I read, the more it feels like I’m finally part of something bigger here—like getting this glimpse into the day-to-day issues of other students makes the barrier I keep feeling between me and them fall away. Like I know this student trying to make a savings goal, or the one in a petty argument with a friend, or the other with chronic first-date jitters. People with problems so personal but so universal that it reminds me, the way running an advice column often does, that at our cores we’re all more alike than we think. Hung up on the same worries, wishing on the same stars.

It doesn’t quite make the ache from before go away, but it makes it quieter. Easier to ignore.

“Wow. Down to one sixty-seven,” says Shay, closing out of the browser at the end of the broadcast.

“Barely a dent,” I say. “I can do more.”

“We only have access to the server from this building. I assume you don’t want to get up at six in the morning to follow us here.” Before I can even fully hit her with the gleam in my eye, Shay smirks. “Never mind. Forgot who I was talking to. I’m just going to poke my head down the hall to make sure the kid who’s supposed to edit and upload the podcast version is fully functional.”

Shay heads out and Milo is busying himself with the soundboard, setting everything back the way he found it. I glance and he doesn’t glance back, so I figure he’s absorbed enough in what he’s doing that I can steal a glimpse at the wall.

All I have to do is take a few steps, and there she is—instead of chronologically, which would put her picture first, my mom’s frame is smack-dab in the middle of all the others. She’s beaming in it so widely that it makes my own cheeks hurt, her blond hair parted down the middle and draped over her shoulders, a version of her I don’t think I’ve ever seen. A version of her so close to my age that the resemblance isn’t just startling, but unsettling.