MILY THE MILLENNIAL - Chapter 1

MILY THE MILLENNIAL | I. Roots and Factors. Copyright 2021 by Kailey Ann. All rights reserved. This is the first chapter of a #metafiction novel by Kailey Ann, read aloud by the author. Discover more about this story at HEDERAREADS.COM.

I. ROOTS AND FACTORS

Mily took a tumble on Saturday, July Fourteenth, 2001. As she fell, Mily lost all her marbles in the overgrown grass along the edge of her backyard. The ball jar she had been holding shattered on a pink granite rock when she tossed it to free her hands and catch herself from crashing to the ground –

As usual, Mily was quick enough. She was a clumsy kid, but her reflexes were good. But that was too bad because even though she had reacted fast, it just so happened she was tripping face-first into a bristly patch of Pitcher’s thistle.

Mily caught her weight on her palms, and that instant her eyes went wide with pain. She tried to turn her head in time, but it smacked the ground on the left side, and her hands and cheek were stuck with what felt like a billion needles. She’d squeezed her eyes shut and kept her corneas safe from the thorns, but it didn’t save her skin.

She could feel them, lots of them – Her hands and face were coated in splinters. Each one stung as bad as a bumblebee.

Mily was afraid to move a hair. If she shifted her weight one bit, a fresh blast of stickers embedded themselves in her hands – and now her wrists and her chin –

Poor Mily was halfway through crying out when she spotted something strange.

At first she thought it was just those white spots she sometimes got when it was too hot outside, but they didn’t go away even after she blinked eight or nine times. Then she thought she must’of gotten thorns in her right eye because she couldn’t be seeing right.

But seeing didn’t hurt. Mily blinked and blinked again; both her eyes were just fine. She’d gritted her teeth and thrown herself backwards, landing bottom-down in the tall grass.

The ground around Mily sparkled with the scattered glass shards of her shattered marble collection. Some of the orbs had split right in half, some were just dust. Others survived with cracks or chips but were still mostly intact, though sprawled about, making the brush glitter…

In fact, Mily was seeing quite clearly. Something strange was happening in her periphery, something was shimmering…

Mily looked up from the tall grass and saw a cloud of buzzing white heat-spots form and fly right at her!

As they drew nearer, Mily saw that they were some sort of bugs; the creatures were shaped like teeny-tiny cottony dandelion seeds, the way they glided on the wind, they were everywhere!

The critters landed all in her hair, and the air was heavy with glittery dust. Mily tried to swat them off, but her hands thwacked in the tall grass and, with a fresh blast of pain, Mily remembered her palms, covered in pins and needles from the Pitcher’s thistle.

The pain and confusion made Mily powerless to stop the glitter bugs as they crawled up her nose and into her ears – They’d gone and nested in her head!

Mily leapt to her feet and barreled across the yard to the driveway, screeching, “Get em off me get em off me get em off!” By the time her toes touched the cement a few seconds later, the Twins – her cousins, Eyani and Esabel – who had just witnessed Mily’s faceplant in the thistle patch just past the tall grass, caught up to her.

“What’s the deal Mil?” Esabel, who went by Esa, asked. She was often the clearheaded one when handling any kind of bump or bruise or cut or wound. This was true when dealing with her own injuries as much as the other two’s – Though Esa did seem far less prone to tripping and falling than Mily was.

Before Mily could summon an answer to Esa, three more people arrived. Bird, Mily’s mom, her big brother Will, and her dad, Dog.

“Are you hurt?” Bird asked Mily firmly.

Mily started bawling. Quite overwhelmed, she fell into a stiff and frantic mess in front of her mother.

Bird hovered over her, inspecting. “You’re okay,” she said. “Where does it hurt?”

It felt like everyone present was holding their breath when the light went on behind Bird’s eyes. Mily looked up and noticed how her mom’s gaze sharpened in focus as she combed Mily’s face. Bird’s eyes made their way down to her daughter’s upturned hands, held away from Mily’s body for fear of touching anything.

“Mily tripped and fell face-first into a bunch of those Pitcher plants!” Esabel exclaimed.

“You know those spikey plants that grew, the ones that hardly ever bloom, with the thorny stems!” Eyani explained.

Mily’s heart beat loud in her ears. But Sound was changing, turning sharp and brassy like scanning static between radio stations. The newness and utter strangeness of it struck Mily clearly as a stroke of bad luck.

Forgetting to breathe, dark spots started cropping up in the scope of Mily’s vision. Black spots skipped and hopped across her whole field of view, and that instant Mily knew, thinking with fright, Heat-spots are black, not white!

“I better go find my tweezers,” Bird determined after what felt like an eternity to Mily, whose Sense of time was now shifting in and out of fast and slow.

“They’re in the vanity drawer upstairs,” Bird went on. “I’ll be right back.”

Then Dog and Will crouched down catcher-umpire in front of where Mily was sitting and set her with complimentary stares of concern. Her dad and brother cast nets with their forward chins and the braced casts of their shoulders, and Mily latched onto their sightlines and remembered to start breathing again.

“Looks like Outside gotcha good. Are you alright?” Dog asked.

“It hurts,” is all she found herself saying.

It must have only been seconds Mily’s Sense of time had gone wrong… When she turned her head it tossed the light strangely, making every motion look slow…

But it was all brilliantly lit! Mily’s summer skin, the cumulonimbus sky, the bluegrass lawn braided with silhouettes of fast-growing blades, all luminously defined, outlined silver and focus-magnified, feathery auras steaming from the edges of everything…

Mily found focus again when she saw Will’s mouth form the end of a thought, something her brother always did before he landed on a question:

“What else is wrong?” Will asked. He leaned forward on his toes till his nose was real-close to Mily’s cheek. She supposed Will was judging how bad her face must’of looked and wanted to keep her talking.

“My marbles,” Mily whimpered. She swallowed and made herself talk a little louder. “I let the jar go and my whole collection shattered when they hit that big pink rock!”

Dog frowned and looked down at his daughter’s hands, still pitifully riddled with Pitcher’s thistles. The evening was dream-sickle tinted and humid, and Will and the Twins were looking at Mily like she might start crying again at any moment. She thought that might be true, but it was because everyone was staring at her and she was embarrassed, not to mention worried about her marble collection…

“You didn’t get any glass cuts didja?” her dad asked.

“I don’t think so.” Mily paused to breathe and think. Her inner clock began to adjust, and she felt her till-then sense of real time returning.

She did hit the ground pretty hard though

Mily blinked. That voice sounded just like… E?

Mily…

She gazed at Eyani’s wide-eyed double-blink and felt her stomach twist and do a somersault. Mily’s thoughts burned too close to the surface – she felt dangerous and dizzy, waving timidly like she liked to savor the last bursts of an Endependence Day sparkler. Can you hear me thinking, E?

Mily can you hear me?

She wanted to scream, ‘There’s bugs in my brain!’ but the fact knocked the wind right out of Mily’s lungs.

Bird was back then – Mily blinked at the sound of her mom’s footsteps on the garage floor and an odd ringing, a ting-ting! over and over. Mily felt her brow twist, bewildered by her sense hearing as she realized, It’s the tweezers Mom’s squeezing.

My ears are ringing…

“I think we should do this at the kitchen sink,” Bird said to Dog. “Can you walk inside, Mily?”

She nodded at her mother but couldn’t see her expression because her eyes were bleary with tears again. Raising her arms up stiffly, Mily felt her dad’s hands slip under her pits and lift her to carry her inside the house. Mily didn’t fight it even though she said she could walk. Dog let her rest her chin on his shoulder and swing her arms over so she could hang there without hurting too much.

Dog put Mily down on the counter beside the double-basin stainless steel sink. She peeked at her palms and was appalled at the number of splinters her mother’s tweezers would have to pull out. The sight almost made her sick.

“Do I have to look, Mom?” Mily asked. Then she clenched her teeth to keep from weeping again.

“No, you don’t have to watch. It might hurt, but try to sit still, all right?” Bird cautioned and hopped straight into plucking the little splinters one by one.

Will had followed closely behind Dog so he could stand closest to Mily. Her brother was being overly curious, sticking his nose close to the splinters to peer at them again. Will shook his head, wide-eyed, and nose laughed.

Will thinks how is Mily so unlucky?

It’s not UN-lucky! Mily thought back at Eyani, just a little bit miffed. It’s just my bad luck!

“I’ll go pick up Mily’s marbles Mom,” Will said. Mily loved her big brother for that. He was always fast to start solving problems.

“If there’s broken glass, I don’t want you digging in the grass without good shoes and gloves,” Bird said. After a brief pause in which their mother glanced out the window, she added, “The sun is about to set. Why don’t we wait until tomorrow when it’s lighter outside?”

“But my shooter!” Mily bawled, picturing the pebble-sized sterling-silver starfish encased in a glass-crystal orb. She prayed it wasn’t halved like some of the other marbles that had cracked when she tossed the jar. Mily’d sworn up and down to Grandpa Bill that his prized favorite would be safe in her possession.

Dog grinned great big and said, “There’s good news!” He left it unsaid until Mily looked up at him. She held her dad’s gaze – Even though his eyes were strange, luminous as icicles at twilight – so Dog would know she was listening.

“I’ve got gloves and boots in the back of the truck,” Dog went on, grinning so big that Mily felt herself return the smile without thinking about it. “I’ve got a couple’a flashlights out in the garage too. Will and I will tackle that – We’ll be right back.”

“Dad!” Mily called because her dad was always fast to act on his words, and she wanted to warn him about the bugs before they went digging through the grass. Mily guessed it was entirely possible Dog knew what kind of bugs these were, because her dad knew just about everything about nature as far as she could tell. He always knew all the names of the trees, grasses, and other green things, and now that Mily was thinking about it, he’d taught her about every kind of fish, snake, squirrel, bird, bug, and in-between she could remember ever seeing in Diana.

“Dad – um – watch out for bugs,” she warned, since Dog and Will were still standing by the door waiting for her to go on talking.

He and Will gave yapping laughs and promised to be careful before turning on their heels to gather Mily’s scattered marbles. That left just Bird and the twins in the kitchen with Mily as a wave of dizziness made her start to sweat.

Uncle Dog thinks huh

Maybe queeries ain’t died off after all

What’re queeries? Mily thought, insides humming uncomfortably. The Pitcher’s thistle splinters left tiny pinpricks behind when Bird pulled them out, and the sight of it made her feel even more queasy.

Dunno but

Will will find your silver starfish shooter

Mily blinked hard. Everything in her line of sight was far too bright – All depths of field fell into sharp focus no matter where Mily shifted her gaze, and the spaces between each focal point were filled with that brilliant, feathered gleam. The auras made her brow pinch and her eyes squint, and when her face tensed, she became painfully aware of the Pitcher’s thistle thorns still stuck to her left cheek and temple.

She keeps forgetting to breathe

Mily! Just breathe!

E! Overtaken by the changes occurring in her senses manifest, Mily didn’t question taking advice from her cousin’s voice in her mind – for some reason, she simply trusted her sudden, sprung-up understanding that E was using telepathy.

Mily jerked when her mind landed on the word, and Bird’s tweezers stabbed the end of her age-line where it faded into her wrist. Tears sprang to her eyes, but her teeth were clenched so tight already that she was braced for the pain. Bird inhaled sharply but didn’t say stay still like she thought her mom usually would have.

“Almost done with this one,” Bird said perkily. “Oh, my silly Mily, you’re so accident-prone.”

Mily rolled her eyes and huffed. It was true – Mily loved to play rough, so she often sported new bumps, scabs, and bruises because her depth-perception had always been somewhat bad.

Except now she was seeing wide and hearing open in ways she didn’t understand.

“What happened, Mil?” Esa asked. Now that Dog and Will were outside, there was enough room to stand at the counter beside her Aunt Bird. “How’d you trip?”

Mily grimaced because the moment she pictured falling out back in the overgrown grass, her ears smarted – her sense of sound was flooded by a high-frequency ringing. She squeezed her eyes tight to try to shut it out, but a sob broke through her lips instead.

Then she was crying again, and Mily hated crying—especially in front of her mother. And up till then, seeing Mily in tears was really a rare thing.

“Left hand’s done!” Bird exclaimed, ploughing by her niece’s inquiry. “That wasn’t so bad! Right hand or your cheek next?”

“R-right hand,” Mily muttered back, choosing to ignore Esa’s question too. Her eyes were still closed, and she didn’t want to open them back up until her mom was finished pulling out all the thistle thorns.

Mily turned sideways so that Bird could reach her right hand easier. She shifted around so that her feet were in the sink instead of hanging over the edge of the counter, barely opening her eyes because she was still trying to stop crying.

Her senses were so sharp it was beginning to really alarm her – Especially when Mily swore she heard Will speak clearly even though he had to be back by the treeline already. The high-pitched ringing didn’t drown out other noises, but sort of brushed their voices with an metallic edge.

It was too much to sit with. Shut up, bugs! Mily demanded. Get out of my head!

What’re you talking about bugs Mily?

There’s BUGS in my HEAD!

“What do you mean!” E said. Mily’s eyes burst open to greet her cousin’s befuddled expression. Esa stared back and forth between the two of them with puckered lips, looking perplexed. Then Bird’s tweezers stopped ting-ting-ing, and her forehead wrinkled like it did when she might giggle.

“What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’” Bird teased. Her mom’s gaze faltered when she met Mily’s eyes. “I’m not nuts am I? You weren’t talking?”

“No, Mom – nobody said anything.” Mily waited till her mother shrugged and went back to plucking splinters before giving E a look of reproach. Stop! I can’t hear ME when you’re thinking at me!

Welcome to my world

Mily decided to ignore him entirely so she could put her energy into not crying anymore. After a few moments of silence, the painfully high-pitched whine subsided a bit, leaving Mily feeling a little less sense blinded. She wiped her half-dry eyes with the back of her left hand just as Bird plucked the last splinter from the end of her right ring-finger.

“Ouch!” Mily hissed. Bird’s tweezers had pinched too close to her skin.

“That one was pretty deep,” her mom apologized. “Let me see…”

Mily lifted her feet out of the sink and spun her legs over the counter again, holding her palms face-up for Bird to do a final inspection.

“Nice, clean hands!” Bird praised. “You’re doing great! We’re almost done!”

Mily grunted in response and thrust her chin forward so her mom would get to work on the thorns still sticking out of her face.

The Twins had quit talking and settled into the growing gloom of anticipation. Esa was still leaning against the counter on Mily’s right side, so they could easily see each other out of the corners of their eyes.

Mily’s cheeks flushed – both because Bird’s nose was only millimeters from her own and because Esa’s incessant peeking was wearing her skin thin. Nerves fried from all the hype, Mily stole away to her inner seat of stubbornness and mustered enough strength to suppress several irate groans.

“Mildred Junegrass!” Bird hooted just as she plucked the last piece of Pitcher’s thistle from her daughter’s stinging cheek. “You will not guess what day it is!”

“S-Saturday?” Mily answered, who hardly ever knew which day of the week it was – Although, her whole family praised her knack for almost always knowing the time of day, often down to the very minute, without ever checking a clock.

She thought Bird was going a different direction, but… this time, Mily was at least sure that it was Saturday because she’d been counting down to her eighth birthday, which was only… Seven sleeps away.

An inkling of an idea rose from Mily’s diaphragm when she landed on the number, but Bird didn’t wait for the realization to bloom before telling Mily straight: “It’s Saturday, July Fourteenth.”

Mily’s mouth fell wide open. “Oh you’re right!”

Her mother threw back her head and laughed. The Twins were giggling in disbelief, squeezing their sides, and raising their fists at the ceiling in mock-defeat.

July Fourteenth had become a date of strange omen in the Yoder family line. When the calendar arrived on the fourteenth day of the seventh month of the year (for reasons utterly unclear or beyond knowing), Yoders were often served with a pot of big’n bad luck from the Universe, ‘Brewed pipe’n hot and already boil’n over,’ as Uncle Earn, the twins’ dad, liked to say. These moments of misfortune were called Schleprockness. Mily didn’t know why: that’s just what they’d always called it.

Perhaps so relieved to be thorn-free, Mily forgot all about the bugs for a second and enjoyed their shared cosmic sense of ‘You’ve got to be kidding-me!’ Laughing made her lungs feel fit to burst.

For a few moments, anyway. They were all still laughing when Mily’s dad and brother got back from outside. But Mily’s joy was so fragile that seeing them put out the spark of the moment before.

Will wore a look of triumph that seemed awfully put-on to Mily, though she wondered if that was only because her eyes were still seeing funny.

“Good news!” Dog bellowed when he’d crossed the threshold of the kitchen. He held up a large crystal marble with a little silver starfish in the middle. “You’ll be shoot’n straight in the morn’n Missy!”

Only the Twins had noticed that she was already not smiling, and Esa scooted a little to her left so that her shoulder was touching Mily’s knee. The thorns were gone, but a fresh prickly feeling crawled from the nape of her neck down her arms and legs, and it hit her full force she hadn’t yet said a word about the critters getting cozy behind her skull.

Ask about the queeries! Mily ordered herself, swallowing her caged, itchy anxiety. “Dad, were there bugs in the grass?” Mily asked. “Did you see any of those qkw – ”

NO Mily DON’T

Don’t say it!

E’s mental beam was so loud that she choked on the word that she’d heard him say earlier Dog thought. Her dad started saying something about it being good of her to warn them because chiggers like this time of night, but she couldn’t understand the rest because Eyani raced to explain in-thought at the same time.

You can’t ask about queeries!

Your dad only said it in his head!

You haven’t ever heard that word before!

I heard it just now! Mily shot back. You just said it!

I didn’t say it

I’m thinking

Mily mulled that information over long enough for everyone to move on to talking about something else. She forced her attention towards Will who was looking at her with hopeful eyes. He held a new glass ball-jar from the garage aloft, and it had been filled to the brim with marbles they’d recovered from the spill-site.

The glass jar that had contained her marble collection before was twice as big as the jar her brother presented there in the kitchen. Mily noticed this difference right away, but she was touched by the steps Will took to make the remnants look full.

Bird bandaged her daughter’s palms with antibiotic ointment and gauze and taped two band-aids to her chin and cheek. When Mily was finally able to hold the marble jar in her own hands, she felt so drained that she couldn’t think of anything at all to say.

How come I can hear you thinking? Mily asked Eyani in her head instead.

Well I can always hear you

Sorry for not telling you

Esa hears too but only cus she hears me

Because uh I can hear everybody

But it’s always just been us two

Well till when you thought –

E?