MILY THE MILLENNIAL - Chapter 4

MILY THE MILLENNIAL | IV. First Outside. Copyright 2021 by Kailey Ann. All rights reserved. This is the fourth chapter of a #metafiction novel by Kailey Ann, read aloud by the author. Discover more about this story at HEDERAREADS.COM.

IV. First Outside

August ended, and with September came the undeniable fact that it was time to go back to school. Mily Junegrass Womack-Yoder loved school, but she loved summer better.

It was Sunday the Second, the last afternoon before class went back in session, and Will and Mily were once again on the lookout for the miraculous Ariel Doe. After climbing the knobby Red oak tree, under which Mily once tripped into the Pitcher’s thistle, the siblings scooted out on the sturdiest branch and sat side-by-side. Having borrowed Bird’s binoculars, the two of them took turns being Scout.

Will was in his wits, making wild guesses about the Doe’s home-range based off what he thought might be a deertrail running right below their feet.

“It’s just a regular deer trail,” Mily told Will with a touch on know-it-all. “I’m telling you – Ariel Doe just showed up. I looked up and there she was.”

“I understood you the first time Mil,” Will said. “The simple fact remains; things don’t just Happen or Appear out of nowhere.”

Double-digits gave Will the edge when it came to their sibling-spars of logic and reason. When Will talked, it often felt to Mily like he was wise beyond either of their years.

“Anyway,” Will went on. “I reck’n Ariel Doe’ll come back by this way if she likes Sugar maple seeds…” He bent the binoculars to fit the smaller of bridge of Mily’s nose and handed them over.

Mily made a face like that had given her some thought, but the truth was she’d known all afternoon that Ariel Doe was nowhere around. Not today, anyway.

In the two weeks since the Twins’ birthday, the Clairs had taught Mily some new tricks. What Mily’d noticed right away was that her range of hearing was much wider. Lately she liked being perched in the oak tree high-enough to see over the roof of the house, but not-so-high that Bird wouldn’t allow it, to stretch and test her eyes and ears to their very bounds. The Clairs had given her a Grander Sense.

Adjusting her sights through the binocular lenses, Mily twiddled the focus dial and whistled, “Oh woah.” Simply all she could see was helicopter seeds, covering everything.

“Right? Ever seen’m cover the ground like that in your whole life?”

Mily lowered the binoculars and gave Will a look of brash perplexity. “Why do you always ask such dumb questions?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re two years older than me,” Mily said. Will only nose laughed back, so she returned to scoping the vast, rolling seas of maple seeds and added, “So how could I’of ever seen’m do this if you haven’t?”

“S’just a way of speaking, Mil,” Will said.

“Oh I know,” she huffed, sights hovering over a storm drain still gushing from the sudden downpour’n that morning. “I just mean you’re right; this is nuts.”

Looking through the binoculars, it was obvious to Mily that her dad had been right when he guessed it’d Flash Flood. Torrents of groundwater were overflowing from the gutters, which were clogged up with stormswept piles of maple seed muck. During breakfast when the rain had been heaviest, Dog told Will and Mily some of his Theories about the earth-covering surplus of winged seed they were seeing that season.

“Do you think Dad’s right about overplanting?” Mily asked, handing the binoculars back to her brother.

“He’s right about that, and what he said about summers being longer,” Will said. “Remember when Dad first became a Jack and he was the running ERATHEntact’s reforestation project?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Dad says he fought some Kings early on in the zoning process – ”

“Zoning?”

“Deciding where to plant the trees, and which kinds, and how many.”

“Oh.”

“Dad talked to the Kings real early on, like when they were still picking the list of trees Diana needed. Dad asked ERATHEntact to pay for what’s called an Ecological Study – ”

“What’s an echo-logical study?”

“That’s when experts in his trade go and count all the different plants and animals living in the area, and figure out how they work together, what they need to grow, and all sorts’a stuff.”

“Oh.”

“I guess the Kings thought the study Dad wanted was too pricey, and ERATHEntact had whole greenhouses of maple saplings already to plant so…” Will plucked that old tennis ball he’d been carrying around since the Twins’ birthday out of his back pocket and started tossing it between his hands while he went on talking. “…they got planted everywhere round here.”

“So there’s all these helicopter seeds because there’s so many Sugar maple trees?”

“Sugar maple, Black maple, and...” Will stopped tossing the tennis ball and cocked his head sideways, seeming unable to recall the third one Dog had mentioned.

“Box-elder,” Mily enunciated, remembering it after only a short pause for thought. That was another trick the Clairs gave her: Mily was always able to recall the new words she heard.

“That’s it,” Will said, resuming his back-and-forth tennis ball toss.

“I’m not going down to get that if you drop it,” Mily told him firmly. Will wasn’t even watching his hands, and his tosses were getting wildly wide – He was crowding Mily’s elbow room, which she really thought he should see was a safety hazard sitting way up in a tree.

“I won’t drop it,” Will said.

“Well if you do, I’m not climbing down just because I’m closer to the trunk.”

“Lucky you,” Will said as the tennis ball flew right in front of Mily’s nose – where he caught it, and with a flick of his wrist sent it sailing straight back into his left hand. “I won’t drop it.”

Mily giggled. “You should be in the big leagues.”

“Big league, Mil.” Will said. “Besides, even if I dropped it – I’d just hop down and get it.” He held the tennis ball out over his knees using only his fingertips. His hands look stiff and feeble, like all it might take was a light breeze to knock the ball beyond his reach.

“Will! No!” Mily’s fingernails bit bark and grit, latching onto the branch tight while her eyes hunted the ground for Pitcher’s thistle.

“Oh alright,” he laughed, tucking the ball securely into his lap. “We should probly head inside, though – I don’t think the Doe’s coming today, do you?”

Mily shook her head. She and her Clairs had listened all day long. But the maple seeds were so thick and the stormwaters so swift, it all sounded sort of staticky in her ears. And besides, Mily was certain she wasn’t waiting for the sound of deer hooves walking over helicopter seeds in the woods. Ariel Doe had simply Appeared, of that much she was convinced.

So where had she come from?

Ariel Doe has to come back, Mily told herself as she climbed down from the tree. Why would she’of talked to me if she didn’t want to tell me something?

After carefully dropping onto the Red oak’s massive roots, Mily went at once to check on the splintered Pitcher’s thistle patch. It’d all grown back mostly okay, after getting smushed under her upper body. Bird had heard from a Ranger that Pitcher’s thistle was endangered. When Mily learned that, feeling just awful about crushing such a rare plant, she went out and splinted and mended every single stem she’d broken in the fall.

Five Pitcher’s thistle flowers were now in bloom, tied to bright blue and red popsicle sticks Mily’d stuck into the ground around their roots. The Ranger’d said they only flowered every eight-to-ten years or so.

“Are you ready for school?” Will, past the edge of the tall grass.

“I wish summer was longer,” Mily said. She swept the tall grass aside and joined Will on the other side of the treeline. Together, they started walking towards the house.

“Summer’s a whole season, so we still have the weather,” Will said. “And Dad said it’ll keep get’n longer, remember Mil?”

Mily set her jaw forward and made a face that told Will she wasn’t in the mood to answer. She didn’t feel like conceding to one of her brother’s trademark Silver Linings. Mily was nervous about school because she always was, and Will knew that…

Nearing the back porch, their footsteps squelched on the sodden lawn, and Mily stomped in the mush – Splashing bits of mown grass and muddy Sugar maple seeds at her ankles.

Bird saw the whole thing through the sliding glass door of the kitchen-and-dining room: The bottom cuffs of Mily’s capri pants were covered in gunk. Bird’s gaze was so fixed that Mily caught a glimpse of herself from her mom’s point of view and laughed out loud – Mily was muddier than she thought. Bird ordered her straight to the garden hose with a sharp point of her index finger so, Mily skipped off to wash her feet.

It was the morning of their eighth school day since the end of summer break, and Mily and the Twins were hitting it off with some of the kids in their new classes at the Schoolhouse Shop.

Simply being related to Will Wood-Yoder made all three of them instantly popular. One group Midlevel Schoolhouse Shop students even told Esa that she, Mily, and E could sit at their lunchtable whenever they wanted. Mily was sort of impressed at how many people seemed to think Will was the Greatest there Ever Was, or something.

The eighth day of school was a Tuesday, which to Mily simply meant there were three and a half boring days of State Standard Practice Assessments left to go.

But Bird was Principal of the Schoolhouse Shop, so Mily knew she had to do well on the tests even if they were really boring. Being the Principal’s kid didn’t hurt Mily’s popularity one bit, because everybody thought Bird was even more the best than Will was.

It did mean that Mily was expected to behave a certain kinda way during class though. Teachers always liked her well enough because she was bright and participated often, but Mily also got teased a lot for being a goody-two-shoes.

Mily probly wouldn’of got in that much trouble, but any kind of acting out would always get back to her mom, so she just didn’t. Some days Mily wished she could whisper with other kids during silent reading or pass notes when she finished her Fast Facts.

That day, to avoid getting peer-pressured into an ongoing game of Telephone, Mily kept her eyes on her desk and talked to E telepathically. I bet today’s math.

Math is stupid

Mily didn’t even have time to reply because Mx. Schwae was tapping on a dingy brass call bell on the teacher’s desk and saying, “How about we take a just a few minutes, and we sharpen our pencils, and see if we have good erasers…”

Mily’s desk was in the top left corner of the large square seating arrangement. She was placed closest to the door, which was furthest away from the pencil sharpener. But Mily never left her pencils dull, so she stayed at her desk and watched half the class form a line to the blackboard to sharpen up.

Mily zeroed in on the stack of papers the teacher was holding and saw there were no staples. This test would be quick. Her eyesight was so good that she could easily read the heading of Mx. Schwae’s papers: ‘Fast Fact Practice: Multiplying Times Sixes’

It’s all times six! Mily told E. She didn’t know if tipping the Twins off was technically cheating or not because really anyone close enough could have read the heading on the paper if they wanted to. But anyway, Mily thought it was only fair to share the information since Esa said a lot lately that multiplying sixes kept tripping her up.

Sixes are tricksters Mom says, Mily warned from the other side of the room. Tell Esa not to race ahead.

Ten-four, six is for tricks

Trusting Eyani to pass on her advice, Mily took a deep breath. Mx. Schwae’d moved to stand in front of the chalkboard where Class knew to look for instruction.

Worksheets held blank sides out, Mx. Schwae waited till every one of their nine students was giving their full, undivided attention.

Mily’s knee bounced – This was typically the moment when her teacher would turn and ask, ‘would you mind closing the door,’ since she sat the closest; and Mily always did it like she didn’t mind, but actually she kind of did because every time she got up, the whole class watched – Not because they meant to gawk or make fun, but because they were kids and something made’m all want to see that she did close it.

“Mily, would you mind closing the door?” Mx. Schwae asked.

Mily stood up at once and banged her right knee on the left leg of her desk. She couldn’t see through her jeans but felt the blue bruise beneath the denim. To make matters worse, Mily’d also knocked over her chair somehow, so now everybody watching was –

Staring.

Mily didn’t have eyes behind her head, but her classmates’ gazes were heavy on her back. Her cheeks blazed as she walked it off stiff-legged, pulled the door closed, set her chair upright, and retook her seat.

You left it open a crack

“Okay Class!” Mx. Schwae called. “It’s time to practice some of our Fast Facts!”

An over-the-top groan rose out of Lespedeza Easterly-Reed’s lungs. She was seated square-center in the desk arrangement, so what eyes had still been loitering in Mily’s direction wandered away.

Lespedeza smiled sideways at Mily and raised her eyebrows as if to say, ‘I got your back!’

Lespedeza, who went by Leza, and Mily had jived the week prior while seated beside each other on the first morning bus ride to the Schoolhouse Shop. As it happened, the two kids shared great dislike for their full first-names, and they had the same taste in games. Mily and Leza had showed off their marbles during recess every day so far that week.

Over the course of that moment, the class’s collective nervousness lifted. Mily relaxed as Mx. Schwae separated worksheets with an index finger and placed one downturned on each of their desks.

“Please leave your papers facedown,” Mx. Schwae said. “I will tell you when it’s time to turn them over.

“This Fast Facts Practice has no impact on your grade,” Schwae explained. “We’re doing this activity so that we can see where you’re at, and where you’ll need practice. And we’ve been practicing our Fast Facts, so I know for a fact that all of you are ready.”

Mx. Schwae paused to take a breath, and Hilarity Marlbrook-Quotient’s hand went up from the desk right next to Mily’s. Hilarity wiggled and waggled her fingers like crazy till Mx. Schwae called her name.

“Hilarity?”

“We’ll be doing Multiplication won’t we!” Hilarity announced, happy and breathless as always.

“Why. Yes. Yes good guess!” Mx. Schwae said. “To solve today’s Fast Facts, you will be multiplying.

“Can somebody remind me which operator-sign we use to multiply?”

Mily looked around and found that everyone else was avoiding eye contact, faces pointed at their desktops. She bet some of them were still remembering what ‘operator-sign’ meant, but Mily recalled terms fairly quickly. Multiply means times, she thought. So the operator is a little ‘x’ or an astrix…

Aster-IX

Mily raised her hand and waited for Mx. Schwae to call her name.

“Mily?”

“We use the aster-icks,” Mily enunciated, fighting a grin as the Clairs caught hints of the Twins’ heldback giggles. “Or the tiny ‘x’ means times, um. The multiply sign.”

“Very good! Yes, thank you Mily,” Mx. Schwae nodded. “So, every problem you encounter on the Practice Assessment will have either an ‘x’ or an asterisk, the little twinkly mark, which both mean you use multiplication to calculate the answer.”

Anticipation made Mily’s knees bob. Her fresh bruise bumped the underside of the desk, and Mily bit her tongue to keep from wincing out loud. She fiddled with her pencil to distract from the pain, pinching the pink eraser between her thumb and pointer.

Mily pinched the eraser so hard that it broke clean off at the round aluminum edge. Her heart started beating fast. Mx. Schwae went back to standing in front of the class before the chalkboard and asked, “Does that make sense? Would anyone be willing to summarize the task for us, just one more time from start to finish, before we begin?”

The student sitting directly behind Mily was named Jean Baptiste States-Prestige, but he just went by ‘Pomp’. Whenever Pomp talked it tended to take up some time, and he had just put his hand up and was waiting to be called on. Mily went rifling in her desk cubby for another pencil with a good eraser to use.

But Mx. Schwae didn’t call on Pomp right away because they never remembered his nickname and had to check the student roster that it was written on nearly everytime Pomp raised his hand. Mx. Schwae frowned and Mily followed her teacher’s gaze the list on their desk, but Mx. Schwae couldn’t read the text from there and had to make their way over to check…

Quick what’s two-times-six

Twel – HEY don’t do that Eyani! Mily smoldered in-thought, mad at him for picking her brain uninvited.

Just joking, Emjay

Esa says tricks are for kids so she’s got this

Good Luck!

“Pomp!” Mx. Schwae cried, finger floating over a scribbled name on the roster.

Jean Baptiste States-Prestige had been patient with Mx. Schwae for never remembering his preferred name, so Pomp took extra prep time before addressing the class. He cleared his throat twice while pressing and patting his polo-shirt collar till its frame sat much more crooked around his neck.

Narvel Bleau-Gill let out a good hardy-har, the whole class turned in his direction just to watch Narvel grin at Pomp from ear-to-ear.

Pomp sat directly behind Mily, and Narvel right behind Pomp, so Mily overheard pretty much all of the whispered conversations between the boys during class. She knew the two were not only best friends but lived together too – Narvel Bleau-Gill didn’t have any parents since he was a Faceborn Ward of the Estate, and Mily’d learned that the States-Prestige parents were appointed as his Upbringers.

Mily too had turned fully around in her seat, eager to be a part of whatever it was the first and only Faceborn Prince of Diana was drumming up.

“Are you ready to summarize Pomp?” Mx. Schwae prompted, reassuming her spot front and center.

“Well first of all it’s a fact we’re All ready to destroy these Fast Facts,” Pomp began. “Second though it doesn’t matter because how well we do won’t impact our grade one bit.

“And third and finely we’ll be multiplying so we can see who remembers how to since last year.”

“Plus,” Narvel Bleau-Gill said, putting up his index finger to tell the teacher he had something else to say before Mx. Schwae spoke. “These are Fast Facts, so we’ll be timed right?”

Mx. Schwae nodded. “You’ll have one minute to attempt twenty problems.” The teacher fixed the class a serious look. “But remember that accuracy matters more than finishing all of the problems. Complete as many as you can with confidence, but don’t worry if you need to skip over a problem and come back to it.”

Mily didn’t know why, but that last bit made her nervous again. Mx. Schwae thanked Narvel and Pomp and then said it was okay to turn their papers over. But they were not supposed to start solving problems till Schwae told them it was time begin.

Mily went ahead and filled in the blanks at the top of the page, her first and/or middle names and last initials. She sounded it out silently while writing them in the narrow letter boxes:

Em-eye-el-why… Jay-yew-ehn-ee-jee-are-ay-ess-ess

Double-yew… Why

The only other fill-in-the-blank was reserved for Today’s date, which as usual, Mily couldn’t recall. Thankfully, Merit Mark-Hough raised his hand and then went on ahead and asked his question without waiting to be called on:

“Mixshway, what’s the date today?”

Their teacher didn’t speak but held up one finger, picked up a stick of chalk, and wrote on the blackboard big enough for the whole class to read:

‘Nine dash One-One dash Two-Oh-Oh-One,’ Mily mouthed while sounding-out the numbers to make sure she copied them down right. The Clairs may’of given Mily magic powers, but they didn’t help her any with keeping numbers straight. For some reason numbers strayed out of order in Mily’s brain, didn’t stick together like the way letters made words. She started counting the tick-tocks on the analog clock fixed over the classroom door – Which Mily had, in fact, left just slightly open.

She peeked down Mx. Schwae’s sightline to see if her suspicion that the teacher was watching the clock was true… And it was! The clock’s little hand was smack-dab between Eleven and Twelve, and the big hand slowly to Six. As the skinny red second-hand wound past Nine, Mily grew positive that their timer would start at exactly Eleven-Thirty.

Mily lowered her gaze to the upturned page and scanned the first few Fast-Facts...

Six-times-six is thirty-six.

Six-times-nine is fifty-four.

Six-times-ten is sixty – easy!

Six times seven is

Through the crack in the door Something bent Mily’s ear – A terrible Strangeness to hear – Every shred of her Attentions went cats-cradle searching for the source of some far-off words filled with warning –

“–tension / CODE RED

There Has Been An Attack In Atlantia

CODE RED / This Is Not A Test

Shelter In Place / Seek Cover At Once

Local Keepers Will Be In Touch

Attention–”

Mildred Junegrass Womack-Yoder was lost – She looked around saw everybody was hard at work on the Fast Facts Practice, scribbling answers in numbers with frenzy. Mily realized she’d missed Mx. Schwae saying ‘Start.’

How many seconds had she wasted? Mily’s thoughts leapt like her brain waves wore moon-shoes A sudden rush of blood to the head and gave Mily the gumption to get going, she had to reread every Fast Fact twice because her heart was racing than the clock at that point, leaving Mily with no sense of how much time had burned up already…

Six times seven is

Six times seven is

Six-times-seven-is-six-times-seven-is

Six Times Seven Is

Forty-six!

Mily chanced a glance at the running clock and gawked at the not-enough time she had to do the entire page of Fast Facts… Shoot! Six-times-seven was not forty-six – It’s Forty-Two!

The second hand hit the minute mark, and Mily’s pencil fell plum out of her hand and fell onto the floor. She left it there Courage sprung up by the fact that this activity would not impact her grade, she gave up on it.

“CODE RED / This Is Not A Test

Shelter In Place / Seek Cover At Once”

She stood up – Without understanding what exactly she’d just decided to do, Mily widened the crack in the doorway and slipped through – Leaving Mx. Schwae, Merit Mark-Hough, Jean Baptiste States-Prestige, Narvel Bleau-Gill, Hilarity Marlbrook-Quotient, the Twins, Lespedeza Easterly-Reed, and River O’Riain-Forsythe behind.

Where are you going?

Mily went into the hall all alone, following the Clairs’ notions as-to-the-source of commotion, and took off walking in the direction of the Computer Lab. Something happened in Atlantia, she told Eyani from afar. Something bad. It got attacked…

Okay and uh why

Why are all your thoughts red?