MILY THE MILLENNIAL - Chapter 5

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

V. Downturned

“CODE RED / THIS IS NOT A TEST”

Mily didn’t believe in happenstances, and because of that she knew for a fact it couldn’t be Chance causing these shying-on regular crossings with Manners of magic and mystery.

Mily knew for sure it was Schleprockness.

She didn’t think that these misfortunate strokes of luck were ‘a thing’ to anyone besides her family. Plenty of people had Schleprockness, Dog said, but he only knew what to call it because his Mom and Dad just always called it that.

Mily knew that it spread because, it was obvious her whole family had it to some degree. Bird said she didn’t believe it till One Day, it just dawned on her that she was Schleprock too. It made sense to Mily when her mom explained simply, “Wacky things just happen when you have Schleprockness.”

Will hypothesized that a kind of Power was at work, but beyond that, Mily didn’t get the finer points of what her brother thought Schleprockness was – All that really mattered to Mily was finding out why it seemed that only she could hear the Warning Voice calling:

“CODE RED / ACTIVE THREAT… The Dealer Has Declared A Novel Emergency… Terrorists Have Attacked The Twin Bowers… Two Ships Were Hijacked And Crashed Into The Right And Left Trade Towers… The Top Trump Office Has Issued A Follow-Suit Order… Aced And Faced Leaders In Every Estate Are Now Enacting Emergency Lockdown Procedures…”

The word Terrorists was new. Mily had never heard it before, not ever. But she understood its meaning from the feeling that was screaming in every fiber of her being –

She was full of fear.

Trying not to lose it, Mily followed the Warning Voice to the computer lab. She moved like a shadow to the blindspot between the lab windows and peered inside to see Mx. Rigor, the I.T. teacher, just sitting there in his straight-backed chair amongst his rows of sleeping computer monitors. The classroom lights were off, and Mx. Rigor was wearing a face full of blank shock.

The I.T. teacher’s old antenna radio was where the Warning was coming from. Mx. Rigor’s hands are sweating bullets… Mily thought. There were wet stains on his khakied knees where he kept wiping his palms.

Mily thought about going back to class, but when she looked back up the hallway, the door was still hanging wide open! No one had noticed her absence, it seemed, so Mily stayed rooted where she was and kept on wondering why nobody had moved yet, when she heard again –

“Shelter In Place / Seek Cover At Once

Local Keepers Will Be In Touch”

Mily almost tripped over her own feet scrambling past the computer lab. She steered toward the right-hand side of the hallway, shooting for her cubby closet aways down, where she kept marbles and lunchbox.

Seek Cover…

Mily’s thoughts reached her long seconds after she’d already decided to do what the Warning said.

“CODE RED / THIS IS NOT A TEST”

Mily unclenched her fists, yanked open the unlocked cubby door, and stared. Its insides were roomy since not much was in there. One last look back told her that no one at all was coming to find her, so Mily ducked her head, tucked her knees and elbows into the closet, and closed herself inside it.

Exhaling – Inhaling, Mily rubbed her palms on her knees and tried not to feel squeezed.

Where did you go?

Mily wanted to answer Eyani, but one of her magic bugs was buzzing so loud that she couldn’t remember what she might’of said back to E to start with.

Mily never knew what to call it but Static – It was like the Clairs were scanning the air to catch conversations in their ever-expanding hearing range. It made her inner ears crackle and smart as if they were electric-lined.

Please hush, Mily pleaded, I hafta tell the Twins it’s notta test… but the Clairs paid no care to her reason.

Yeah it’s just practice but Mily

Why did you leave?

Mily was feeling rather lost for thought. She pressed the palms of her hands flat to the closet floor and wiggled her fingers, incapable of giving answer.

The Clairs were hungry for her added Attentions. Mily was used to being distracted by whatever whiffs of curiosity the bugs went after, but she had always felt in control.

Mily had never ever thought about whether she or the bugs were in charge. She felt the Clairs’ strange powers and shivered. It was like being pushed and prodded to Cede, to relinquish her Sense of Being somehow –

Mily was afraid. She didn’t want to give herself over to Something inside her – Not knowing where might guide her. Should she fight like her life depended on it, or just let the Clairs snatch her away? Would the bugs give her brain back, or did this moment mean Mily was losing her Wits for good? And if she did permit it – or fail to resist it – What in the world would happen to her?

Mily felt a Magic shudder and shut her eyes. Pressure built in the bridge of her nose and spread inward, filling her cranial stores like popcorn. Mily was sure if she looked, she might just be Nowhere.

And, in a Sense, Mily was Elsewhere.

Mily Junegrass Womack-Yoder woke from her first Passage when she heard Bird’s voice overhead.

“Hello students, teachers, staff, visitors, and volunteers,” Principal Birdram Wood said over the school intercom. “I need to ask you all to please give me your Undivided Attention.”

Bird had Mily’s at once.

“We are experiencing an Emergency,” Bird said. “And because of that, we are going to get ready to go home early. We are safe: What Happened is far away, so please don’t be afraid. But it is an unexpected half-day, so I don’t have time to explain everything right this minute because we need to get moving here…

Emjay Schwae just wondered where you’re at

“Students, please help your teachers by finding your assigned seats. Collect your things and get there quickly please… Teachers, I need each of you to please take Attendance by hand, and – Please sign and confirm that your current roster matches this morning’s Attendance Report and accounts for all Absences, even if – especially if tardy slips didn’t make it to the Front Office yet today…”

Bird went on talking but Mily’s head hurt, so a lot of what her mom said after that point went right over her head. How long had it been since she walked out of her Fast Facts straight into Madness? It was disorienting. Mily thought she must’of gone into a trance or something because she was still hunkered in the cubby… Whole minutes had passed since Mily first left class, and it seemed quite implausible that Mx. Schwae hadn’t noticed till Now.

Am I invisible?

Cut it out come back I’m serious!

“RED ALERT / The Left Bower Has Fallen”

Mily’s knees and elbows locked in place. No, she wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t leaving this closet!

Her mind raced and crashed, became a stranded stream of thought which got so mixed and mashed and twisted that, Mily would always struggle to answer when asked, ‘What were you thinking That Day?’

She was only Eight, after all.

Mily saw blue and black spots and realized she hadn’t been breathing. It felt like she’d sucked the cubby fresh out of air, but she was scared to get out.

She felt frozen stuck.

“I’ll be around to each classroom to collect Attendances,” Bird said in a lower tone knew meant her mom was in-conclusion. “But realquick Misty, Paul – Please send my kids to my office? Will, Mily, Eyani, and Esabel. Right now, please?”

It struck Mily Then that she might scream.

Did Bird know that she’d just kept Mily out of trouble for ditching class during Fast Facts? Relief lasted only an instant; aftershock was turning the clock Fast Forward; Mily heard her own voice shouting without knowing how or when or why she started – “Mom!”

Mily squinted at the light: Someone’d swung the cubby door wide: And it sure wasn’t Bird.

It was Padrick Chance Birke-Altera. Mily felt her face turn beat-red. He was one of Will’s friends.

“Hi,” Padrick said.

There was a long pause, during which Padrick and Mily stared at each other, dumbstruck. It was obvious their encounter was the very last thing either of them had expected.

Padrick scratched his rib with his free hand – the other was ladened with a set of wooden paddles which were fixed together by an iron spout. After a beat, he and tried to get things going again: “I’m uh, not your mom, but I’m Paddy.”

Mily didn’t know what to say to explain herself. She didn’t know what to say Period. What must she look like, curled so squirrelishy inside a cubby? Stalling for time by moving her palms to her knees (just so it would seem like she might do something) but then still coming up short for self-direction, Mily went out on a limb –

Pointing with her nose to the curious spade-shaped device dangling from Paddy’s left hand, she plain-out asked, “What’re those?”

“Bellows,” Paddy answered.

Mily nodded. She had no idea what that meant, but the casual way the kid said it made the bellows seem arbitrary. Her cheeks burned for calling them out in the first place.

“You’re Will Wood-Yoder’s sister right?” Paddy asked, scratching his rib with the end of his bellows.

“That’s me,” Mily managed as seconds lagged. She hardly seemed to recall Language, nevermind what her Name was – It was long, and she preferred any one of her many nicknames as long as the right people used them, and besides most fokes only called her by ‘Will’s Little Sister’ anyway.

“Mil, uh – Mily right?”

She nodded, feeling oddly frightened. The surest simplest thing was to just say something. Say anything.

Mildred – Speak. Up.

Forreal Emjay Schwae said you must’of known

How come you didn’t say we’re leaving early

and just wait for Us?

On Our way now

Esa has your bookbag you’re welcome

“If you want, you can walk with me,” Paddy persevered. “I was just going to the office when I heard a shout and thought maybe someone was uh, stuck in this cubby.”

Swift as a fiddle, Mily twisted and tumbled out of the closet onto her feet.

“Sorry you had to see that,” she told Paddy.

“Were you trapped?” Paddy asked.

“I might’of been.” Mily grabbed her lunchbox and marbles from the top shelf and shut the cubby door and held the items stiffly. She tried not to peek at Paddy out of the corners of her eyes while she waited for him to ask How or Why Mily’d climbed inside the cubby in the first place… but he didn’t.

Hold your horses m’kay…

Mily and Paddy were defrosting from their polite states of shock when they heard a door close. Mily turned back toward her class and saw the Twins loping long-legged in their direction.

“Did you hear it?” Mily asked Esa and E as soon as they were near enough that she needn’t raise her voice to be heard. “The CODE RED I mean, did you see? All the firetrucks and am-ambluences and dust?”

The Twins blinked hard like she’d just asked them to answer a riddle. Mily looked desperately over at Paddy and then flushed. What reason did she have to think he had super-hearing too?

“She means the Emergency, I think,” Paddy said. “Something bad happened, over by the Ocean. Something Big. I saw – ”

Paddy Chance’s eyes grew wide, failing to find words for What he had seen.

Mily waited patiently for him go on. She had Seen too – Everything! So, she knew how confusing it was.

“Skyscrapers on fire,” Paddy settled on saying seconds later. “It was on the News in the teachers’ lounge. A plane crashed, or… I think two planes crashed, and they said it was uh, on purpose…”

“Yes,” Mily agreed. She was relieved – Paddy’s reading helped her make so much more Sense of what she’d Seen. “Terrorists attacked.”

“Emjay,” Esa said, holding out Mily’s bookbag by a single strap so she would grab it. “Are you okay?”

“What! I’m fine,” Mily cried. “On the Computer Lab radio it said Seek-Shelter-Code-Red. So I went! I heard it because of my bugged-up ears – Okay? So maybe you didn’t hear it, but I did.”

Mily then swung her lunchbox in one hand and shook her jar of marbles in the other, flustered, finding it hard to say out loud that she needed a little help! Esa smirked and unzipped her bookbag, took Mily’s lunchbox from her hand, and stuffed it inside the pack before handing it back by one strap again.

Mily fastened her grip on her marbles and pulled the bookbag around her shoulders. She didn’t say thanks and didn’t wait for the others – she just took off walking down the hall and busted straight through the doors at the end, onto a carpet landing at the top of the stairwell.

She paused there and thought about waiting…

But Mily let steam off instead, racing down three flights of stairs two steps at a time. She couldn’t tell whether she’d gone Nuts or if all this was Real. But the downward spiral of the stairs made Mily feel like she might outrun Schleprockness if she really, really hurried.

Swift footedness, at least, left unimpeded by her current state of Awares, when Mily landed at the bottom of the stairs, Paddy and the Twins were still at the top.

Of course, now Mily wished she’d gone slower. The Twins sounded like they were practicing for a three-legged race down the steps. Mily guessed the softer double-thunks punctuating the background of her cousins’ cantankerous racket was just Paddy – probly greeting each stair with both his feet, trailing behind so as not to get toppled if Eyani and Esa’s mischief led to an accident.

That unlikely thought made Mily grin a little bit. The Twins never tripped, not like she did. She unscrewed the top of the marble jar and rooted around for her Starfish Shooter. She often liked to fiddle with it, ever since the incident with the Pitcher’s thistle.

When she’d fished it out and refastened the lid on her marbles and still the Twins hadn’t made it to the bottom, impatience led Mily through the bottom floor stairwell doors and into the main hallway of the Schoolhouse Shop.

Her eyes traced the brick herringbone floor to the big pewter benches stationed outside the Office windows, where car riders waited to get picked up after school.

Mily picked the bench most out-of-sight of the Office windows and popped a squat while she waited for the others to join her.

When they did – the Twins grinning ear-to-ear, Paddy appearing quite amused but also bemused – Esa said, “I’ll go tell Office Lady we’re waiting out here.” Then Esabel Earlee Able-Yoder turned on her heel to go and do what she’d said.

“Mind if I wait out here with you?” Paddy asked.

“No,” Mily said.

“Why d’you have bellows?” E asked, sitting down on the bench right next to her.

Paddy lifted the device and his eyebrows and said, “It’s Simple Machines Week.”

“Oh,” Eyani and Mily said together.

“I didn’t want to go today,” Paddy explained, “So I left them in my cubby to use up time at the end of class.” He got a spark in his eye and added wistfully, “But I guess I gotta go anyway, since you asked…”

Paddy aimed the bellows like he was piloting a mounted water gun on the Midway, shooting an airstream out of its long-barreled nose and – blasted Mily in the elbow.

“It makes wind!” she marveled.

“They can kickstart a fireplace or stoke one that’s dying,” Paddy elaborated.

Uncrossing her arms, Mily leaned in to inspect the bellows closer. “So they help the flames breathe?”

“Uh, yeah! That’s it exactly.”

“Know why the tube-end is made of metal, Mil?”

Mily turned her head at the sound of Will’s voice. Her brother was standing right there. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but it couldn’t have been long since she was very hard to sneak up on these days.

“So that it doesn’t catch on-fire,” Mily emphasized, “when you poke it straight into some burning wood.”

“Very good!” Will applauded, as if know this fun-fact was the same thing as acing a pop-quiz.

“I’m a real wizkid,” Mily said.

“Takes one to know I guess,” Paddy said.

Right then Mily decided she would be friends with Padrick Chance Birke-Altera if he wanted to be.

Esa came back from the office and plopped into the last seat on the bench beside her brother. Not another moment elapsed before she asked, “So that’s why you dipped out of Fast-Facts huh?”

Fury rose in Mily’s belly. Not in front of Will! she hissed at E, who clearly relayed the message because Esa’s face turned red at once and she looked down at her lap – something Esa always did when she realized she’d spoken without thinking again.

Mily felt her big brother’s eyes but wouldn’t meet them – She met Paddy’s instead and was pleased to see he looked surprised but in a good way. And anyway, her chance to fess-up about ditching class – Passed.

Because Someone then entered the Schoolhouse Shop – And the appearance sucked all the air out of the kids’ conversation. Whether that was good or bad luck, to this very day, Mily wasn’t sure.

But she recognized the Stranger at once.

It’s that guy from outside on your Birthday!

Eyani’s eyes didn’t waver as he watched the man approach the Office. The Stranger never even glanced their way, but when he was closest, the Clairs emitted a scary chorus of viper-like hisses, stressing their venom by vibrating viciously in Mily’s forehead, turning the edges of her vision blurry.

“CODE RED / This Is Not A Test

Shelter In Place / Seek Cover At Once

Local Keepers Will Be In Touch”

He must be our Local Keeper.

Why would he come here first?

Mily shrugged, but really having no idea why the Stranger would come to their school first (of all places…) left her very unsettled. Mily didn’t like not knowing. Maybe we’ll find out later? she thought back. Something was telling her that they would…

And oh, did they ever.