Milo and the Restart Button

by Alan Silberberg

  Dabney St Claire wants pepperoni, but Hillary is a vegetarian and Marshall says vegetables are against his religion so we have to settle on just cheese.

  My dad writes it all down on a piece of paper and bows like he’s a waiter, and I just want to be invisible. “Be back in twenty minutes,” he says, which is a relief because now we can start the movie in peace.

  While the previews play, Hillary taps my shoulder. “Your dad is nice.”

  And all I can do is shrug.

  The movie starts, and we turn off all the lights and sink into the quicksand of my couch. As promised, twenty minutes into Galaxy Quest, my dad’s back, and he bought bottles of grape and orange soda. I admit the movie gets better after the pizza arrives, and watching my friends thank my dad makes me think maybe what he did is a good thing and not the embarrassing thing I feel.

  “Never give up! Never surrender!” That’s the catchphrase in this movie, and every time the main character says it, Marshall stands up on my couch and says it too. The first time he does, grape soda comes out of Hillary’s nose. The second time, we all laugh so hard that I have to pause the movie and then rewind it so all three of us can stand on the couch and yell it out too. “Never give up! Never surrender!”

  Bowls of bad microwave popcorn appear from the man dressed up as my dad, and I apologise a bunch of times to my friends for having the cheap kind that never fully pops and is made with fake butter that smells a little like stale milk.

  Hillary and Marshall just yell “Shut up!” enough times that I finally see their point that talking during the best scenes just ruins the movie, and I shut up and grab a handful of popcorn and slide into the feeling that I’m hanging out with friends on a Friday night, which instantly creates a check in one of my “Life Goals” boxes.

  Truth is, I’ve hung out with Marshall tons on weekend nights, but that doesn’t really count beyond the fact that Marshall is awesome and my best friend. With the addition of Hillary, the whole thing changes, and it’s not because I like her, which I don’t! It’s because now it doesn’t feel like two guys alone watching things explode on TV, it’s three friends, which is a perfect number for meeting my goal and the reason the box gets checked now and not before.

  MY LIFE GOALS

  #39: Weekends mean hanging out with friends

  “Special features!” Marshall shouts when the movie is done. He loves all the goofy outtakes and documentary stuff that shows behind the scenes.

  After we watch every special feature on the disc, we decide that life should have special features so you could learn about the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on with all of us. We start a discussion that goes like this:

  Marshall: “Okay, if you clicked on my special features button, you’d get to learn about how my mom once dressed me up as a dog for our Christmas card photo. The guy at the store even gave me a fake bone to hold. True story.”

  Hillary: “No way!”

  Me: “It’s true. I saw the picture. Funny.”

  Marshall: “Way funny.”

  Everyone: (laughs)

  Hillary: “Well, if I had special features, I guess it’d be behind the scenes of when I used to name my fingernail clippings.”

  Marshall: “Whoa! That’s pretty weird.”

  Hillary: “Really weird.”

  Me: “You think that’s weird? What about this one: Hillary still has a whole shoe box of broken doll pieces that she hides under her bed!”

  Marshall: “No way!”

  Marshall finds this so strange that it’s funny, and he starts rolling around on my floor like he’s on fire. I laugh too because I want to be like Marshall – but then I see Hillary, who isn’t even smiling, and my laughing voice evaporates.

  “Oh, dude,” Marshall says after his laughing dries up. “Now I gotta go to the bathroom.” He gets up, leaving me alone with Hillary.

  “I can’t believe you, Milo.” She is really mad. “That was a secret. I shared it with you. And you just made fun of it . . . of me.”

  I want to say I’m sorry, but that part of me gets overtaken by the other part – the part that has just let all the air out of the fun and is trying to ruin everything. “What’s the big deal?” that me says. “Those broken dolls were just stupid, anyway.”

  Hillary’s eyes go from angry darts at me to sad mirrors, and there’s nothing I can say or do to make that look go away. “Oh, really? Then why did you take one of them when you left?”

  I forgot about that – and then I remember what I did and I blurt it out. “That stupid guy? I threw the pieces out my window. That’s how dumb I thought he was.” Wow, I can’t believe I am being this mean.

  Hillary stops looking at me and her eyes now watch my floor. Maybe she’s hoping the conversation can be rewound like a DVD – that’s what I’m hoping, anyway.

  “I thought . . .” She can’t even finish that sentence because she grabs her coat and walks out of my house.

  Marshall comes back from the bathroom, and he’s clueless that the Friday night we had a minute ago is now something totally else. He jumps onto my couch and strikes the catchphrase pose. “Let’s watch it again!” He’s pumped and up for anything.

  But I can’t do it. I am giving up and surrendering to the fact that I am a complete jerk.

  salt and pepper

  I LIKE MARCH BECAUSE IT’S JUST ONE CALENDAR page away from April, which is when the real spring weather hits. What I don’t like is you just can’t count on March: One day you get a warm breeze and the flowers start to wake up, and the next you get a snow day from school and your dad skids in a doughnut in the icy parking lot (which you actually think is fun, not dangerous, though it’s both).

  Totally unpredictable. That’s March, which is why it makes me nervous.

  Sylvia waves from her living room window, and as soon as I see her, I don’t hesitate to wave back. I pretend I can’t find my house key and turn to face her house, where she is already motioning me to come over.

  Inside she asks how school was and what I’m up to and comments on my shirt, which has a big stain on it from art class where Barry Durwood decided I’d make a good canvas for his painting of a shark. And he got detention.

  I saw Hillary just once today, and maybe that was because she was avoiding me and maybe it was because I did everything I could to walk the other way if I saw her. There were no purple notes in my locker today – or all last week for that matter – and I miss them. Even the stupid ones that just said hi.

  “Gin!” Sylvia spreads all her cards out in that winning way that makes me admit I am not much of a cardplayer.

  “I think I’m much more of a Crazy Eights kind of guy,” I say to her as I push the cards back into a mishmash crash scene and then shuffle them as best I can.

  “Don’t underestimate your skills, Milo. You’re already better than last time.”

  We play cards while the brownies finish baking and I wait for my sister or my dad to show up across the street, which will force me to admit I have to go back to my own house.

  “Oh, I just remembered something,” Sylvia says to me, and then leaves the kitchen. Quickly.

  I kill the time she’s gone by playing action heroes with her salt and pepper shakers. The salt is a rooster and the pepper a hen, and I hold one in each hand while I make them fight each other in a monster movie called Battle to the Death. Salt-Rooster is the enemy who can turn anything it pours itself on into stone, and Pepper-Hen is the nemesis with the sprinkled power of extreme itchiness.

  Right after they join forces to destroy the napkin holder, I finally notice that Sylvia is back, watching me. Smiling. “Paul used to love that silly rooster,” she says. “For the life of me I don’t know why.”

  And then easy as saying my name I add, “My mom had a set that was a cat and a dog. I think the dog was the salt.”

  Sylvia smiles again. “See that? Things attach to memories, Milo. It doesn’t take much to remember, does it?”

  And she’s right, because thinking
about Sylvia’s salt-shaking rooster suddenly I do picture my mom showing me her new salt and pepper shakers – the dog and the cat – and making them bark and meow while we both filled them up, and I even remember when I broke the cat by accident and she was mad for a minute but then just shrugged and said, “Them’s the breaks.” And we both laughed.

  Sylvia takes her hand from behind her back and shows me why she left the room. “Here, Milo. A present.” She hands me a small square gift. It’s flat and wrapped in flowery lady-type wrapping paper, which usually I’d hate but not this time. She tells me not to open it until later, and so that’s what I do – in my bedroom after the supper that my sister ruined by telling us in detail how she dissected a cow’s eye in biology, which did not add any flavour to my steak.

  I usually just rip wrapping paper to shreds to get at the insides, but tonight I’m like a surgeon carefully removing the tape pieces so that I can preserve the sheet of gift paper “as is”. Maybe I’ll save it and use it to wrap a present I give to Summer. I stop for about half a second to realise I haven’t thought much about Summer for a few days. But then the weight of whatever’s inside the flowered paper calls me back to my task and I finish getting the last piece of tape off.

  Peeling the paper back, I reveal the hidden treasure – the chocolate middle part of the Tootsie Pop. I stop wondering what Sylvia has given me when I see the thing that it is: It’s an empty picture frame about the size of a playing card, and I know she removed a photo of her husband so that I can fill the frame again with someone I miss.

  truce

  I KNOW WHAT I HAVE TO DO.

  I have to ask Marshall if he minds letting me cash in my half of the Freezie fund (equal to a grand total of $5.53). I don’t tell him why and he doesn’t ask, which is just Reason #47 why he’s so great. Reason #48 is because right away he adds, “If you need it, take it all, Milo.”

  Next I need Hillary, and even though we haven’t spoken since I blabbed all about her broken-doll box, I call her up and ask if we can meet somewhere. At first she says, “No way,” but then she adds, “How about my front steps?” and I say, “I prefer neutral territory,” so it’s the Pit Stop where we decide to go to discuss what I want to do.

  Because I get there first, I go ahead and buy her some gum – sort of as a peace offering and maybe as a bribe. It’s sour watermelon gum, and it’s her favourite, and she almost smiles when I hand it over.

  We sit outside near the bike rack with our backs against the yellow cement wall. Because it’s been sunny all morning, the wall is warm, and even through my flannel shirt, my back feels nice. She sits staring at the pack of gum and I just sit.

  “It’s okay,” Hillary says, cutting me off. But she’s not ready to look at me yet. Instead, she holds up the rectangle of packaged gum, and it looks like she’s inspecting it for any flaws in the design. But then she digs around for the little piece of wrapper that you pull like a zipper that undoes the top, and she unwraps a piece of the pink-and-green gum and pops it in her mouth. I can smell the watermelon all the way from next to her, and it makes me smile because I hate the taste but love the smell.

  “One more thing,” I say, reaching in my coat pocket. And I watch her blow a perfect bubble as I pull my hand out and open it. “I found him.”

  It’s the broken doll’s head and torso that I took home from her shoe box. As soon as the snow melted even a little, I started my rescue mission by spending different half hours digging around the row of bushes between our houses. When I finally spotted the crooked plastic shoulder sticking up through some dead leaves, I felt like I’d found a piece of me, and I actually gave him a bath in warm soapy water just to try to get the winter stains off.

  I give the broken doll pieces back, and I can tell Hillary is being careful not to say anything that will make the whole good-talking part pop and so she only says, “Thanks, Milo.”

  She sits there thinking and holding the broken pieces in her hand, and I can tell she wants to say more, but secretly I’m glad that she doesn’t.

  “There’s something else,” I say. “Something I need help with.”

  “There’s lots of things you need help with.” And because she’s smiling, I know this was actually a nice thing to say to me and that’s exactly how I hear it.

  “I want to go to yard sales and I need a guide,” I tell her.

  Hillary doesn’t ask why I want to go to yard sales, but she does tilt her head the way I like. “What’s going on in that brain of yours, Milo Cruikshank?”

  And I smile back and say, “Secrets – the good kind. The kind that feel good.”

  Two teenagers walk up to the Pit Stop, and one of them has long black hair and the other one wears a ski hat even though it’s April.

  I make a note to throw out all my winter hats as soon as I get home.

  windmills

  IT FEELS LIKE FOREVER WAITING FOR THE weekend, but Hillary explains that no one has yard sales during the week, and even if they did, there’s no way she’d skip school just to show me the ropes of buying cool stuff for cheap.

  I just have to get through the week, which isn’t so bad Monday through Thursday mainly because I get so busy with school and Mr Shivnesky’s tutoring and visits to Sylvia’s that I forget about the plan. But Hillary calls me Thursday night and says, “Great news, Milo.” And I’m honestly hoping her news has something to do with cake, but that’s not why she calls. “I’ve gone through the Penny-Pincher with a highlighter, and there’s going to be a ton of sales this weekend!”

  The Penny-Pincher is this free newspaper you can pick up at the supermarket, and it’s full of ads people write when they’re trying to get rid of stuff or just want to wish their dog a happy birthday, which to be honest, just creeps me out.

  I hang up excited that Saturday is almost here but still wishing for some cake. All I have to do now is speed up Friday, but Friday is the worst because it’s one of those school days that go really, really slow. Not even getting to watch part of a movie in Mrs Favius’s English class helps – mainly because it’s a movie of Shakespeare’s something or other that I can’t understand because everyone talks so weird. As much as I think any thing Mrs Favius does is perfect, her Netflix list seems kind of lame.

  Anyway, after English I have gym class, and there are no words to describe the way it feels to come in last when all you have to do is run laps around the stupid gym. This sounds pretty easy to do with the exception of it being twenty-five laps, which is like running to the Pit Stop and back home without getting to stop and buy a Freezie. What also makes the running harder is Mr Thwaits, who thinks it’s more “fun” to run while he throws dodge balls at you.

  But after lunch the day is on cruise control. Science. Spanish. Health. These just seem to slip through my head, and before I realise it, the bell is ringing and my day is finally finished. I put a tiny tick in the box that says School Week, pack up my books, and walk out the door a free man ready to meet tomorrow’s yard sales head-on.

  Saturday.

  I’m up and dressed before the alarm that I set for six forty-five because Hillary says success at yard sales is for the early birds. She says some people actually wait in their cars for the yard sale people to put out the tables and load them up and then they pounce on the yard sale. She also says it can get kind of ugly if the stuff being sold is cool junk and not just the junky kind.

  My house is the meeting point, and my dad actually makes French toast for Marshall and me. Hillary says she’s eaten already so just sits there while we wolf down the food. “Where are you kids off to?” my dad finally gets the courage to ask. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t really want to know, but he asks because that’s what a dad is supposed to do.

  “School project,” Hillary says before either Marshall or I could make something up. And I am impressed because I never told her not to talk about the plan – she just knew.

  We’re out the door and it’s still just 7:30, so we make our first stop at the Pit Stop to stock up
on the essentials – namely, one pack of candy or gum and one Freezie, because the budget is supposed to be for my yard sale search, not junk food.

  “I’ve divided the neighbourhood into three sections,” Hillary says, spreading out a hand-drawn map that shows all the streets that are walkable to where we are. “Based on my experience, the best yard sales are on the green streets – those people love to get rid of stuff. I think they’re possessed. The blue streets might be okay – because the Penny-Pincher said ‘moving sale’, and moving people need to get rid of stuff. The yellow streets . . . I’d save them for last.”

  I am blown away by Hillary’s colour-coded map, and the thought in my head remembers that if it were last September, I’d think she was a freakish loser for making a map, let alone giving it colour codes. But it’s April, and the Me back then isn’t the same Me who’s walking side by side with two kids who are my friends. And a tiny voice in my brain whispers, That’s pretty cool.

  I’m wearing an empty cloth knapsack from the basement, and it smells a little bit like mouldy socks. I don’t care. It’s roomy enough for all sorts of stuff, and that’s my mission: to fill it with things that remind me of stuff that was thrown away before the fog.

  “You want to tell us what we’re looking for?” Marshall asks as we pass the grape Freezie back and forth, and I’m shocked that Hillary actually takes a sip too and doesn’t need her own germ-free straw, which I have in my pocket just in case.

  “Nope.” And I mean it. “I’m on a secret mission.” And only Dabney St Claire can truly appreciate the meaning of how secret missions need to be kept quiet, on a need-to-know basis. And right now no one needs to know anything but me.