He laughed. “So what’re you and Sophie doing? Just hanging out?”
“Hanging out? Are you kidding? We’re working our butts off. Sophie’s opening a bakery in her house. We’re redoing the whole thing. Top to bottom.”
“You’re redoing the house?” Milo repeated. “Wow. Is it in bad shape?”
I laughed softly. “Yeah, you could say that.” I shaded his eyebrows, unruly in the middle where they were the thickest. “But it’s coming along. It really is. We’ve been doing a ton of work.”
“I did construction one summer back in Portland,” Milo said. “I liked it.”
“What kind of construction?”
“Just the roof of a house, really. It wasn’t too hard. But I liked being up there, in the bones of it, you know? Seeing everything all laid out like that. And whaling away with my hammer was pretty cool too.”
“We have these older guys helping out.” I told him about the Table of Knowledge. “But Sophie doesn’t use them very often. She’s kind of stubborn about it, really, insisting on doing it herself. I think she’s trying to prove something.”
“Well, maybe you should let her,” Milo said. “Maybe she does have something to prove.”
I stopped sketching, looking down at the face before me. Milo was right. Maybe Sophie did need to show herself that she could do this. Who was I to stand in her way?
“You doing anything for fun?” Milo asked. “Or just working all the time?”
“Well, I take long walks in the afternoon. And I met a really nice guy on one of them. He’s a potter. His name is Aiden. He lives right around…”
“A guy?” Milo repeated.
“Yeah.” I felt a twinge. Was that jealousy I heard in his voice? “He’s been teaching me how to make things. Out of clay. I told you, he’s a potter.”
“What’s he like, really old?” Milo asked.
“No. He’s twenty-four.”
Milo didn’t say anything.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” There was a pause and then, “Aren’t you coming home at all? Even just to visit? I mean, your parents must be going crazy.”
“No, no visits,” I said softly. “I need to be here. I’m staying here until I don’t have to anymore. Then I’ll come back.”
“Yeah. Okay.” I could hear Milo getting up and walking around the room. “I kind of miss seeing you in your window,” he said. “That’s all.”
My heart began to pound. “What window?”
“Your window. In your bedroom. The one you sit in every afternoon after school, doing your homework.”
Oh, Milo.
“Listen,” he said. “I have to go. My boss at the Pantry Quik docks my pay if I’m even two minutes late.” He paused, hesitating. “Will you call me again, though? Soon?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call you this weekend.”
“Great,” Milo said. “And Julia? If you need anything, anything at all, I’m here. All you have to do is ask.”
I put my pad and pencil down and stared out the window for a while after he hung up. Why did there have to be so many layers to everything, so many unseen—and unsaid—parts? Why couldn’t everything just be spread out, flat and even, so you could just see it for what it was? It could be like an enormous table, full of food. Over there, next to the mashed potatoes, would be the way Milo felt about me. And on the left, beside the broccoli, would be the way I felt about him. The truth about Maggie would be right in the middle, alongside the centerpiece, and all the reasons for Sophie’s anger would be sitting on the plates, ready and waiting. We could come to the table, all of us, and see what it was we wanted, what we felt hungry for. And because we could see it—and even taste it—we could decide if we wanted to take it or leave it.
Did anyone ever do that?
Was there anyone who even knew how?
chapter
38
Two days later, when Aiden offered me another afternoon ride on his quad, I hopped on. We sped through the forest once more, zigzagging through a maze of tree trunks and pine needles until finally bursting out onto a road.
I gripped the sides of his jacket. “I don’t want to go on the road without a helmet,” I said. “Seriously. Can we go back?”
“We won’t drive on the road,” Aiden said. “I just want to show you something.” He turned off the motor and beckoned me toward a stone bridge a few feet away. I leaned over the side next to him. Beneath us was a waterfall, set between two sloped—and very rocky—banks. A stream, thin as a snake, wound its way out from under the falls and then disappeared under the bridge. “Pretty,” I said.
“This is the East Poultney gorge,” Aiden said. “It is pretty. But it’s dangerous too. Those rocks are a lot trickier to navigate then you might think.” He took off his hat. “I come down here all the time, just to sit and hang out. It’s where I get a lot of ideas for my pottery designs.”