Begin Again

In my defense, I don’t wake up on Wednesday morning with the intention of unearthing Milo’s deepest secret and upending the sanctity of one of Blue Ridge State’s most prolific traditions. And also in my defense, I was just trying to be a good roommate when it happened.

It’s still pitch-black when I wake up to the sound of the door clicking shut. I flick on the light by my bed just to confirm Shay is gone and check the time. Two things register: one is that it’s six in the morning, and the other is that I still haven’t written a worthy response to the “Bed of Roses” column I took on this week. Everything’s been such a whirlwind I haven’t even been able to put myself in the headspace for it.

I let out the kind of sigh I know means I’m not going back to sleep anytime soon, stretching just enough that something glints from Shay’s side of the room—her room key, sitting on top of her fully made bed.

“Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts,” I mutter, grabbing the keys and shimmying into a pair of sweatpants and the slippers by my bed.

I see Shay and Milo both getting into the elevator at the end of the hall as I poke my head out, but the doors shut before I can holler. I take the steps as fast as I can and bolt out braless and coatless, so cold that the air feels like the inside of a sno-cone, but when I call out Shay’s name she doesn’t so much as flinch.

Shay and Milo abruptly pivot to the psychology building near our dorm and walk inside, so I follow with the half walk, half jog of someone who is both freezing and attempting to use their own forearms as a makeshift bra. It’s not just that I’m going to be busy with class and a tutoring session all day, so I won’t be able to let Shay in—it’s also that my brain can’t reconcile these two non-psychology majors wandering in there before most psych majors have cracked an eye open. I’m too curious not to follow.

By the time I get inside I see Milo unlocking a door and Shay following him in, but they still don’t hear me—they’ve both got headphones on—so I have to drag my slipper-clad self to the unmarked door and catch it with my hand just before it closes.

Shay spots me first, and greets me with an “Oh, shit.”

“Your key,” I blurt, holding it out to her, my hand shaking from the cold.

Only then, when Shay and Milo both freeze in place, do I take in our surroundings. The soundproofing foam on the walls, the soundboard propped on a table, the comically small booth behind clear plastic with chairs and mics dangling in front of them. A weathered-looking sign reads BLUE RIDGE UNDERGROUND.

“Oh, yikes. Thanks for that,” says Shay, taking the key from me. She glances at Milo with a sheepishness I can’t decipher. “Uh . . . my bad.”

But Milo’s already shucking off his jacket and tossing it to me.

I catch it, but just barely, because my eyes have already snagged on another sign. One on the wall to the left that reads THE KNIGHTS’ WATCH has a bunch of pictures of students framed under it. The one closest to the top is a picture of Milo, looking slightly less sleep-deprived and smiling this wry, genuine smile that I saw just a hint of on my first day here. One that snaps the situation into place so fast that I can’t help it when my mouth falls open, and I blurt out the one thing they’re probably hoping I won’t say.

“You’re the Knight,” I say, gaping at Milo. “The Knights’ Watch—you’re the one recording it.”

It’s why I thought I recognized him when we first met. It had nothing to do with his face, and everything to do with his voice. I’ve spent the last six months with Milo in my ears—early mornings sitting in my grandmas’ garden, walking around the community college campus, lying in bed and watching the sun come up early enough to listen to it live.

The heat that floods into my cheeks is so searing that I don’t need Milo’s coat or maybe any kind of coat ever again. Shay winces, but Milo just lets out a loose shrug.

“Sorry,” Shay tells him. She turns back to me. “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

“Oh, I know,” I say, my eyes trailing all over the tiny room—everywhere other than the pictures on the wall, or Milo’s sleepy face.

“No, not just the Knight. Like, this whole setup.” Shay pulls down a rickety mic stand to settle it in front of a stool. “The broadcast and journalism programs don’t exactly love that the show is more popular than all of theirs after all these years, so we’ve been relegated to this, uh.” Shay looks around. “Is ‘closet’ too generous of a word?”

“But why the psych building?” I ask.

Milo shrugs. “It’s always been this way, is what I was told.”

My mom always told me they’d done the broadcast somewhere secret, but I was a kid back then. I’d imagined some edgy bunker or off-campus facility, somewhere hidden that would involve a fingerprint scan or password to get in. But I suppose in their case it might have made more sense to hide in plain sight. I’ve passed this same door plenty of times now and never even noticed it.

“Were you also told what to do about not one, but now two of your dorm residents finding out your big secret?” says Shay.

“Eh,” says Milo. “We’ll just make her sign an NDA and threaten to kidnap her firstborn if she rats on us. It’s fine.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I say quickly.

“I know,” says Milo, his eyes momentarily so intent on mine that my cheeks somehow burn even hotter. I chalk it up to embarrassment. I can’t believe I had no idea it was him. “It’s fine. Besides, even if you did tattle, nobody on campus outside our dorm’s floor knows my name.”

I back up toward the door. “Okay. I’ll just, uh . . . head back and never speak of this again?”

Milo taps the mic, one ear pressed to a headphone, the other still bare and listening to us. “You can stick around if you want.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t . . .”

But I would. Now that I’m here in this room that’s clearly older than all three of us combined, it’s like I can feel some echo of the energy in it. In the musty smell of the carpets, in the dim, moody lighting from the overhead lamps, in the way everything in here feels muffled and contained and . . . safe.

Shay nudges the chair next to her with her foot. I almost don’t take it. This all has a kind of surreal quality to it, like I stumbled into a dream, or maybe one of my mom’s. I sit down, acutely aware that somewhere on that wall of photos her eyes are watching me.

“You work on the show, too?” I ask Shay as she fires up a laptop and Milo busies himself with the mic.

“A few times a week, for extra work-study hours. I help consolidate the stuff the school sends so Milo can write it up. Mostly I just look at listener emails and questions.”

I end up sliding Milo’s jacket on anyway, only because it will become abundantly clear just how braless I am if I don’t. It’s soft and flannel and has that distinctive woodsy citrus smell that makes me want to pull my knees up to my chest and burrow into it.

Shay pulls up the account and I let out a low whistle at the 173 unanswered emails.

“Oh, that’s just left over from New Year’s. We had listeners email about their resolutions.” I almost blurt out the words “I remember that” before Shay adds, “I keep meaning to go through and delete them, I just . . . I don’t know. Felt weird.”

“Weird how?” I ask.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Like, some of them are kind of . . . personal? I don’t know. I should probably just clear them out.”

We’re interrupted by Milo tapping the bottom of a travel mug, sucking down the last dregs of his coffee. He blinks a few times, still trying to wake himself up. “I should have brought a second,” he groans.

Shay rolls her eyes. “You’re on in two,” she reminds him, tapping the print button on her screen, where there’s a bare-bones outline that says things like “weather 27 high 19 low clear skies” and “parent banquet date switch feb 22” and “trivia ribbons-tbd.” Before I can zero in on that last bit, a dusty old printer in the corner whirs to life, and Milo plucks the sheet from it.

“What would I do without you?” he asks.

“Deeply alarm our peers. Are you ready?”

Milo slides the panel to the recording booth shut, gazing mournfully into his empty coffee mug. “As I’ll ever be.”

He turns a dial and I hear the notes of a Bruno Mars song coming to a close—in between the radio show and the other occasional student programs on the station, the station just plays Top 40 hits from the past few years—and the telltale ding ding ding! that always chimes in to introduce the show. Milo sits up straight on his stool, and the transformation is so immediate that it almost seems like a trick of the light. His eyes brighten, his back straightens, and the wryness in his voice has an electric kind of energy to it that makes him impossible not to watch.

“Well, I’d say good morning, but we’re kicking off today’s broadcast with news that yet again a bunch of you opted to bring back ‘Hot Dog Breakfast Wednesday’ in the latest student dining hall poll,” says Milo, easing into the top of the show like he’s sliding on an old favorite sweater. “Your efforts succeeded, you monsters. So, very bad, possibly cursed morning to you all. And with that, the weather . . .”

For the first few minutes we both watch him in hushed silence. The way he takes the bare bones and riffs off them (“The parent banquet has been rescheduled to February twenty-second, which will henceforth be known as our one and only Student Sobriety Day”), making jokes about campus goings-on (“I have been told to remind you all that the arboretum is a place of learning, not a place of cavorting; but whoever is cavorting there, for the love of god, I hope you brought a decent coat”), talking into the mic with the warmth of a close friend.

But the moment he really comes alive is when he’s discussing ongoing efforts for the school to reform its work-study program, a common thread he follows up on every week. He leans into the mic with his full body, muscles tense and eyes alight with a new energy.

“If anyone else is keeping score out there, we’re on day five million and fifty-two of the administration ignoring that its overblown tuition hikes have caused the work-study applicants to outnumber the available positions for the program,” he says, his voice just as engaging as before, but with an edge. “To everyone who signed the online petition for the school to freeze tuition hikes and expand the work-study options to more local businesses, thanks. To everyone who didn’t, you’re dead to me. And probably also too rich to know this is even a problem, so I will accept an apology by way of a free sandwich or car.”

It’s not the first time this morning I’ve had to muffle a laugh. It’s like watching Gammy Nell tend to the themed crusts on her pies or Connor scanning the soccer field to figure out which teammates are open—someone clearly in their element, and enjoying every moment of it.

But watching him also makes me ache in a way I’m not used to anymore, at least not with such a full and immediate force. There was a time this made me happy, too. Using a platform and connecting with people in real time, whether it was talking at school assemblies or helping host the town’s annual talent show for kids or even the few times my mom let me “guest spot” on her radio show growing up. There was a time when I assumed I’d be doing that kind of thing my whole life.

“The brave one of us,” my mom used to brag to her coworkers, which seemed silly to me at the time. With her unapologetically blunt humor, willingness to navigate hot topics with guests, and relentless commitment to local causes, she was the bravest person I knew. She was a breath of fresh air on the radio, the host people tuned into every morning to wake them up and make them laugh, to set a tone for the morning that would follow them through their whole day. She was far from conventional, and she was beloved for it.

But she had stage fright of her own. She never wanted to make any appearances outside of radio, preferring the focus and quiet of being behind the mic. I was the one who dreamed even bigger; I was the one who dreamed so big that as a kid I felt limitless, like there was so much potential in the future that I could run in any direction and never meet the edge of it.

Now I can’t even bring myself to use my real name on a column for a high school I don’t go to anymore.

I wait for the ache to fade the way it normally does. These past few years it’s been more of a phantom feeling than a real one. But if anything it seems to spread deeper, claiming back old territory, making me unsettled in my skin.

“Wow,” I whisper to Shay, trying to pull myself out of it. “He’s so good at this.”

An understatement if there ever were one, but Shay just nods.

“He only just pulled out of the biology major last semester.” She turns back to the laptop monitor. “I’m guessing he’ll apply to the broadcast program here.”

I nod back carefully. Milo’s identity as the Knight isn’t just a secret for school tradition, then. If the broadcast and journalism heads don’t love the idea of this radio show, being publicly known as the host of it probably won’t put any points in his favor.

“Makes sense,” I say. “Why would he major in bio when he can do this?”

Shay clicks back into the overflowing inbox, but I don’t miss the way her smile falters in the light of the laptop screen. “Biology was Harley’s major, too. I think he was gonna follow him to med school or something. They were super close.”

Don’t overstep, says that part of my brain that knows all too well what will happen if I do. Don’t get involved. So even though I am itching to ask Shay for more details about this Harley-Milo-Girlfriend situation, I lean over her shoulder and decide to make strangers’ business my business instead.

“Let’s knock out some of the resolution emails while he’s at it.”

Shay blows out a breath. “I would,” she says, her eyes skimming the inbox. “I just don’t know what to say to people.”

I scan the subject lines like I’m running diagnostics on strangers’ brains. “I can answer some of them.”

“You really want to?”

I flex my fingers over her keyboard. “Let me at ’em.”

Since the emails are anonymous, I fall into a familiar rhythm, answering them with the same ease I answer my “Bed of Roses” column. Except the more I read, the more it feels like I’m finally part of something bigger here—like getting this glimpse into the day-to-day issues of other students makes the barrier I keep feeling between me and them fall away. Like I know this student trying to make a savings goal, or the one in a petty argument with a friend, or the other with chronic first-date jitters. People with problems so personal but so universal that it reminds me, the way running an advice column often does, that at our cores we’re all more alike than we think. Hung up on the same worries, wishing on the same stars.

It doesn’t quite make the ache from before go away, but it makes it quieter. Easier to ignore.

“Wow. Down to one sixty-seven,” says Shay, closing out of the browser at the end of the broadcast.

“Barely a dent,” I say. “I can do more.”

“We only have access to the server from this building. I assume you don’t want to get up at six in the morning to follow us here.” Before I can even fully hit her with the gleam in my eye, Shay smirks. “Never mind. Forgot who I was talking to. I’m just going to poke my head down the hall to make sure the kid who’s supposed to edit and upload the podcast version is fully functional.”

Shay heads out and Milo is busying himself with the soundboard, setting everything back the way he found it. I glance and he doesn’t glance back, so I figure he’s absorbed enough in what he’s doing that I can steal a glimpse at the wall.

All I have to do is take a few steps, and there she is—instead of chronologically, which would put her picture first, my mom’s frame is smack-dab in the middle of all the others. She’s beaming in it so widely that it makes my own cheeks hurt, her blond hair parted down the middle and draped over her shoulders, a version of her I don’t think I’ve ever seen. A version of her so close to my age that the resemblance isn’t just startling, but unsettling.

I look away, zeroing instead on an engraved piece of metal that says AMY JANSON, FOUNDER OF THE KNIGHTS’ WATCH, along with the years she went to the school.

“You ready to go?”

I take a sharp step back from the wall. “Yeah.” Milo doesn’t miss it, looking at me quizzically. I clear my throat. “Great show, by the way.”

He shrugs the praise off, grabbing a set of keys out of his pocket. “I try my best for our seven listeners.”

I lightly swat at his arm as he locks up. “It’s gotta be at least a few thousand. You really have a knack for this.”

Milo makes a face like he’s about to brush the compliment off, but we round the corner to the window and see a flurry of snow starting to fall so fast it looks like someone shook the campus up in a snow globe. Shay catches up to us in the hallway and joins us in our staring, her eyes going wide.

“It’s so beautiful,” I say quietly, already wondering how it will look in the arboretum if I manage to break away long enough to catch a glimpse.

“It’ll be even more beautiful if they cancel classes,” says Shay.

Milo nods. “Your mouth to the weather gods’ ears.”

I shrug off Milo’s coat. “Thanks for—”

He’s already walking toward the door, waving me off. “You can give it back at the dorms.”

“But it’s your coat, and it’s snowing, and—”

“I’ll be fine. Besides, if you freeze to death, it’s a hell of a lot of paperwork I’d rather avoid.”

He’s smiling, but something in his tone tells me it would be a waste of breath to argue. I’m starting to recognize it—the stubbornness of the way he cares. The way he really only pretended to strike a deal with me before helping me get a work-study position. The way he acts like he dreads his RA duties and yet seems to accidentally-on-purpose leave his door open for people to wander in and out during the day.

I shrug the coat back on, at ease in its warmth, but uneasy with something else—at the feeling of being taken care of, when so often I’m determined to be the one who takes care. At the surge of gratitude, but also something else that follows it, too warm and indistinct to name.

I wrap the coat around myself as tightly as I can, letting the fresh sting of the cold chase it away.