Chapter Eleven | Everything Has Its Place

♫ Everything Has Its Place by Young Mister

"Hey." I'm still so shocked, it's barely even audible.

"Sorry I'm calling. This is weird, I usually text people. Calling is for doctor's appointments." Milo's voice sounds crisp coming from my phone, but it's nice hearing his voice again. "Are you busy right now?"

"I-" I glance at the car. The back windows are blinded, so I can't even see Atlas or Rosie. All I know is that they're waiting for me. "What's up?"

"So, when I got this place I might've forgotten that part of moving somewhere is furnishing. I bought dinnerware and this monstrosity of a couch and surprisingly I got my bed here without my evil father trying to stop me. But then I was at Walmart for curtain rods and bought potted plants because they looked really healthy and vibrant, and I got a rug and paint for my walls and for some reason, fucking placemats. And then I returned home to a great big box in my apartment. Now, I'm thinking there's a live tiger inside. It's going to say, "This is from your dear ol' Dad" in the voice of Christopher Walken and then rip me to pieces and then ship the bed back to my father's place."

"Why Christopher Walken? How would a tiger ship back the bed?"

"You're supposed to disagree with me."

I let out a short laugh. "Sorry. It's unlikely that there's a tiger in there. And if there is, it's unlikely that it'll tell you who sent it, much less in the voice of Christopher Walken. Do you need me to come over and open the box with you?"

"Yes." Is all he says.

Milo's not one for retail therapy— I mean, placemats? Really?— and I can definitely imagine this to be much lonelier without Maxwell there. Or anyone at all, if he's really been isolating himself.

"I have to figure out how to get there first," I say, pulling my phone from my ear and exiting the call screen so I can find the route. "But I'll text you when I'm on my way."

"I can send you the route from Weinstein Hall. That's your dormitory, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm not on campus. I'm at Central Park."

"Oh. Okay. I'll—"

"Milo," I interrupt him. "Relax. I'll be there soon." When he doesn't respond, I hang up the phone and turn back to the car, getting into the passenger seat.

"Is he okay?" Atlas asks from behind Michael. His hand is in Rosie's, who's fallen asleep in her car seat.

"Yeah. He just needs some help with something. I'm heading there now," I respond, giving him a tight smile. Our eyes meet briefly and I feel actual entities in my stomach. When will he ask me again? Will he even ask me again? Maybe he took me answering the phone as a no, but he told me to answer it. Milo's as much his friend as he is mine.

Atlas nods once and turns to Michael, who's still waiting for directions. "Could you take us to The Capitol in Chelsea? 776 6th ave?" He asks.

My stomach sinks. The moment is definitely over and gone.

I don't even know for sure if he was asking me out. He started his sentence with "I'd love to go with...", and could've easily ended it with "...the group". It's not even as if I would be able to tell if anyone makes an advance towards me.

I need someone to grab me by the shoulders and look me in the eyes and explicitly tell me that they're interested, otherwise I don't think my mind will allow me to believe the signs.

I did get asked out once. I was thirteen and still in my brace-face phase and it was around the time I still had the ginormous orthopedic boots (and around the time nothing traumatic had happened yet for me to refuse to wear them any longer). Sofia was still in school with me, but Flynn had already moved onto high school, and he was the main reason people were nice to me. Not because he was scary or intimidating or overly protective as my brother, but because he was nice. He's always been the kind of person whose kindness is felt so very deeply and it attracted people to him, so until he left, people didn't mess with me.

But after he left, it started. I still remember his name: Quin Willoughby. He was lanky and had brown hair and exactly three hairs on his upper lip that only he referred to as a mustache. And, he happened to be the kind of guy every girl in my grade swooned over.

I was too busy being an academic nerd during that time to even think about boys, but the day Quin Willoughby sat next to me during math class and put his arm on the backrest of my seat changed everything, momentarily. The deal was, if he could have the week's homework answers, he'd take me to the state fair on Friday. He even explicitly called it a date, "but with his friends there", which honestly should've been my first red flag, but I was overwhelmingly flabbergasted and said yes.

Quin freaking Willoughby got all my math homework, distributed it to the rest of the class, and they were all there at the state fair on Friday night to see him call me 'an unwanted, cringy freak' and reject me. I was lucky my siblings agreed to come with (a few feet behind us, but close at all times because I needed back-up) and it actually ended up being a great night with the two of them, if you disregard the many times I ran into classmates who laughed at me when they saw me, and then stopped when they saw Flynn and Sofia stare them down.

It's safe to say I was very distrusting of boys after that happened, until Logan. Now it's been so long since we talked that I can't help but think this is him belatedly rejecting me, anyway.

I knock on Milo's front door, chest heaving from all the stairs-climbing I had to do with my tired, metal-rod-legs.

He swings it open on the third knock and ushers me inside, where a big box is sitting unopened in the middle of the living room, right behind a genuinely ugly black leather couch.

"Milo, you were definitely overreacting," I say, moving closer to the box. My voice echoes in the empty room. "A tiger doesn't fit in here."

I glance over at him to see his reaction. He exhales as he smiles, his entire body deflating. "Yeah, well..." He joins me, rubbing the back of his neck. "I did find out that Sergei sent it. Or Vivian did, using his name."

I press my lips together, not knowing how to respond. "Do you have scissors?" I ask.

He nods, retrieving a pair from a kitchen drawer and handing it to me.

I fumble with them for a bit (handling anything with my hands while I'm being watched is nearly impossible; it's like my muscles are like, "oh, she's nervous, stop what you're doing, guys!" and I have to physically fight them underneath my skin to get anything done). The sharp edge gets pushed into the tape, right between the flaps of the carton box, and I slice it open. Milo and I peer inside simultaneously to see a slightly smaller box inside, this one white with images of plates and bowls printed on the sides. He pulls it out and I open this one, too.

It's just carefully packed dishes. Cereal bowls, soup bowls, plates and a few mugs. We resort to sitting on the floor as we unpack everything, legs crossed.

"This is nice, right? The box looks expensive," I say, trying to spark up any kind of conversation. Usually he's the one to be talkative, but he's quiet today.

Milo turns a plate over in his hand, eyes locking on something on the bottom. "The box is the most expensive part of this... gift."

I take hold of the plate as he hands it to me. 'Dollar Tree Dinnerware Collection' it says, with a sticker for 'one dollar per unit of six' barely peeled off.

"I got the same ones from Dollar Tree yesterday," says Milo, nodding his head to his kitchen. "However, the box is from Artemest. They sell dinnerware for ridiculous prices. Eight-hundred-dollars-a-plate ridiculous. He's doing this on purpose." He runs a hand over his face and swallows, packing the dinnerware back up again. "Whatever. I don't need it. Maybe I can donate it somewhere."

"Wait. I have an idea."

He looks up at me as I shakily rise to my feet and walk into the kitchen. I rummage through his drawers. "Do you have Ziplock bags?" I call out to him. I do find two Sharpies, which I take, too.

"I bought those today, they're in the shopper on the kitchen island."

I rummage through the bag and find the Ziplock bags underneath the placemats that I can't believe he seriously bought, carrying them back to the living room and handing him a Sharpie and a Ziplock bag. "Pick a dish," I tell him. "I'll take a bowl."

He frowns at me. Not because he's mad, I know, but because he thinks I'm joking and he's not in the mood for jokes.

"Well?" I raise my eyebrows.

Finally, he picks up the plate he handed me earlier and waits for further instructions.

"Now, we write down our frustrations. You can write, I hate that my father sent me Dollar Tree dinnerware in an Artemis—"

He interrupts me. "Artemest."

"—Artemest box. And I hate that I bought placemats because who even uses placemats anymore." I look down at my bowl. "I'll write somethings down, too. You can read it when I'm done, or we can keep our frustrations to ourselves. We'll figure that out later."

He doesn't feel the need to make a remark, but slips onto his stomach and pulls the plate to him, uncapping the Sharpie.

I mirror his position, moving onto my stomach and using one spasmodic hand to keep the bowl from rolling away and the other spasmodic hand to try and write something on its slippery, white surface. Handwriting is hard for me in general, so I don't know what genius part of me came up with this, but looking at Milo concentrating in silence makes it worth it. Sometimes, we just need someone to lie on the floor with us and write curse words on dishes. I'm glad he called me, out of everyone. And, if I can be egocentric for a moment, I'm glad I'm the kind of person people call when they need someone. I'm glad I'm here to just be with him when he's obviously sad, and that not much else is expected of me.

I've only written "I hate that my classmates don't see me as a person" and "I hate feeling like I got into NYU just to be nothing" on my bowl when Milo sits up, but lay down my Sharpie anyway. I'd ruin the moment if I forced him to wait on me.

"What now?" He asks, exhaling.

"Now we put our dishes in our Ziplock bags," I answer. I zip mine open and carefully slide my bowl inside, standing up afterwards. "Keys?"

He wordlessly points to the kitchen again as he puts his plate into his Ziplock bag, neatly slipping it shut again. He rises to his feet and comes to join me by the front door, and then follows me all the way up to the roof, not asking any questions.

I lead him to the edge where we sat last time, when he told me about his father and the bathtub. I can tell he recognizes it by the way he shifts his feet on the floor, avoiding my eye.

"Sometimes, the right thing feels wrong because we're scared." I don't even know what I'm saying. I meant for this to be inspirational or kind, but I don't seem to control the words that tumble out of me.

I brush my hair from my face as the wind blows, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, reading the two sentences I wrote down over and over again. "For the longest time, I thought I'd never go to college," I confess.

"When I thought of moving out and of moving on, in a way, from home and my family and everything I'd ever known, I'd experience a shortness of breath and a tightness in my bones and it would stay there until I fell asleep. And then, to escape those feelings, I just slept all the time for weeks. Everyone thought that I was just anxious about what was coming, but it wasn't just college. I didn't want to eat or go out or celebrate Christmas. I didn't want anything, and I didn't want to tell anyone because I thought they'd talk me out of it, and I didn't want them to. I didn't want people to reason with me and encourage me, I just wanted to be asleep and avoid everything."

I stare down at my bowl, feeling his eyes on me, but unable to look up. "Many of the things I felt during that time were brought on by negative experiences I didn't control. And I think I just figured that that's all my life would ever be. A collection of moments I can't control. I can't control what people think of me or how they see me. I can be the smartest, most charismatic person in the room but if people aren't willing to look past what they see, initially, they won't care. And the idea that I'd spend my entire life not being in control of my identity, of all things, made me feel like nothing I'd do matter. And that nothing I'd ever be would matter. That going to college, or even leaving the house would just enable people to make me feel like I was nothing again, nothing besides what's wrong with me."

Claire, and my parents, always hated it when I referred to my disability as "the thing that's wrong with me", but I still think it best conveys how it feels to even have a disability to begin with, in my experience. Every time I try to do something— grab onto an object, take a step, pronounce a simple sentence— and it doesn't work, it feels like an error. It's still so unfathomable to me that most people don't have that feeling in their body. That it's not a constant feeling of failure and struggling that they're inevitably dealing with whenever they move a muscle. I know it shouldn't be as hard as it is for me.

"But you and I, we have an identity outside of what people think of us. That's difficult to recall at times like this, I know, but you're worthy of support even if you feel no-one supports you. And you are doing great things, and you are amazing, even without anyone telling you that you are. But I'm telling you, right here, right now."

I grip the Ziplock bag tightly, raising my chin. "I'm smashing my bowl and letting go of my frustrations. Because... I moved out and I'm in college. I can see the Empire State Building from this rooftop, and that's amazing. Even without anyone telling me it is." With that, I smash the bowl onto the ground and watch it shatter into a million pieces, until the words are just letters, and until the letters are just bits of black Sharpie on the pieces of a broken bowl.

I stare at it for a moment and then look up, meeting Milo's watery eyes. He clears his throat, wiping at his eyes and then looking down at his own Ziplock bag.

"I..." He starts, uncertain. In the silence that follows, I want to tell him that he doesn't have to say anything, but he continues before I have the chance to.

"I've always wanted to be more composed." He shifts at the last word, as if it reminds him that he's the opposite. "I feel like I've sort of stumbled my way through life. I feel like all I do is disappoint people and all people do is give up on me.

"I know Maxwell didn't mean what he said the other day, but he was right. The thing is... when people look at me, they think I don't care about anything. That I'm here to have fun and not take anything seriously and that I run around formal functions because I like being disruptive, not because I want my brother to feel more comfortable. I think if people knew how much I cared about what they thought of me, maybe they'd like me more."

He swallows feverishly, his eyes still watery. "I wanted to be proud of myself. I wanted Max to be proud of me. I wanted my father to see that I'm distancing myself from him and even though he's spent his life hating me, I wanted him to care about it. But he didn't. He doesn't. Now it feels like everyone is in on some kind of joke. It feels like everyone knows something that I don't and they're watching me go down for it.

"I'm smashing my plate because... I want to feel how great it is that I got my own place. And I want to be proud of it, even if it's on my own. And even if it's temporary and even if Sergei doesn't care and Maxwell doesn't believe in me. And I'm smashing my plate to let go of feeling this loneliness. Because—" He looks at me. "I'm not alone." He pulls his arm back and then swings it down, breaking his plate into a million broken pieces right next to my bowl.

I go to stand next to him as we stare at them.

"Why the Ziplock bags?" Milo asks after a while. But it sounds like he breathes easier, and the question sounds lighter and breezier than I think it would've sounded twenty minutes ago.

"It's easier to clean up. I saw it on Twitter." I bend over and pick up the bags. "There. As if nothing ever happened." I hold the bags next to my head, smiling at Milo.

He smiles back at me, shaking his head. "Want to go inside and have soup for lunch? They had two soup-in-cans for the price of one."

We walk back across the roof and he opens the door for me, taking the bags with broken dishes out of my hands.

"Will we be using your new placemats?" I ask.

"Why are you so bothered by my placemats?"

"I don't know. It just infuriates me for some reason. You have one couch, a bed, cutlery and some toiletries and your next purchase is placemats. What is that?"

"Just wait. We'll have soup from a can on the floor of my apartment with placemats underneath and you'll understand. They have little pictures of cats on them. It's great."

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