“So there you have it,” Milton finished. “That’s why my vine truth was what it was—that you, Fig Morris, are my only friend in the whole entire world.”
He had faced forward for his storytelling time (during which he had carefully avoided any mention of the name Sea Hawk) because he didn’t want to see Fig’s reactions. Now he could hear that her paddling had slowed again, but she remained silent. He sat quietly and watched the river flowing past and the clouds floating by. He sat and wondered if Fig was ever going to say anything or if perhaps he should dive into the river and let it carry him back to the beach.
“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Fig finally said, breaking the stillness. “Something bad happens or you make one little mistake and you’re done!” Milton peeked over his shoulder. Fig’s eyebrows were down, and she was gripping the paddle tightly. “Dev sounds like some of my old friends.”
“I behaved quite foolishly though,” Milton said.
Fig shrugged. “So what? Everyone makes mistakes, don’t they? Everyone gets nervous or sad or angry sometimes. Isn’t that when you need friends the most? What’s the point of friends who only stick with you when you’re happy and doing everything right?”
“I suppose,” Milton said. The sun felt warm on his face, and the breeze was gentle. “Although I think maybe—well, it’s possible that I was a bit too distracted.”
The canoe had started actually drifting backward, so Fig began her paddling again. “By the video game, you mean?”
“The very same,” Milton agreed. “And by other things. Rotten things.”
“Why do you think you played it so much?” Fig asked.
For Milton, the answer was obvious: Isle of Wild was awesome. There were dozens of new parts of the island to unlock, creatures to discover, missions to complete. And Sea Hawk was the coolest person in the virtual world. He was brave, handsome, and brilliant. He loved flora and fauna, knowledge and adventure, the jungle and his feline companion. What more could you want?
But hidden just behind all of that, there was more, like the jungle behind the vines. There was this: Milton’s one-and-only friendship had started to crumble. He had been involved in a karate-chopping incident that had brought him school-wide notoriety. And for months, maybe for years, his family had been like a battered ship in a storm, a ship no one had been able to bail out or sail to safety until finally it had broken into pieces and sunk to the bottom of the sea.
That year, it had become very hard to be Milton P. Greene.
“Sometimes I want to be somewhere else, somewhere better,” Milton told Fig, swiveling to see her. “And sometimes I want to be someone else too. Someone better.”
Fig tipped her head to one side. “I like to be somewhere else and someone else too—that’s part of why I like reading. But it can’t be better if it’s not real, can it?”
“It’s real as long as I’m playing,” Milton replied.
“But what about when you stop?” Fig asked. “What about when I close the book?”
“Therein lies the problem, I suppose,” Milton said, turning back around.
He noticed now that the trees on the riverbanks had grown taller, and there were quite a few that he didn’t recognize. The air smelled different here too, sharper, wilder. Fig paddled a few times, propelling them farther up the river, before she said, “Well, I’m glad we decided to come on this real-life adventure. Together.”
Milton didn’t trust himself to look at Fig. He wasn’t sure what he’d do. He felt very strange inside, not bad but not great, sort of mushy and tender and vaguely nauseated.
“Indeed,” he said. “Indeed, Fig.”
“Because there are some real-life skills that you are seriously lacking,” Fig continued, a smile in her voice. “Like how to paddle a canoe.”
“Isle of Wild is an extremely educational game,” Milton replied. “But you may be right that some of my experiential skills could use work. Let me remedy that.” He stuck his branch in the river and gave a full-power push.
The canoe veered toward the bank. Laughing, Fig reached forward, grabbed Milton’s branch, and threw it into the middle of the river.
“I changed my mind! No more paddling,” she said with a grin. Then her smile faded. “What’s that up ahead?”
Milton peered upriver. “Are those rapids?”
Fig was half standing in the back of the canoe now, craning her neck to see around him. Suddenly, she threw herself back down and gripped her paddle. “They’re not rapids!” she yelled. “They’re waves, and they’re coming toward us. Get ready, Sea Hawk!”