Right after Mrs. Stuart handed out the candy corn, Penny asked Milo to pass her the glue.
What Penny actually signed was I want, pulling both hands toward herself, palms up and fingers curled. She rubbed her palm over her heart in the sign for please. Milo didn’t know how to sign glue, but the only things in his hands were a glue stick and some surreptitiously chewed candy corn. He used his powers of deduction.
Body language made a ginormous difference in American Sign Language! Lots of what people said had to do with how they said it. And “said” was a silly word to use. And other times, sign language was so specific. There were like five different signs for make! If you were making something, like a paper pumpkin for instance, you used a different make than you would for telling someone you’d made your bed. Milo had a lot to learn!
But Penny’s dad, Mr. Dawson, was a good teacher. That was his whole job. Mr. Dawson could hear a little, but he told Milo the first language he ever learned was ASL, because his dad, Penny’s grandpa, was Deaf. Dads, dads, and dads! They were everywhere, doing all kinds of things.
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, Mom loaded Milo into the van at what she called “the crack of dawn” and Milo called “the butt crack of dawn.” At first Milo figured he’d be too tired to rise and shine so early; he might half-rise and sparkle a little at most. But Mom was right there with him, and they got to skip an hour of school!
They drove all the way to Eustace Community College and closed themselves in room 27. Room 27 wasn’t like a real classroom at all! It was a trailer at the back of a tiny, bare campus.
Mom and Milo weren’t the only students. There was a small Deaf community in Eustace, but Mr. Dawson explained that most people in Deaf families learn from each other, not from teachers. Mr. Dawson’s job was teaching really big kids, college students, all about ASL, so they could interpret or teach ASL one day, too. Milo was allowed to sit in on their classes and ask Mr. Dawson as many questions as he wanted.
“Does this mean you believe me? About my ears?”
Mom had told him no, and Milo should be careful about what he said; Milo was not Deaf and should never, ever pretend to be. But this was part of the agreement she’d made with Principal Olsen. If Milo wanted to keep his headphones on in school, he had to work hard. “It’s a good deal, Milo. Sign language is an amazing thing for anyone to learn. We are lucky to have Mr. Dawson so nearby.”
Mom was so awful at signing! She frowned the whole time, folding her face in half. She stared at Mr. Dawson with very beady eyes. Usually Milo only ever saw her look that suspicious about dentists. (Basically everyone in Eustace knew Mom had a bazillion cavities.) Whenever they paired up for conversation practice, Mom’s partners took two steps back, probably scared of getting swatted by accident!
Oops! Penny was asking Milo for the glue again. Music swelled in Milo’s ears.
Milo had spent almost two months straight listening to Sigur Rós and nothing else. He still hadn’t learned what the Icelandic songs were about, but they weren’t cold. They were just beautiful, strings and ghostly falsetto. The kind of music that felt like it kept existing even when you stopped listening. And maybe it had existed way before you ever did, echoing in old sea caves or made out of fog, and it made everything else beautiful sometimes, too.
Dad in his ears had felt like that. One of the first things Milo had asked, after Dad/Luz moved in, was how come he left without saying good-bye?
I’m sorry, Milo, Dad/Luz told him. The bear grass grabbed me. I had to go.
“I thought you were sucked down the shower drain! I was only four so I thought that. Because you didn’t say good-bye.”
I did say it, Milo! I hugged you close and definitely did not leave without telling you I’d be gone forever.
“Oh. I didn’t hear you, maybe.” Milo wiped his nose on his hand.
Oh, really? Then let me say it now: Good-bye, Milo. Good-bye.
Milo remembered burrowing deeper into his blankets and putting his hands over his ears because he wanted to hold that whisper in his head forever. That one word made the time Dad was gone more beautiful, or at least less ugly. Just like music.
Now Penny was like that. It was in the way she repeated signs until Milo understood them.
Penny would never just take the glue from him.
“I have to hand it to you, Penny!” He passed her the Elmer’s. A few other kids looked up. Oops! Milo should lower his voice for the next pun. But someone laughed. Maybe Milo should try this same joke on Hank? Would Hank laugh at last?
Milo’s chest hurt. Without thinking, he swallowed another candy corn. Now his pumpkin craft would either have only one eye, or no nose, or be missing a tooth.
“You can’t have everything, Jack,” he told his construction paper.
Halloween was turning second grade into a madhouse!
Penny huffed. She handed him one of her extra candy corns.
Later there would be trunk-or-treating. Milo had picked out some awesome gushing fruit snacks for Mom’s trunk. Parents would be coming, too, from wherever parents who didn’t work in schools worked. Mom had promised to come help Milo get dressed at lunchtime. She’d packed his homemade fire ant costume from last year, after bending one of the cardboard wings back into shape.
Mom didn’t know Milo had outgrown fire ants. He had other plans.
Milo popped another candy corn into his mouth. Penny punched him in the arm. Kids were finishing their crooked jack-o’-lanterns. Some held their work up before it dried, and watched the candy fall right back off.
“Penny, we’re running a real circus here,” Milo lamented.
Be quiet, Penny signed. Work.
Milo lowered the volume on his headphones. Mrs. Stuart was about to call for attention, Milo guessed. She always rubbed her hands together beforehand. Milo was never so good with people’s faces, but lately watching people move had taught him a lot!
Mrs. Stuart called for them to join her. Milo tapped Penny on the shoulder and the two of them found their places on the colorful rug.
Show-and-tell was usually pretty decent entertainment, for kids anyhow. That was Milo’s opinion. But today almost everybody who had a turn cheated by showing-and-telling about their Halloween costumes.
Stormy Calimlim showed off black sweatpants and a sweater with small Froot Loops and Corn Pops boxes stapled to it. Each box was impaled by plastic cocktail swords. Milo thought a cereal killer costume was a little inappropriate. Even if it was a pretty good joke. When Stormy sat down, she forgot she had cardboard on her butt and really killed the cereal. That made it better!
Antonio stood. Milo looked down, so he didn’t really see. But he was pretty sure Antonio was wearing the same dumb Freddy Krueger claws as last year.
Finally, it was Milo’s turn! Mrs. Stuart beckoned him forward. He unfolded his legs from under him. He almost got tangled! He rushed to the locker cubbies to grab his secret costume. He hefted the heavy bag to the front of the classroom, set it on the stool, and stood beside it. Milo waggled his eyebrows at his audience.
Mrs. Stuart gave him an encouraging smile.
Milo pulled two items of filthy clothing from the bag.
“Here is my show-and-tell presentation. First, this is my shirt.” He pinned it to his chest with his chin. Maybe it muffled his voice, but still! He held up a pair of jeans next. “These are my pants. They are kind of dirty, like if you look you can see grass stains but that’s okay if you can’t.”
Everyone had strange faces. Milo folded his pants and shirt perfectly—he’d been practicing! He set them back in the bag.
“Um, why my costume is important is because of what it is. What it is called is, MILO VASQUEZ, SEVEN YEARS OLD. I wore these exact pants and shirt on my birthday! I wanted to wear this shirt because there’s a really cool frog on the pocket giving everyone the peace sign. This is the peace sign. It’s not really sign language.”
Penny flashed him one anyhow. Her smile was rare and special, like those rocks he sometimes found outside that had sparkles in them!
Milo puffed up his chest to say the most important part.
“This is a costume of a different person, though. Because now I’m Milo SEVEN YEARS, FOUR MONTHS OLD. If you look at the holes in the knees you can see where I fell in the canyon. There’s even a little blood! Because I cut my knee pretty bad. I ran away from home after my birthday party. It was black out.”
Milo looked at them all meaningfully. Eyes on the magician!
There was some confusement (a word Milo had invented). Mrs. Stuart started clapping. The others joined in. But Milo held up his finger until every hand froze!
“Usually I only run at nighttime when I’m playing ghost in the graveyard. And we were going to play ghost in the graveyard. At my party.” He took a deep breath. “Except—TA-DA!—no one came to my party! ”
Stormy fell out of her chair and crushed her remaining cereal boxes. Adrian opened his mouth wide enough to catch baseballs. Penny started signing: Stop it, stop it!
But Milo wasn’t finished yet!
“You guys didn’t come to my party, even though I invited most of you except Terrance, because Terrance is lactose intolerant and I can’t live without ice cream. But if you look at my shirt, my evidence! The sleeves! There are snot stains. I was crying!”
Milo darted out of Mrs. Stuart’s reach. He clambered atop the stool. It rocked precariously under his feet. This was nothing compared to a teeter-totter.
“I’M ALMOST FINISHED!” Milo bellowed. “THERE’S ONE MORE THING TO TELL EVERYONE!”
Mrs. Stuart’s mouth became the fish lips he’d seen on day one.
“I DIDN’T CRY BECAUSE YOU GUYS DIDN’T COME. I CRIED BECAUSE DAD DIDN’T COME! BUT GUESS WHAT—?”
“That’s enough, Milo,” they were probably saying. Mrs. Stuart was definitely saying so. She pulled him off the desk and caught him.
“HE WAS JUST A LITTLE LATE!”
Long before he left, Dad had taught Milo how to whistle. And whistling was the sound that the wind made in Nameless Canyon on the night he ran away. So Milo didn’t have to see a face to recognize Dad again. So what if he didn’t have a body? So what if he didn’t have brown eyes or a mustache like he used to?
A whistle was enough. A shadow or a whisper would have been enough for Milo. A whistle was music, the beautiful Roaring Everything.
Dad had promised to teach Milo to bike ride. Dad was magical. He built tree houses without trees and he brought opossums back from the dead. Of course he didn’t need a body to be a dad. He was just a little Luz. He was just a little late.
Mrs. Stuart pulled him right back to his place on the carpet. When he sat down, Penny took his elbow and signed hush.
Milo didn’t feel like shouting anymore.
“Thank you, Milo.”
Milo didn’t know how come, but when they set their crafts out to dry on the windowsill, he didn’t really care whether his pumpkin had eyes. He chewed and swallowed his last candy corn, glue and all. He set his blank paper pumpkin down next to Penny’s.
All sorts of people didn’t have all sorts of things.