Page 22 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
“Take the survey!” I call after her, and she lifts a hand in the air without turning back to look at me.
I close my locker as Miller says, “She hasn’t taken it?”
“Uh, not yet.” I glance at him, pulling on my backpack. I think of Maren in my car, just this weekend.He cares, she’d said, though everything about today has proven otherwise.Before I can help it, the question’s out of my mouth. “Why did you?”
He doesn’t say anything, just takes my hand, same as this morning. His fingers are bony, the hard knots of his knuckles threaded against mine. We haven’t held hands since we were, what, five? I look up at him but he’s staring straight ahead, like his hand’sdisconnected from his body and it’s just this dead thing he’s given me to hold on to. Like it’s not even part of him.
I keep looking at the side of his face, and he keeps not looking back, and by the time we hit the parking lot my whole body’s gone hot. When I checked my Instagram follower count during last period, it was close to nine thousand. TheDenver Postwants to run an entire piece about just me. Josie freaking Sweet is out there in the world having casual conversations about MASH. But still, somehow, Miller makes me feel small. When we get to his car I slam the door.
“Okay,” he finally says, after we drive all the way to my house in silence. I have not looked at him even once. He doesn’t get to show up after years of shutting me out just to ignore my questions and make me feel like an idiot in the heat of my own success. He doesn’t get to ruin this for me but somehow, already, I’m letting him. “You’re upset.”
“I’m not upset,” I snap. I have the car door open, one foot on the gravel of my driveway.
Miller’s eyebrows lift just the tiniest distance and it’s there, finally, that I see him: the Miller I knew. Reading me whether I want to own up to what he sees or not.
“Don’t do that,” I say. The September breeze blows through the open door and rustles a parking ticket in his cupholder.
“Do what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“Then just don’t look at me at all.”
He says my name again, but only once, and I’m already gone.
I get to XLR8 at three fifteen, headphones looped around my neck and car keys spinning around my finger. This is our arrangement: I get out of school and come straight here, Monday through Friday, until Celeritas.
In the conference room facing the mountains, Jane from the product team is leading a meeting. Up on the screen: a live view of MASH with the buttons off-center, everything a hair out of place.
“... fix this as soon as possible,” she’s saying when I step in. “Just makes us look unprofessional.”
Everyone turns to look at me, and Jane smiles. “Ro, hey. Come on in.”
“What’s up with the buttons?” I ask, nodding my chin toward the wall.
“Something’s off with the code,” she says. “They aren’t lining up right, but we’ll get it fixed today.”
“I’ll do it,” I tell her, and when she starts to protest I say, “Just give me an hour with a computer. I’ll fix it.”
I drop my headphones over my ears and turn out of the room, headed for the nearest empty desk. I boot up the computer and turn up my music until I can’t hear my heartbeat, or the people moving around me, or my own thoughts tumbling like current over river rock.
I don’t know how to handle Miller, how to get through six months of his distant silence, how to thread out the coiling weave of my own stupid feelings.
But this, I know how to do. The computer blinks on.
13
When I get home it’s almost seven, and there’s music on in the house. It smells like shallots coming from the kitchen, sharp and heady with something smoother mixed in—sage, maybe. Vera’s at our dining table with her usual glass of white wine. Dad cranes his neck around the upper cabinets and waves a spatula at me.
“First day!” he calls, and I dump my backpack to the floor. “Come regale us.”
We do this every year, a big meal after my first day of school. Used to be Vera would come straight from work, her black briefcase stuffed with papers in need of grading. She’d shake her hair loose from its clip, let out a gusting breath, accept a glass of wine from my dad. Now, she just smiles and pats the table next to her.
“Good day, Rosie?”
“Pretty incredible,” I tell her. Dad turns chicken in a pan, and we both look over as it sizzles. “TheDenver Postwants to interview me next week.”
