Page 26 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
“Enjoy the ice cream!” she calls as Miller shifts into reverse. When I look over at him his face is calm and impassive, zipped into himself just like always. Aiden winks at me as we pull out of the spot, and I roll my eyes, and we drive away in silence.
Downtown Switchback Ridge is one block long and five stores strong, the Fast Freeze plopped at the end of the strip like a sprinkle-topped afterthought. It’s got a drive-through and a cracked-asphalt parking lot and a towering sign shaped like a cake cone. There are six picnic tables out front, all of them occupied when we get there except the one right next to the trash cans. We sit, thrown into shade by the cone sign.
Miller’s in a polo shirt with the National Honor Society logo stitched along the collar, his sunglasses pushed up into his hair. I got a waffle cone but he eats his ice cream from a cup with a spoon, like a big jerk.
“No cone is incredibly lame of you,” I tell him.
He doesn’t look at me. “That feels like something my match wouldn’t say to me.”
I indulge in a dramatic eye roll, safely hidden behind my sunglasses where no one can see. When there are people around, Miller and I usually talk about something inane—homework he has, the new recipe Dad’s trying out at Beans, how bad we need rain this year. Small talk with him makes us feel like strangers, which is what we are now. I’m debating whether to bring up Aiden when Miller opens his mouth and says, “I read the article.”
I lick at my cookies-and-cream. “Keeping tabs on me, huh?”
He looks at me through the dark fringe of his eyelashes. “I have a vested interest.” A pause, and then: “I noticed you didn’t mention me. Aren’t you supposed to?”
I actually recoil a little, leaning away as I look at him. “Excuse me?”
“I thought that was the whole goal of this.” He spoons a bite of ice cream, taking so long to finish his point that I want to hop the table and strangle him. “To talk about our relationship as often as possible, communicate how meant-to-be it all is.”
I blink, and a small spluttering noise escapes me before I can help it. “The profile was on me,” I say. “About the tech and the science and how I made MASH all by myself.” He looks up, and I keep talking without even considering the words. “And anyway, Miller, seriously forgive me if you aren’t exactly top-of-mind after you haven’t spoken to me in three years.”
Miller goes absolutely still. He stares at me and it feels like thevolume’s been turned down on the whole entire world, like the clock’s stopped for all of us. I’m not sure I could move even if I wanted to.
Slowly, Miller says, “Which was your choice.”
Ice cream drips onto my hand. “I called youeveryday after it happened. You didn’t pick up.”
He puts his ice cream down, like a parent about to dish some discipline. If I could breathe, I’d use the air to laugh at him.
“You called me every day for one week.” When he looks at me, there’s a controlled calm holding his features in place. “I was hurt, Ro. I wasn’t ready to talk about it.”
Every word settles on me like a shovelful of sand, like the lake bed rising up to bury me. I haven’t blinked in so long my eyes burn.
“And then you just stopped calling,” Miller says, “like you didn’t even care anymore.”
I thought this pain was dormant in me, impassive as wet wood. But I shock myself, shock both of us maybe, with how fast my fury sparks to flame.
“No,” I say, louder than I should. At the table next to us, a woman looks up from her sundae. “You’re the one who completely disappeared from my life.” More ice cream drips onto my hand, and I wipe it furiously with a neon-pink Fast Freeze napkin. “Youdidn’t care, Miller.”
“How could you possibly have thought that?” His voice is blade-sharp, everything about him suddenly, crushingly familiar. His hand fisted on the table, every muscle in his forearm gonerigid. The simmer of his hurt, right there on the surface for me to see. “After everything we—youliterallytold me to leave you alone, Ro.”
“I clearly didn’t mean forever!”
“That wasn’t clear!” Miller shouts. His eyes are angry and unblinking on mine. His chest rises and falls, the breath forced and shuddering. And then he shakes his head, just a little, and glances around. The woman watching us looks quickly away.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says. He stands and throws his ice cream, unfinished, into the trash can. Mine’s still dripping all over my hand, a sticky mess these napkins won’t fix.
Miller doesn’t look back at me, just pulls his car keys from his pocket and turns away.
His voice is flat, like nothing even happened here at all. “Let’s go.”
15
There’s one month out of every year when Miller and I are different ages. Growing up, that four-week span from July to August felt like the twilight zone—a strange dislocation before we phased back into place. It was during that weird, off-kilter month, when Miller was eleven and I was ten, that he saved my life in the woods.
Dad’s A-frame is five minutes from the lake if you take the shortcut. Which, of course, we always did: through the trees behind my cabin, around John Able’s house and over the gravel drive, down the embankment to McGough Pass Road and around the edge of the dam before scrambling up the hill to the lakeshore. The shortcut was strictly forbidden from a parent perspective. It checked all the major boxes—cutting through private property, crossing busy streets, the dam.
The Gossamer Lake dam looks innocuous from any angle, just a concrete wall with a slow spill of lake water that siphons off to the stream trickling toward town. It’s a chipped-rock, rusted-outbarrier skeletoned with rebar. It does its job, keeps the lake where it’s supposed to be. And pretty much every parent in Switchback Ridge warns their kids away from it.
