Useless Dresses

Milly is the scariest person I’ve ever met.

As much as I tried to avoid her, the mousy girl somehow attached herself to me. Actually, maybe that’s a little of an exaggeration. I just met her on Friday. But she found me the moment my bus screeched to halt at the drop-off and hasn’t left my side since. I could never build up the nerve to tell her how terrifyingly hyper she acted.

So there she was, blabbering away about the jelly doughnut she ate for breakfast that morning, and I just wanted her to stop and go away so that I could find Rich and talk to him, but I didn’t think that would happen. A dusty swirl flew down around us that morning, nothing but a light fluttering of tiny white flakes, and we sat in the courtyard while most of the other students retreated indoors. I kind of wanted to go inside—Rich might expect me to be there—but I got the feeling Milly wanted to stay outside.

Of course, that meant going inside would relieve me of her. And leave me sitting alone in a crowded cafeteria. That didn’t sound too pleasant. So stayed and listened.

“But it was really sticky and got all over the table, and—whoa, Kate, dude alert!” Milly leaned over and attempted a whisper, but the sound came out louder than most people speak normally.

I half-turned to catch Rich walking toward us. He sat down, scooched his backpack to the snow and curled his hands up on the table. “Hey, Kate. Yea, I totally didn’t realize it was Friday last week when I talked to you! But sorry I’m late—a teacher wanted to talk. You have—”

“Hi! I’m Milly,” Milly stuck out her hand for Rich, who stared at it for a surprised second before shaking it.

“Hey, Milly. Rich.” After Milly continued to grin widely without a word coming through her lips, Rich continued. “Yea, Kate. You have Mrs. Wibbons for English, yea?”

“Sure do.”

“Millicent Southbend. That’s my mom’s last name. Southbend, I mean. Not Millicent.”

“Nice to meet you,” Rich said. He turned to me. “Who’d you do for the ‘walk in my shoes’ essay?”

“Lion tamer.” I wanted to write in the perspective of a serial killer or a butcher, maybe a detective who goes mad by all the violence in the world and starts butchering people. But I doubted Mrs. Wibbons would appreciate it. So I went with something a little friendlier.

“Wow. Kudos. I did a blind person.”

Milly moved to speak again, but I reached across the table and slapped my hand across her mouth. “Yea? How’d that work out?”

“Wibbons said it was offensive and unnecessary. But see, she didn’t even read the thing. And I mean, I did wonder what an actual blind person would think if they came across it on tape or something, if they’d be offended. But then I realized—how would my essay get on tape anyway? I’d have to be, like, super famous. So there’s no issue. Not really.”

“Ah! Milly!” I took my hand back and caressed it with my other hand as if Milly broke my fingers. “Did you…did you lick me?”

Rich looked over and a wicked smirk broke out across his face. But I kept him from laughing by smacking my hand across his mouth, too. His eyes widened into dinner plates. “Ew!” He tossed himself back. When my hand followed, he leaned back until he fell into the snow.

Milly sat smiling like a madwoman down at poor Rich, who didn’t seem to know what just happened. He shifted uncomfortably on the frozen ground.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded, his dark hair covering most of his face. “She had spit on her hand!”

I cracked.

“Don’t laugh!” Rich glared at me as he righted himself with the table.

“I’m not, I’m not,” I choked out, clutching my stomach despite myself. “Anyway, Richie, Mrs. Wibbons…”

Rich stared at me, his eyes abruptly losing their emotion and his voicing taking on a monotone. “Don’t call me that.”

“Um…yea. Ok.”

At least 10 seconds past before he spoke again, and when he did his eyes flew back to life and his voice rose and deepened like it did. “She’s making me redo it. I think it’s stupid. And you already took the next best option, didn’t you?”

“Well…there are elephant tamers, too,” Milly suggested. “Actually! Elephants are way cooler than lions, because elephants—”

I glanced at the clock hung on the outside wall of the building, half covered in snow but readable. “Oh! Um, Rich. Didn’t you have something to talk to me about?” I interrupted Milly, but I don’t think she noticed.

“Oh…yea. Uh, Milly, do you think we could…”

Realization dawned on the mousy girl’s face immediately, and that madwoman smile came back to her lips. “I gotta go to bathroom!” she announced, then left with a wink.

“So that’s how you get rid of her,” I said as she skipped into the building. Her backpack overwhelmed nearly her whole figure, but she kept up a pace as if she didn’t notice the mammoth strapped to her back.

“You know, I heard Milly Southbend has always been off the wall. I’d hate to see what she was like before—” Rich cut himself off and looked at me.

“Before…?”

“I don’t know if…” Rich glanced around, suddenly avoiding my eyes. “I never really knew Milly, but her brother—”

“She has a brother?”

“Did. She did have a brother.”

“He…”

“He died. I mean, he killed himself. Right before the break.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. “Did he, like, did he leave…something?”

“You mean like a note? No. But…well, just no.”

“You said ‘but.’”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“There’s a but. Tell me.”

“He had this...this really, just really shitty friend. And he said some things to that guy, and then he killed himself. At that spot you found on Friday.”

“What did he say?”

“No one knows. He’s not talking.”

“Ah…oh.” Once again, I found nothing to say. “I don’t…poor Milly.”

“Yea,” Rich said. “I feel really horrible about it.”

“Why do you feel horrible? It’s not like you could have done anything.”

Rich leaned forward on the picnic table, his long back hunched over and his eyes closed. “It’s just a really bad thing to go through.”

“Yea. Yea, it is.”

I made a silent promise with myself to keep Milly my friend after that. It was selfish act, sure. She’d experienced loss through suicide, just the way I had. And I wanted that around me. But it was not an act of pity—Milly didn’t seem like the kind of person who needed pity.

Maybe if I told her my story, she would pity me.