Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [12]
It was difficult for Milo to pinpoint a single event in his past that might have initiated the odd requirements to which he was subjected. Even in elementary school, he had experienced the pressure, the pain, and the subsequent relief that he now felt as an adult, though the requirements had been different. The tying and untying of his shoelaces, the opening and closing of the latch on his Trapper Keeper, and the puncturing of a juice box with a straw at lunchtime (a demand that still struck him from time to time). And he could still remember the anxiety and stress associated with the days in which his mother had forgotten to pack a juice box or, worse, had packed a Capri-Sun drink bag in its place (a painfully inferior product in terms of straw-popping relief). He guessed that these inexplicable demands had been with him since birth to one degree or another, adapting and evolving as he grew older, but he did remember the first time they had created problems for him.
When Milo was eight years old, he had made the mistake of asking his friend Jimbo Powers if he could pop a few of the balloons at the end of Jimbo’s birthday party. The other children had already left, and Milo was waiting for his perpetually tardy mother to pick him up. The two had been playing Breakout on Jimbo’s brand-new Atari 5200 when Milo noticed the balloons in the corner and asked to pop them.
“Huh?” Jimbo had said, staring at them with obvious affection.
“I need to pop those balloons, Jimbo. You know. Pop them. Can I?”
When Jimbo said no, Milo persisted, telling his friend that they needed to be popped, that allowing them to slowly deflate would be unacceptable, and that only he, Milo Slade, could pop them and set things right. Reflecting back on the moment, Milo thought that he probably sounded a little feverish and manic in his request, because that was exactly how he had felt when contemplating the prospect of half a dozen balloons slowly deflating on their own.
Jimbo refused again, obviously confused, and perhaps a little frightened by Milo’s rationale and demeanor. “They’re my balloons, Milo. And it’s my birthday. I get to do whatever I want with them. My mom bought them for me.”
“I know,” said Milo, becoming inexplicably worried. “But I need to pop them. Maybe just one will be fine, but I need to. Okay?”
“No,” Jimbo said, rising from the sofa and taking up a position between Milo and the balloons. “Leave them alone.”
Jimbo’s mother had apparently heard snippets of their conversation. Seconds after Jimbo had taken his defensive stance, she had entered the living room and told Jimbo to give Milo one of his balloons. “You have plenty, honey. Let Milo take one home.”
Unaware of Milo’s intentions, Mrs. Powers was shocked to watch as Milo removed a red balloon from the bunch along the far wall, pulled it down to eye level by its ribbon, and pressed it against a three-foot-tall cactus plant beside the television. The cactus’s spikes pierced the balloon immediately, causing a loud pop, and though it had been satisfying, Milo instantly found himself in need of another.
“Why did you do that, Milo?” Jimbo’s mother asked. The confused, slightly alarmed look on her face was all that Milo needed to see to realize that what he had done was not normal. It was a slack-jawed, wide-eyed stare that made Milo no longer feel like an eight-year-old boy. In Mrs. Powers’s eyes, Milo had suddenly become something else, something slightly scarier, and he instantly wanted nothing more than to immediately return to his innocent eight-year-old boyhood status.
In that moment, as Jimbo and his mother stared in utter bewilderment, Milo