Becoming Mila by Estelle Maskame
5
Savannah touches my arm in an attempt to get my attention. “Are you okay?” she asks.
I tear my eyes away from Blake and lock them on Savannah instead. “What’s the deal with your cousin?” I ask, my tone sharper than intended. “Is he, like, the captain of the football team or something? The student body president?”
Tori busts up with laughter and Savannah bites her lip to stop herself from joining in, the two of them sharing one of those knowing glances that I can’t understand. Tori excuses herself to get back to her DJ duties, leaving Savannah to fiddle with her earrings in front of me. I raise an eyebrow, prompting her for a reply.
“Our school is small, so we don’t really have cliques. Everyone is kind of friends with everyone,” she explains with a shrug, her gaze wandering off over my shoulder. “Blake is just good at getting things done and making sure things run smoothly, so he tends to be at the forefront of stuff like this.” She scoffs quietly. “It’s kind of in his blood.”
Okay, good. So, I can go talk to him without fear of getting on the wrong side of Fairview High’s top dog, since there isn’t one, apparently. Which I don’t buy for a second. In what worlddoes a high school hierarchy not exist?
“Thanks. I’ll be right back,” I tell Savannah, then spin on my heels and stalk off.
Blake’s still in the back of his truck, bent over a cooler and rummaging through its contents. I stop by the side of the truck, then knock my knuckles hard against the paintwork to get his attention. He glances over but doesn’t straighten up.
“Miss Mila? ” I challenge, crossing my arms over my chest. I feel patronized and, therefore, defensive. I don’t think it’s cool for a complete stranger to call me Miss Mila, and I don’t believe either that it’s down to southern etiquette.
“Well, you’re not married, are you?” Blake says matter-of-factly, finally straightening up from the cooler having retrieved a can of Dr Pepper. “You are Miss Mila. I simply assumed that you’re addressed with a title.”
“Are you messing with me?”
Blake pops the tab of his soda and gives me a flippant, disinterested glance. “Now why would you think that?” He takes a sip, exhales loudly, then awaits a response from me.
“Because I didn’t want to be addressed or introduced. And especially not as Miss Mila.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Would you have preferred to have been introduced as Mila Harding, the daughter of that guy . . . What’s his name again?” Mockingly, he cups a hand to his ear and angles toward me, listening for a reply that never comes. “No, I didn’t think so.”
Stunned, I shake my head wordlessly at him. What a jerk. I press myself against the truck and hiss through clenched teeth, “Who do you think you are?”
Nonchalantly, Blake jumps down from the truck bed and closes the distance between us. He looks straight into my eyes. “Blake Avery,” he says with an infuriating smirk. “It’s nice to meet you, Mila.”
Ugh. I can’t take another second of his obnoxious self-confidence. Fixing him with the most intimidating look I can muster, I turn and stomp back over to Savannah, who seems to have been watching the whole thing.
“What was that about?” she questions, glancing between Blake and me. He’s talking to some guy now, casually waving his soda can around as he speaks.
“Nothing,” I mutter, ignoring the quick beating of my pulse. “Your cousin is—” I start, but as rattled as I am, my voice trails off when I remember it’s probably not a good idea to talk trash about Savannah’s relatives.
“You’ll warm to him,” Savannah says with a teasing smirk, but no, I definitely will not. “C’mon, let’s sit down.”
I don’t know whose truck it is that Tori is working from, but I help Savannah drag out some lawn chairs from the back of it and set them up. We sink down into them and I take the opportunity to really study the crowd.
There’s a mixture of ages and equal amounts boys and girls. Myles is sprawled out on a lawn chair with some girl in his lap who’s biting at his earlobe, and I give Savannah a sidelong glance to see if she’s noticed, but I’m pretty sure she’s actively avoiding looking in that direction.
I pay attention again to the truck from before, the one with the packets of hot-dog buns laid out on the tailgate. There’s a guy setting up a trio of the disposable grills and I assume that must be Barney.
“Any boys caught your eye? Or do you already have a boyfriend?” a voice from above us says, and my eyes fly upward to find Tori leaning over us from the back of the truck. She sticks her tongue out, upside-down, and then jumps down and gets comfy in the chair next to me. She passes out cans of soda to us, and I figure she must be satisfied that her playlist is now set up and running correctly.
“No and no,” I say. “What about you guys?”
“Savannah has a huuuuge thing for Nathan Hunt. That guy over there helping Barney with the food.”
“No, I don’t!” Savannah protests, catapulting forward in her chair to lean over me and whack Tori’s arm. “I only said he was cute one time and now Tori thinks I’m obsessed with him,” she tells me.
“Oh, please,” Tori snorts. “You stalk his Insta feed daily.”
Tori goes on to tell me about some guy she’s been seeing, who isn’t here tonight, and then they fill me in on everyone who is here. They give me the low down on who’s dating who, who was on the prom court, who’s on the football team (surprisingly, not Blake), and who went skinny dipping in the lake last month. Maybe there’s more to Fairview than meets the eye.
Barney and Nathan dish out hot dogs to everyone but I decline when they offer me one – when I was a kid, Dad bought me a hot dog from a food cart at the beach and I got sick with food poisoning, so I’ve never been able to stomach one since – but Savannah and Tori both wolf them down.
The “party” is more of a chilled get-together among friends than the wild night of debauchery I was worried it might be, so I’m pleasantly relieved. People are relaxed, lounging on chairs, on truck beds, sipping on sodas and seltzer, though I do spot the odd beer every now and again. The scent of hot dogs wafts through the air and Tori’s music is the heartbeat of the night. It’s nice, and I feel at ease with Savannah and Tori with no one else bothering me, until Blake starts banging those tongs against his truck again.
“Everyone well fed?” he asks, arm propped up on the edge of his truck. The small crowd nods and holds up their drinks. “Good. It’s time for Truth or Dare.”
Okay, so maybe this is where the “party” kicks in. A hush of anxious whispering and giggles ripples through the group and people shimmy their chairs forward to form a closer circle. I follow suit with Savannah and Tori, edging in to the point where the proximity to everyone becomes a little uncomfortable.
To the surprise of no one, Blake leads the game. He steps into the middle of the circle and sets down an empty Pepsi bottle, holding it steady under his foot. The music is still playing, perhaps a little too loud. He summarizes the rules of the game as though there would ever be a possibility that any teenager in the world doesn’t know how Truth or Dare works, then spins the bottle and leans against his truck. The white polo he’s wearing stretches tight across his broad chest.
The bottle points at Savannah.
“Truth,” she says anxiously, pursing her lips and giving her cousin her best puppy-dog eyes. Maybe she’s hoping Blake will go easy on her, but I doubt it.
“Is it true you dip fries into your milkshakes?”
Okay, point not proven.
“Laaaame,” someone drawls.
Savannah sighs audibly beside me, her face lighting up with a relieved grin. A lucky escape thanks to blood connections.
No one else is as lucky.
Poor Barney opts for a dare and Savannah orders him to streak across the baseball field. He laps it up, entertaining the troops with a faux striptease, then sprints around the field butt-naked. He returns, hands shielding his crotch, and bows to a round of applause that even I participate in. I get the feeling that this is something of a party trick. He seems like the kind of guy who’s destined to become the joker of any friendship circle.
The game continues and there’s a mixture of both dares and truths being chosen. The truths are the usual, obvious kind of questions, like who was the last person you hooked up with? And the dares are relatively tame in comparison to the one Savannah delivered – kiss someone in the group, post an embarrassing photo to your Instagram feed, chug the last remaining bottle of Bud Light that someone has found in the bottom of a cooler. Every time someone spins the bottle again, I stare at the dark sky and pray it points to anyone but me. So far, luck has been on my side.
Until . . .
“Ah Mila,” Blake says as the bottle slows to a stop in my direction. “Truth or dare?”
My heart beats faster and everyone’s gaze is on me, waiting to see if the new girl is brave enough to go for the dare. But even a truth is a scary choice when I’m with strangers who know nothing about me. They could ask anything since there is so much to find out. But I can lie, right? How will they know any different?
“Truth,” I say, swallowing hard. Of course the bottle has to land on me when it was Blake’s turn to spin it.
He sits on a chair now, across the circle from me, a fresh can of soda in his hand. He runs his finger around the metallic rim, pretending to think hard. Then he glances up and smiles. “Who’s your father?”
Now my heart stops. What?
I stare at him with an icy look, wishing I could smack that smirk off his smug face. He knows exactly who my father is, but he obviously wants everyone else to know too since his introduction earlier clearly didn’t cause the stir he was hoping for.
Confusion passes through the group, eyebrows furrowing and murmurs tainting the stilted silence. Expressions perk up with curiosity, but the small handful of people who already seemed to connect the dots earlier are now lighting up in an “I knew it!” sense of joy.
“C’mon . . . it doesn’t matter,” I whisper, groveling pathetically, appealing to Blake’s better nature. That’s if he even has one. Can’t he tell I don’t want to talk about this? That if I wanted everyone to know who my father is, I would have found a way to work that into conversations already?
Blake glances around the quiet circle, purposely drawing out the tension. “Did you guys know we have a celebrity in our midst? Sorry – the daughter of a celebrity.”
My lips part, shocked that he’s throwing me under the bus like this. We only just met – what could I have possibly done for him to act this way toward me?
I’m not oblivious to the power of celebrity – the truth was bound to come out eventually, but Blake is making every effort to shine the spotlight on me and, right now, it is burning far too bright.
Barney is the first to say it out loud. He hunches forward in his chair, the buttons on his shirt still waiting to be done up. “Wait. Mila . . . Harding? Everett Harding is your dad?”
I close my eyes, inhaling deeply. Here it comes. Everyone bursts into a clatter of noise, questions flying through the air, both to me and to each other.
“Who?” someone asks.
“The guy who plays Jacob Knight in Flash Point!” someone else tells them.
“Is he here in Fairview right now?” an animated voice questions at the same time as someone else remarks, “I knew it was her!”
I open my eyes and search through the jostling group to find Blake. He relaxes back in his chair, swigging his soda as though he hasn’t just created total chaos in my life. I shake my head slowly, angrily, and mouth, Why?
People have stood up from their chairs to shuffle closer to me, gathering around in hopes that I’ll answer their random questions or spill some gossip. The entire night, no one has batted an eye at me other than to say friendly hellos. But now that Dad’s name is out there? Suddenly everyone thinks I’m so cool and interesting.
“Should we act as bodyguards?” Tori jokes with Savannah as they remain on either side of me. To be fair, even Savannah freaked out a little over Dad earlier today. Tori is the only one who remembered who I am but doesn’t seem to care all that much about Dad – and if she does, she certainly doesn’t show it.
The girl who’s spent most of her night in Myles’s lap pulls a chair up in front of me, eyes wide. “Is it creepy to you if I say that your dad is hot? Do you think you could get me an autograph?”
“Do you have any pictures of you and him together?” Barney asks, towering over my shoulder from behind. “Can we see?”
“I guess,” I mumble. What’s the point of being secretive now that everyone knows?
I pull out my phone and swipe through my camera roll, painfully aware of everyone’s eyes latched onto my screen, all of them subtly edging in closer and closer so that they can get the prime viewing angle. There’s only six people cornering me, but it feels like a thousand. Everyone else at the tailgate is keeping their distance for now, though I can hear the hum of their voices.
I find a picture I took of Dad and me last month. A selfie of us on the beach in Malibu as the sun was setting over the ocean, casting a golden aura over us. My wet hair sticks to my cheeks and Dad’s million-dollar gaze is even more smoldering than usual. Ruben posted this sunset picture on Dad’s Instagram to remind the world that Everett Harding is a proud and loving family-man. But yet, he wasn’t exactly conflicted when it came to making the decision to send me here.
Then, suddenly, as everyone coos over the photo, my phone is plucked out of my hand.
“Hey!” I yell, jumping up from my chair.
But Barney has already made his getaway, barging others out of the way, and slipping through a gap in the trucks. He has my phone in his fist, eyes locked on it as he runs. I give chase – because he has my damn phone! And with my phone he has access to a lot of different things, like my social media accounts, and my contacts list, and my private photos of Dad and me that haven’t ever been made public but which plenty of gossip columnists would love to get their hands on. From the moment I first got a phone, Ruben has been one hundred percent clear that I’m never, ever to let even my best friends near it.
Savannah and Tori and the others follow behind me, a total ruckus as we all squeeze through the trucks to follow Barney. His hands move across my screen, scrolling, then he presses my phone to his ear. He’s laughing as he moves fast and agile across the concrete, one hand held out like a true football jock to keep me at a distance whenever I get near him.
“Give it back!” I beg, both arms outstretched to try and claw my phone from him. He’s calling someone and panicked, hot tears spring to my eyes. “Please, don’t! Please!”
“Oh, hi!” Barney says brightly into my phone. “How do you do? Is this Everett Harding?”
No!
“Give her the phone back, Barney!” Tori demands as she gets close enough to kick Barney hard in the shin.
“Hey!” he barks, lowering the phone from his ear to reach down to rub his leg, and I steal that chance to snatch my phone. “What the hell, Tori?”
I cup my phone tightly in my hands and then rush to safety with it, kneeling down between two trucks to shield myself from view. I’m panting, my heart’s beating fast. There’s an active call ongoing – a call with the contact saved as Dad. I was praying Barney was just kidding, but he wasn’t. He seriously called my father. Nerves rocking me, I force myself to press my phone to my ear.
“Dad?”
“Mila?” Dad snaps across the line. “What the hell is going on?” I can’t blame him for being angry, but his abrupt tone still makes me flinch.
“Someone took my phone and—”
“You’ve been home for five minutes and already you’re letting people mess around with your phone? Why aren’t you at the ranch? Goddammit, I thought there was an emergency.” I hear him groan and then exhale deeply. “Look, Mila, I’m at a business dinner. Please can you just behave?”
“Okay, I’m sorry! I—”
But he’s already hung up.
I shove my phone into the pocket of my jean shorts and press my hands over my face, trying to steady my breath. I’m still crouched down between two trucks, but a moment later I force myself to stand and walk back out into view, my whole body pulsing with adrenaline. Barney is arguing with Tori, and Savannah has stepped in as backup. The three of them go quiet when they spot me.
“Why the hell did you do that?” I demand, eyeballing Barney, my hands on my hips. A few others are still lingering nearby, while some people, like Blake, haven’t even bothered to get up from their seats back at the social circle.
“It was funny,” Barney says sheepishly, stifling a laugh when he makes eye contact with those who witnessed it. “You know – a joke?”
Before I flip out on this guy, I decide to remove myself from the situation. This party seemed like a cool idea, but it’s spun out into something that’s pushing the boundaries too much too soon. Blake has publicly taunted me, everyone here knows I’m the daughter of Everett Harding, and now Dad will be frustrated at me again. . . I can only hope Ruben doesn’t find out.
It was meant to be fun, a chilled evening . . . but I really don’t want to be here anymore. I want to be back at the ranch, tucked up in my new bedroom for the summer, doodling in my bullet journal. Which, ironically, is exactly what Ruben expects of me.
Turning away from everyone, I stride over to Blake’s truck and try the door, but it’s locked. He must notice me tugging on the handle, because he appears next to me, raising an eyebrow.
“Unlock your truck,” I demand. “Please.”
“Why?”
“So that I can hide inside until you take me home.”
Blake presses his lips together and fishes his keys out from his khaki shorts, then unlocks the truck. As soon as I hear the click, I wrench open the door to the backseat, climb in, then slam it shut again. He peers in at me through the window, studies me for a second, then saunters back to his friends. I’d like to think all of this is his fault, but the truth is it’s mine for agreeing to come here in the first place.
I sit back and bask in the silent privacy of the truck for a minute. Everyone seems to have calmed down, and have slowly congregated back inside the circle of trucks. I can hear music and voices, a muffled chorus through the glass. That was some finale to their game of Truth or Dare. Note to self: Be more careful with my phone in the future.
A moment later, the door on the opposite side of the truck swings open and Savannah clambers in to join me.
“I’m so sorry, Mila,” she says, eyes full of guilt even though she hasn’t done anything wrong. “That was so shitty of Barney to do that. Did he really call your dad?”
“Yes!” I throw my hands up in exasperation. “I’ll be in such deep shit with my parents, and now you’ll all just think of me as Everett Harding’s daughter—”
“That’s not such a bad thing, though,” Savannah interrupts in an effort to cheer me up. “Everyone thinks it’s super cool.”
“That’s not the point!” I snap.
Savannah looks a little hurt, like she’s not sure how to navigate me. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing my temples. I don’t mean to take out my frustration on her. “I just need to keep a low profile while I’m here. I didn’t want anyone to connect me to my dad. It always makes life so freaking complicated.”
“But . . . Everyone would figure it out at some point, right? It’s a small town. Not many Milas. Not many Hardings.”
“I know, but I really, really need for it to not be a big deal. Between you and me, my dad’s control-freak manager doesn’t want the press finding out I’m here.”
“Why?” Savannah asks. “What’s so scandalous about spending your summer back in your hometown?”
I look at her kind, innocent face and it feels pointless to do anything other than tell her the truth. “The fact that I didn’t want to,” I say.
“Ohh.” Savannah draws in a breath. “Are you here as a punishment or something?”
“Preventative measures,” I correct.
“Okay. I’m on it!” Savannah says confidently, straightening her shoulders. “I’ll head out and do damage-control.” She holds up her pinky finger to me. “I promise I’ve got your back. I’ll make sure everyone stays cool and collected, and I’ll bodyslam any crazy, obsessed fans out of your way as and when required.”
This finally gets a smile out of me. I guess I can understand now why Savannah Bennett was my best friend in grade school, because she looks out for others and still makes pinky promises at the age of sixteen. That, and the fact she believes her tiny frame could ever bodyslam anyone.
With a nod of agreement, I interlock my pinky around hers.