Puddles

Milo sees worlds in the puddles.

Now this may not seem inherently special at first. Many people can see the world in the puddles. After a good bout of rain, anyone can step outside, peer into the puddles formed in the streets, and see a crystal-clear reflection of the tree branches swaying to and fro, the gray sky hanging over their head, and the curve of a dissipating rain cloud. They see their own world tipped outside down, and this is perfectly normal.

What Milo sees is not normal.

He looks into the puddles and he doesn’t see tree leaves, summer skies, or clouds overhead. No, he sees worlds with medieval castles, with round towers like tarnished soda cans and forked flags flickering in the wind. He sees worlds with rolling plains that are not green with grass but instead speckled with tiny pebbles of all kinds of colors, like the beach of a shoreline that stretches for miles. He sees worlds where plants dance like humans do—like his parents once did. He sees creatures that are not human, sporting soft orange skin like a sunset and a handful too many eyes. He sees reflections of oceans that are more Jell-O than water. He glimpses places that look like the pictures in his history books and ones that look like his favorite sci-fi movies.

He doesn’t see one world like everyone else. He sees many.

He’s not sure when it started, really. When the puddles became more than rainwater. He can’t remember a time when they weren’t this way, and he can’t imagine his life without them now. He waits for rainy days like other children wait for Christmas.

What Milo doesn’t understand is why others can’t see the different worlds too. Just the other week he was walking with his mom and dad to the store—the one grocery store in their town—green rain boots splashing as he pointed excitedly at the small puddles, saying, “Mom, look at that, isn’t that a unicorn?” because that was the closest word his 10-year-old mind could find for the creature he was seeing, but his mom only sighed and shook her head, black curls covering the disappointment in her eyes that he knew was there, and his dad said, “Milo, please just…stop. Your mom is really tired right now, okay?” And then his dad walked straight through the puddle, ripples tearing into the creature’s watery image, ruining it.

This makes him sad, mostly, but a little of something else too. Special, maybe. If he’s the only one who can see them, does that mean that he’s meant for something different, like the heroes in his story books? It reminds him of something he heard his dad say once, who’s an English professor at some fancy college an hour away: a hero’s journey. “It’s an English term that means the main character of a story lives an ordinary life until they find something unexpected and magical, and their entire world transforms,” his dad told him.

Milo stares down at the puddle at his booted feet—even though he didn’t know it was going to rain today, he wears his rain boots everyday just in case. This one depicts a campfire, and a group of cloaked people circled around it; one flicks her fingers and the flames change from red to green. Milo presses the tip of his boot to the water, applying pressure.

His ordinary life on one side and a mysterious place of adventure on the other—if only he could reach it.

Maybe, just maybe, he’s a hero in the making.

#

When it doesn’t rain, which is sadly most days, Milo finds ways to keep himself entertained. For the most part, he reads.

Like today. Today is stupidly sunny, and so he goes where he always does on days like this: the stuffy little bookstore on Cherry Avenue. Like all the streets in their town, Cherry Avenue doesn’t have much besides a few odd businesses here and there: a shop that sells only soap, an insurance company of some kind, a diner notorious for serving burgers and fries with food poisoning on the side, and this bookstore. It’s a small square building that was painted white but has now faded to a murky dishwater gray. The windows are smudged with fingerprints and dirt, obscuring the books inside. The books themselves are as well-worn as the building is. Milo’s heard his mom say she doesn’t think it will survive much longer.

“Back again, Milo?” the teenager at the register teases. “I don’t think I’ve seen a kid your age read this much, ever.”

Milo is already situated comfortably in the children’s section, sitting crisscross applesauce on the floor as he flips through a book with a girl holding a sword on the cover. His rain boots squeak as he shrugs. “Is this any good?’ He holds the book up.

From the register, she squints at the cover. “I think so? I’ve seen a lot of other kids get that one, but then again, all of the covers kind of look the same to me. It looks like something you would read, though. Fantasy and all that, right?”

Milo nods.

“I’ll never understand the hype about fantasy,” the teenager says. “Realistic fiction is so much better. But to each their own, I guess.” Gangly elbows propped on the counter, she ducks her head to avoid the glare of the sun. “So are you going to do anything fun today? The weather’s pretty nice.”

“No, it’s not. It’s too sunny for puddles.”

At that, the teenager’s eyebrows crease, and she looks like how his mom used to look when he would fall and scrape his knee on the sidewalk. “You talk about those a lot. Do you like playing in them? I know that I used to love splashing in puddles with my friends when I was a kid—it drove my mom and dad crazy.”

“My parents don’t care.” Clutching the book to his chest, he comes to the front counter and pushes a few bills across the counter. “They don’t see what I see, anyway.”

“What do you see, Milo?”

He takes his book and change, thinks of all that he’s seen in the puddles, too much to describe. “I don’t know,” he says. “Everything?”

The book is good, but he still wishes it was raining.

#

When Milo was younger, his parents bought him a kiddie pool. It was like all of the inflatable pools on their block: round, blue, a few feet in height. Milo was so excited when they gave it to him, until he realized that sitting alone in a pool filled with cold water was not as fun as he thought it would be, and that you can’t play Marco Polo as a single player. The pool only got a few more lonely uses before it was shoved into a crevice of the garage, forgotten.

Huffing and puffing, he drags it out now; it is crinkled, dusty with cobwebs and dirty with dead grass strands. He spots a couple of spider legs on the plastic and wrinkles his nose. Dragging it to the backyard, he flaps it up and down to shake off the dead things, then lays it flat to the ground. Armed with the air pump, he slowly fills the plastic pool with air, watching it puff up like a frog’s throat. Once it is filled enough, he turns off the pump, pulling away the nozzle. Without water, the inflated pool seems even smaller and sadder than he remembers. But it hasn’t rained in so long, the bookstore is closed on Sundays, and he’s impatient.

The water comes out of the hose in spurts for a while as Milo smooths out the kinks in the tube, forming tiny puddles on the pool’s plastic floor. He straightens the last curl and watches as the spurts become a stream that becomes a roar.

The water glimmers in the harsh sunlight; it is liquid diamond, almost sharp in how crisp and clear it is. Milo can’t tear his gaze away.

But the water is just that: water. Besides a faint reflection of the spruce tree towering over Milo’s head, there is nothing otherworldly about this pool of water, not like the puddles. No centaurs, no dragons that breathe fire and water, no valleys that look like clouds that have fallen to earth. Nothing gleams beneath the surface besides a few twigs and specks of dirt.

Milo squints—perhaps it is just his glasses, in need of a new prescription, that are the problem? When his eyes fail him, he rolls up his striped sleeves and blue jeans, crouching down to pull off his green rain boots, and steps into the pool. The water is cold around his toes. He is shivering within seconds. Unusually tall for a 10-year old, he feels self-conscious and awkward standing here.

He is not sure what he is waiting for, to be honest. The pool’s bottom layer of plastic is smooth and firm underneath him, but he keeps waiting for the ground to give way, to leave this side of the water and come out the other side. He’s waiting for his journey to begin, but maybe the moment is wrong? Most of the heroes in his storybooks don’t have to look for their journey; the journey comes to them. Or maybe it needs to be raining.

He tries sticking his head underwater, eyes wide open. He can see his dark hair floating around him, and a twig gets a little too close to his eye for comfort, brushing his cheek, but nothing else happens. He doesn’t know why he expected anything to, and feels a little stupid but not stupid enough to leave the water. To give up hope.

He waits in the water until his fingertips prune like his Grandma’s always are before he goes back inside, teeth clacking with cold, clothes soggy and stiff, his parents none the wiser.

#

There is a new kid at school today. She introduces herself as Autumn, a fitting name—her hair curls like falling leaves, and it is red like them too. When directed by the teacher, she greets the class confidently, her smile soft and easy as she tells them where she is from, why she is here, and a smattering of interesting facts about herself (she has been to Europe and she has four cats). She seems the friendly type; even though she is joining the class a month late, she will have no trouble finding a group. She strides to her new desk, hands already laden with this year’s worn textbooks, and the class’s eyes follow her. They are unused to seeing new faces in their little time capsule of a town.

But Milo barely bats an eye. He hasn’t looked away from the window since the school day started, and he doesn’t plan to now. It's been raining all day, drizzling at seven this morning and storming only a couple hours later. It will make for some good puddles, he thinks, as he watches the water droplets platter on the window. He pictures the worlds they will create. Already his feet are tapping in his rain boots, eager for the leaps of faith they will make, the splashes of water and world. Dimly, he can hear the sounds of his teacher and the students that are not his friends, but it is like when he has the television on for background noise, and he drowns it out easily, ears pricked only for the rushing of the rain.

When the final school bell rings—a sound he does pay attention to—most of the rain has been squeezed out of the clouds. Only a few droplets are left, dripping like the last squish of a sponge. The rest has swirled into sewers, absorbed into the grass. Pooled into puddles. He leaps from his desk, mind humming with excitement, shiny green boots taking him to the door, only to find someone standing in front of him.

“Hi,” says the new girl. “I don’t think we got to meet at lunch. What’s your name?”

During lunch, Milo had asked if he could go outside and eat instead. When his teacher told him no—Why would you want to do that, Milo? Don’t you see how much it’s raining out there?—he snuck away and ate in the library, so no, he had not met Autumn.

“Milo,” he says, shifting from foot to foot. “Sorry, but I have to get home.”

Already he is turning towards the door, but she stops him, fingers curled around his arm. She isn’t wearing nail polish like some of the other girls in their class; her nails are bitten to the beds, her pinkie bleeding a little. “Wait, don’t leave yet! I was wondering. Would you maybe wanna give me a tour around school? I don’t really know my way around yet and…”

Looking at her this close, Milo realizes that her smile is not as smooth as he thought it was. No, up close it’s nervous, shy, scared, like her nails. Maybe she is scared she won’t have any friends too.

He wonders what it would be like to be friends with her. With anyone, really. Would they hang out at each other’s houses? Go to the bookstore together? Sit next to each other in class and play games at recess? Once, this was all he ever wanted.

But then he looks outside. The rain is gone now, the sky clearing. Soon, the puddles will dry, taking their magical worlds with them.

“No,” he says, and this time when he moves forward the girl doesn’t stop him. “No, sorry. I can’t. Maybe ask Kelsie instead? She knows more than I do.”

#

After two weeks of no rain, Milo wakes up one night to a loud crash. Disoriented at first, he thinks his parents have finally torn through the veil of silence that has fallen over their heads for so long, unleashing the storms inside of them, but no: another crash, and Milo recognizes the sweet sound of thunder. The rain slides down his window and casts long shadows on the opposite wall. It reminds him of when his dad used to make shadows on the walls with his fingers. A funny-looking bird, an angel, a chomping crocodile, making Milo laugh until his sides ached.

He hasn’t seen a crocodile shadow on his wall in a long time.

Alone in the darkness, his heart stutters for a second, eyes welling and throat aching. But watching the rain shadows run down his wall soothes him (and so does his red and blue plaid blanket, not that he would tell anyone that), and he remembers that he doesn’t need his parents anymore, not really. Not when he has the rain, the puddles, and the other worlds right there at his fingertips, waiting to be explored. The makings of a hero are right here in front of him, his journey, and he wants more than anything to take it.

On his nightstand, the alarm reads 3:37 AM. Listening to the rain outside, pounding on his window like a knock beckoning him to answer, like Gandalf at Bilbo Baggins’ door in The Hobbit, an idea begins to take root, but with it a curdle of fear. He’s too scared to break rules.

But then again, if his parents don’t notice him when they’re awake, they probably won’t when they’re asleep, either.

Still in his pajamas—blue and red plaid, just like his warm blanket that he is sad to leave behind—he slips through open doors and hallways, socked feet soundless on the carpeted floors. He feels like a spy, a very good spy if the silence of the house and the master bedroom is anything to go by. He tugs on his rain boots before he goes.

Outside, the rain is fighting gravity, slanting this way and that, whipping the tree branches along with it. The clouds overhead are as dark as ink splatters, smothering the white glow of the moon. Thunder booms like someone’s clapped directly into his ears. A yellow line of lightning follows, arcing through the air in the distance, reminding him eerily of what he thinks a UFO landing would look like. Milo is drenched instantly, the cloth of his thin pajamas sagging with the weight, his light hair darkening to the color of blood pasted on his forehead.

“This is amazing,” he murmurs, awestruck. Even shivering as he is he can’t contemplate going back inside, not when it feels like his town is coming to life for the very first time.

Then, remembering what he came here for, he jumps off his porch and takes off for the main road in front of his house, his path lit by the frequent flashes of lightning. Here he can see the puddles pooling in the dips of the road, and they take his breath away.

In each of them, he sees the different worlds, more vibrant than they ever have been before. His eyes flash from one to another like he’s in a toy store and he doesn’t know where to go first. In one puddle he sees buildings of all different shapes and colors: a red pyramid made of glass, a sphere built with lime-colored bricks, a purple building like a squiggly line. In another, he sees a light green dinosaur—the one with the long neck that he can never remember the name of—lumbering along a shoreline. There’s a field with luminescent flowers that are as tall as giants and thick as tree trunks, and a forest full of fairies, and a swamp of colorful hippos like the ones in the Hungry Hippos game.

Each puddle is different from one other and from the ones he’s seen on past rainy days, each unique and new and astounding to watch.

He toes one of the puddles, one with a herd of animals crossing a field—similar to deer, except they are clothed like humans. Sinking his foot deep, he hits the muddy ground under the water, tethering him back to reality. The puddles aren’t deep enough. They never will be. They can only beckon him pointlessly closer, like a cookie jar with a glued-on lid.

Suddenly, he knows where he needs to go. With difficulty, he turns away from the puddles. His rain boots squish deep into the ground with his first step towards the docks, crusted now with mud and grass, but he barely feels it. He doesn’t feel anything outside of him for most of the run there, his mind buzzing and heart pounding.

Soon the lake swims into view, blurry through his glasses. The docks reach out into the water like insect legs. He is heaving for breath when he reaches the water, gripping his side as he slows to a walk to the end of the docks. There, the town lake spreads before him, large and vast.

The first thing he sees is the two suns that brighten the other world’s land, slightly different shades of yellow as if one is closer to burning out than the other. The fields are green but vibrantly so, like food coloring. Leaning forward, Milo focuses on the people walking the fields: a tall girl with a bow, aiming her arrow at a large red creature in the sky that is bigger than any bird; a group of girls with sharp ears that are chasing each other with a speed too fast to be human; an elderly man drinking from a fizzy bottle that looks more like a wizard’s potion than any soft drink. There are creatures he has seen before and others he has not. In the far distance, Milo sees the wisp of smoke that might have come from a dragon’s mouth.

It is not as elaborate as other worlds he has seen, not even close.

It is perfect.

He hesitates, one foot hovering over the water, the rest of his body safely planted on the wooden planks. This is no kiddie pool anymore, and suddenly he’s scared. What if this actually works? What if he really falls into the lake and emerges on the other side? Is that something he really wants to do? What if he can’t come back?

He sees his dad, hunched over on the couch, not looking up when he asks him to read him a bedtime story. His mom, her figure small from his bedroom window, coming back from work when the crickets are chirping and the moon is glowing. His school, full of kids that found him too weird to be friends with, and Autumn, the new girl who came a moment too late. His town, a tiny place with no room for adventures. His story books, brimming with heroes and quests but imprisoned within the paper.

It’s all lukewarm compared to the brilliancy of the lake before him.

He lets his foot fall, lets his balance tip, lets the lake swallow him whole.

#

“Hello? Are you alive?”

Milo opens his eyes, face scrunching at the light. He blinks rapidly and groans. He is aware of something soft under him—grass, he thinks—but even with the softness, his body still aches, everywhere. His chest feels heavy. Eyes squinting, he sees a flash of sky above him, a bottle blue that he is all too familiar with. Did it not work? Then the sky disappears as a boy’s face takes up most of his view.

He has horns on his head. Horns.

“I made it?” Milo whispers, unable to believe it. The boy only stares. His horns are small but there, hiding in his blond curls. His nose is too button-shaped to be a normal human’s, and his outfit is more flower than cloth. It is what an adventurer would wear, he thinks. Milo lets out a whoop of joy. “I made it! I really made it!”

“Made it where?” the boy says.

“Here!” Milo cries. He wrenches up a fistful of grass and throws it over them both like confetti. “The world in the lake! I didn’t think it was possible, but look! You’re here! And you have horns!”

The boy touches his horns almost self-consciously.

With effort, Milo stands. His whole body still hurts, and his breath feels weird, snagged in his throat like a gumdrop that went down wrong.

He takes in his surroundings and sees what he saw in the lake’s reflection and then some: rolling green plains, clear water that’s never met pollution, fields of crops that he doesn’t recognize, mountains in the distance. Then there are the people: boys playing in the grass, some them with wings sprouting from their backs; a pair of women strolling on a dirt path, one rifling through a purse that has gold coins instead of dollar bills; the horned boy beside him, reflection made reality. It’s all…real.

He doesn’t realize how wide he’s grinning until a drop of water drips into his smile.

Looking down at himself now, he realizes he is still sopping wet. The water drips from his pajamas like a leaky faucet, steady and showing no signs of stopping. He frowns, glancing at the two suns and wiping the water off his face. “Um, are your suns not…hot? I feel like I should be dry by now.”

The boy shrugs. “No, they are. You just have to be patient, I’m sure you’ll be dry soon.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” Milo smiles tentatively at the boy, and the boy smiles back. For the first time, Milo thinks he might have found a friend.

“I’m going to be a hero,” Milo says, breathless at the thought of it.

He’ll be like the boys in his stories, brave and bold, a boy who is not scared by a centipede on his ceiling or the silence of an empty house. He’ll find his journey just around the corner, his chance to save the world. He’ll find someone to guide him, like in the storybooks, someone who might even come to see him as a son. He’ll fight dragons and play with fairies and go on adventures with the horned boy and finally live the life he’s always wanted.

People always love the heroes.

He grins, and lake water spills from his blue mouth when he does.