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PURGATORY. MILO CAN'T THINK OF A BETTER WORD TO DESCRIBE the acute experience of recovering from a nauseating migraine in a diner bathroom at night.
He isn't a sinner though. Or at least he doesn't think he is. That's what purgatory is, right? That in-between place where fractured and tormented souls get caught, neither in heaven nor hell, but in some terrible place between?
It hadn't been quite that bad, Milo thinks, but it's possible that whatever the other boy had experienced had been.
Milo hadn't fallen asleep in the Riviera, though he had come close, the heaviness of his fate tugging away at what little energy he'd had left in him. Once he felt he had wallowed in self-pity for an indeterminable time, he had made the decision to drag himself up to his room to wallow somewhere warmer. This is when he encountered the blond boy in his kitchen and his stomach had lurched in a complicated way. The Iverson boy, a wolf amongst them.
And now there's just this: two boys, winter and fall; two different reflections looking in the same mirror.
The radio continues to crackle and Lenore eyes it wearily for a moment before returning her focus to Milo. "You two have met before?" she asks him. Her gaze is analytical, gauging his reaction.
It suddenly occurs to Milo that his omission of the Iverson boy from his diner retelling has unceremoniously come back to bite him in the ass. There are few things more stupid than lying to a psychic—or even just a mother that knows you particularly well—so Milo says truthfully, "We met that night at the diner."
Lenore frowns. "The night you had that migraine?"
"Yes."
"What was the nature of this meeting?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Not to generalise, but it just seems unlikely that you boys would... associate."
It's a fair assumption to make. In fact, it's a highly accurate assumption, but it makes Milo feel strangely uncomfortable. He tries not to be intimidated by Iverson boys—they are nothing without their money after all—but he can't deny that the wolfish boy's presence makes him feel more than a little on edge.
Milo crosses his arms, feeling suddenly defensive. "My previous question still stands."
Lenore mirrors him, though when she folds her arms it's decidedly more of a subtle power move than a defence mechanism. "I just want to gauge whether it was a coincidence or whether there was possibly divine–"
"I don't see how any of this matters."
"We met in the bathroom," the boy says, his words cutting cleanly through the conversation though he hadn't spoken any louder than anyone else in the room. "And I told him he looked like shit."
Lenore and Milo both turn their attention to him.
You didn't look much better, Milo wants to say, but doesn't. Whatever strange confidence he'd had in 'purgatory' had evidently stayed there. Milo bites his lower lip self-consciously. Lenore clicks her tongue disapprovingly, though she doesn't defend Milo's honour. Milo can't decide whether he's thankful for this or not.
