The Throwback List

by Lily Anderson

  Jo slid the map journal out of her purse and handed it over. “All the fun Sandy Point has to offer.”

  Autumn’s eyes hungrily scanned each item on the list. “Oh, look, it has both of our handwriting! That’s nice. Thank God TP-ing Bee’s house was your idea, not mine. I feel guilty every time I remember that we used to call her ‘Bianca the Bore-ia.’ So mean!” She gazed at Jo with a curious scrunch in her nose. “You’re going to do all of these?”

  Jo opened her mouth to protest. She hadn’t TP’d Bianca’s house intending to work through the whole list.

  But with a second item ticked off, the rest of the list looked more inviting. When else was she going to have the free time to learn a TikTok dance or stage herself an elaborate pinup-girl lingerie shoot?

  Instead of more days like today, where she bounced around town, her very existence getting in the way of everyone living their actual lives here, she could fill her time with something fun. The idea of a real, old-fashioned check-box to-do list was weirdly satisfying.

  And it would be easy to document everything. She’d fished her camera out of the garage in time to commemorate the TP tree. If she gave everything else on the list professional lighting, some Photoshop tinkering, maybe a hashtag…It was basically a social media campaign. Except for herself instead of for a company that dumped her like her tenure there was a cache to be cleared.

  “Yeah, I’m going to do all of them,” Jo said, deciding then and there that it was true. She could see herself ticking off every box, feeling the rush of completing a huge project on her own. “I mean I can’t pass up something to do in a town with nothing to do. There’s still no gym here, right? And no Starbucks?”

  “There’s a Starbucks kiosk inside the Safeway now! You get used to it.” Autumn dropped a sheepish smile into her straw. “I did.”

  “Right!” Jo wished that she had studied Autumn’s social media to fill in the huge gaps of knowledge she had. It seemed rude to have to ask but ruder not to know. “How long were you in Los Angeles? You went to UCLA for grad school, didn’t you? Eden said she applied because you went there.”

  “Oh, really?” Autumn looked surprised. “I would have gone to any school near Hollywood that gave me a scholarship. I just wanted to get discovered and drop out. But I fell in love with teaching instead. And I really missed it here.”

  “Here?” Jo spluttered. “You must mean Days specifically.”

  “No! Sandy Point!” Autumn laughed. “Here. Home. LA was never home. It was just a place I lived. It was like I was commuting a thousand miles away from my real life. So I got my teaching credential and left. I’m not the only one. Half the staff of Point High grew up here. Maybe more.”

  Stunned, Jo sat back. She could not imagine anyone purposefully choosing to live between nowhere and the ocean. Autumn had managed to get so far away—all the way to Los Angeles! And yet she chose to be here, in a town that got together on a weeknight to scream-sing top-40 hits.

  “At least you ended up with a job,” Jo said, struggling to find common ground. She rubbed at the music throb in her temple. “I did nothing but work, but when my old company goes public with their acquisition, none of the work I did will survive. I’ll have literally nothing to show for the last ten years. I need a real job so I can get to my adult life, as soon as possible.”

  “Well, in the meantime,” Autumn said breezily as her brother reappeared with a steaming basket of mozzarella sticks, “you can count these free mozzarella sticks—”

  “You are paying for these, Autumn.” Florencio frowned.

  “—as your welcome basket. And your first step toward eating everything on the menu here.” Autumn pointed to the item list in the back of the map journal.

  “That is going to be a very different challenge now that there are only five appetizers and seventeen kinds of margaritas,” Jo said.

  “Jo is working on a bucket list we wrote in high school,” Autumn told Florencio. “At the end we can dig up the time capsule in the backyard on Main Street. You’d better work quick, Jo. Ginger Jay wants the house picture-perfect and on the market before summer. May first, they’re putting everything left behind in a big dumpster. So you’ve got about six weeks to get what you want out of there.”

  Jo got the feeling that somehow the intensity of that deadline wasn’t just meant for her.

  Florencio bristled as though considering having an opinion on the May first dumpster or, perhaps, Ginger Jay, but instead he set his decorated forearms on the bar and put his face closer to Jo.

  “A bucket list, huh?” he asked, turning the full force of his sparkle on her. A cheap but effective distraction. A girl could lose a pinkie in those dimples. “Is that why you TP’d Bianca’s house?”

  “Yes! The list wanted me to!” Jo said. Then, hearing herself, she added, “The first item is ‘TP Bianca’s house.’ Because in high school she was so annoyingly perfect—”

  “That hasn’t changed,” Flo said. Autumn threw a cocktail napkin at him.

  “I just wanted to muss up her shit. A little,” Jo said. “I went to clean it up when I left Point High this morning, but I didn’t quite beat Bianca to it. I thought she’d be at work. She has a house. She must have a job.”

  “She runs the tattoo shop on the boardwalk,” Flo said. “They open late.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Jo said, inclining her head toward his heavily inked forearms. Flo obliged her by flexing them. A gift.

  “Did you tell Bee you were sorry for vandalizing her house?” Autumn asked.

  Jo opened her mouth to say, Yes, of course. Except that as she replayed the scene, she realized that no, she hadn’t. She had felt sorry before Bianca screamed at her for not being sorry, and then all of her sorries sort of evaporated. She gave a sheepish wince at the Kelly siblings, who both threw up their hands at her.

  “Jo!” Autumn chided.

  “You vandalized her house and didn’t apologize?” Florencio exclaimed, caught somewhere between laughing and shouting. “You’ve been back for two seconds, hometown hero!”

  Guilt made Jo’s stomach roil. It had been a long time since she had lived in a small enough community that word of what she did was instantly known by everyone. In Palo Alto, if she cut someone off on 101, she never had to think about it again. In Sandy Point, if she didn’t greet the postman by name, everyone would know by dinner.

  “She let me take over cleaning when I got there, but she followed me around, interrogating me.” Jo thought of Bianca’s meticulously styled hair sheepdogging her around the yard.

  “Did she ask, ‘Why did you do this?’ and you said, ‘A list told me to’?” Autumn asked. “Because then I would understand why she was mad.”

  “No, I said I wasn’t mad about high school, then she told me I wasn’t sorry enough and stormed off. But! Did I mention how clean the tree is? Spotless.”

  “Fifty percent right is still half-wrong,” Florencio said. “That’s an F, Freeman.”

  “You’re a wrestling coach,” Autumn scoffed. “Your grades aren’t real. You don’t know the pain of report card season.”

  “Because all of my students are winners,” Flo said with a cavalier flick of his head.

  “Coach?” Jo gasped. She didn’t know how many wrestling matches she and Autumn had gone to as Florencio’s own personal cheer squad, armed with elaborate signs made out of Mrs. Kelly’s infinite craft supplies. “Coach Kelly! You didn’t tell me that you had your own honorific. Your dad must be so proud.”

  “Must be,” Flo said, noncommittal. He craned his neck to catch a better look at the journal. “You never did any of this? Climbing the anchor! Kegs and bonfires! This is like everything I did in high school.”

  “No shit.” Jo laughed. “Where do you think we got the ideas?”

  “Aww, remember when I thought you were cool, Flo?” Autumn asked.

  “I don’t miss it,” her brother said. “You were little stalkers. Autumn followed me the night when I went to climb t
he anchor.”

  Autumn tipped her nose up in a proud smile. “And then I climbed it faster.”

  Florencio turned his attention back to Jo. “So why didn’t you?”

  “I was in a different neighborhood. I couldn’t just sneak down to the boardwalk in the middle of the night,” Jo said. “We had to plan anything that required sneaking out.”

  “Sure, but the rest of this,” Flo said. He swept a hand over the list. “What did you do in high school if you weren’t surfing or smoking weed?”

  “Studying,” Jo said at the same time that Autumn giggled and said, “Wren Vos.”

  Flushing, Jo thought of her ex-girlfriend longboarding by, pockets heavy with paperbacks, long blond princess hair whipping in the wind.

  “That’s right!” Flo laughed. “You dated the Vos sister for a minute.”

  “A minute and a half,” Jo said. “Two years.”

  “Have you seen her?” Autumn asked.

  Jo shook her head. “Not in the last ten years. She thought social media was participation in a surveillance state, remember? We lost touch.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, fingers twitching. “I lost touch with everyone.”

  Jo was coming to realize that it had been a long time since she’d let herself have a social life. Talking to influencers expecting goody boxes or coworkers shit-talking their man-child boss wasn’t the same as having fun with other people. It wasn’t the same as being known.

  She really hadn’t done anything fun in a long time. Not fun that wasn’t work. She had really liked her job and found it enjoyable to be good at it, but it wasn’t glitter-fight fun. Pointless fun was rare.

  If she was going to do this list, she would have to commit to every step. That would mean a lot of time on the boardwalk. Coming and going. It would be a good idea to make sure that the next-door neighbor wasn’t holding a grudge.

  As she looked down at the list, her gaze caught upon Get belly button pierced. “Does Bianca’s tattoo parlor do piercings?”

  “Bee does them herself,” Autumn said. Then, in a conspiratorial whisper, added, “She can’t draw. But she can run a business. She has a degree in it and everything.”

  Jo bit into a mozzarella stick. “Do you think letting her stab me with needles sounds like the start of a good apology?”

  Autumn smiled with all of her new teeth. “That sounds like a great apology.”

  By the next morning, the whiteboard wall had a list of project-title ideas. She needed something that would work as both a brand and a hashtag. Something that wasn’t already crowded on social media. Autumn had suggested “The Way Back List,” but Jo found it already in use by a Floridian teen working on her own bucket list. “The Home Again List” sounded too much like a community-sponsored program. “The Time Capsule Project” put too much pressure on the time capsule itself to be interesting—Jo was pretty sure it was mostly dollar-store trinkets and letters written on binder paper. After ten more false starts—all of them a mishmash of vaguely nostalgic words: hometown, ten years later, return—she finally landed on one that worked.

  She dusted off her Instagram, uploading her first post since leaving California.

  PhotogFreeman: Sorry I’ve been so quiet on here recently! Life has been hella busy and is about to get even more exciting. I’m embarking on a new project, starting today! I’d like to introduce you to the Throwback List.

  Would high school you be proud of who you are now? When I found this list of everything I wanted to do before the end of high school, it was ten years later and I hadn’t done a single thing on it! Now I am going to check off every single item, no matter how terrifying or silly or impractical (wow, that’s a lot of TGI Fridays!).

  What task on my list would you be most scared of? Sound off in the comments!

  #TheThrowbackList

  TP Bianca’s house

  Perform onstage

  Dear Bianca,

  I hope you can forgive me for yesterday. I’d love the chance to apologize in person. Do you have any appointments available for a navel piercing this week or next?

  Best,

  Jo Freeman

  “She vandalizes my house then has the audacity to ask me for a piercing appointment?” Bianca shouted at her computer in the Salty Dog Tuesday afternoon. “She didn’t even have the decency to call! An email! Does she think I don’t know she lives next door?”

  Dear Jo,

  Think nothing of it. This week, I could schedule you for Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.

  Cordially, Bianca Boria-Birdy General Manager & Body Piercer at the Salty Dog

  “I bet she’s never been inside a tattoo shop in her life. She’s going to find every single flaw,” Bee said, at home, hacking apart a head of lettuce. “She thinks she is so cool and metropolitan because she lived in California. It’s only a state, people. If she’d moved somewhere less flashy, maybe she’d still be there. She could afford rent in Idaho, I bet. No one moves in with their parents because they want to.”

  Bianca,

  Thursday afternoon would be perfect. Would it be okay with you if Autumn joined us? She offered to take pictures of the process for my Instagram, but I thought I should ask if she could tag along. I don’t want to be rude.

  Thanks,

  Jo

  “It’s rude for her to not ask permission to take pictures inside my shop,” Bee said, Wednesday morning at the kitchen sink. Wet spread across her side as she scratched shampoo into Lita’s scalp. “I bet she won’t even go through with the piercing. She’ll wimp out at the last second. But not before Autumn takes a bunch of pictures of her in the chair.”

  “Pictures are good for business,” Lita intoned, eyes closed. “Tell her to put them on the Yelp reviews. My husband, your grandfather, he loved the Yelp reviews.”

  Jo,

  Of course, Autumn is always welcome. Accommodating her after-school club schedule, how does Thursday at 5 p.m. sound to both of you?

  Regards,

  Bianca Boria-Birdy

  General Manager & Body Piercer at the Salty Dog

  Bianca,

  We’re on! Thanks again!

  Jo

  “Now I’ll just be the fat suburban friend,” Bee said, crashing Dez and Dede’s smoke break mid-Wednesday, holding a Safeway latte instead of a cigarette. “And, yes, that’s what I am. But I don’t want to feel like that’s all I am!”

  “It isn’t! You’re a boss, Boss!” squeaked Dede.

  AUTUMN: Aww, yay! Thanks for scheduling an appointment for Jo! See you Thursday for sure!

  “Autumn’s real best friend is back, and already everything is changing,” Bee told Birdy as he got into bed Wednesday night. “I didn’t hear from her at all on Monday. After I told her that Jo was rude to me, they went and had drinks at singalong night! And they’re going to come into the shop together tomorrow! So the duchess can look down that bump in her nose at my ancestral business.”

  “Is Meghan Markle still a duchess?” Birdy asked now, slipping his reading glasses on as he reached for his e-reader.

  “Of course she is,” Bianca snapped. “Just like Diana will always be the people’s princess.”

  “Fair enough,” Birdy said. “And this girl you’re talking about isn’t Meghan Markle but is just some girl you went to high school with? The mysterious daughter of Phil and Deb next door?”

  “If mysterious is code for ‘snobby robot.’”

  “I’m not in the habit of speaking in code, honey,” he said, patting her arm.

  Bee yanked the patted arm back. “I can’t lose my one friend, Birdy.” When his face fell into an offended frown, she amended her statement. “My one friend other than you. Not that I want to share you either.”

  “That’s very only-child of you.”

  Bianca gasped. “Birdy!”

  “It’s true!” He laughed. “I know you think you’ve outsmarted it or you’re immune because of your Gilmore Girls situation with your mom.”

  “Rory Gilmore is the ult
imate only child. I would never steal a boat.”

  “But you do expect your friend to pick up the phone. Every time.”

  “I wouldn’t call her if I didn’t know she was free.”

  “That attention to detail is endearing and not at all scary. But you are an only child, honeybee. Growing up alone means that you weren’t raised to share anything. Except your personal space.”

  Unlike Birdy and his two brothers—all known as Birdy in their social circles—Bee’s childhood hadn’t been an endless stream of Tom Sawyer–esque hijinks. While the Birdy Brothers were flexing their white privilege and running amok in suburban Ohio, Bianca had been following the rules to keep the Boria name squeaky clean.

  She hadn’t been friendless. She just liked her friends the way Lita liked a dinner plate—in distinct, separate quadrants. School friends stayed at school. Work friends within a block of work. Family friends were rare—and usually guest tattoo artists who fell back into work-friend territory.

  A best friend had to be able to move in all those spheres with her. More than that, they had to be someone she could talk to day or night, but who wouldn’t get mad if she disappeared on family business. Someone who she could travel with but who would understand how far in advance all trips would need to be planned. Someone who could enjoy both working and playing hard. Someone who wasn’t pushing diets, religion, or pyramid schemes, which ruled out most of the people she was Facebook friends with.

  When she re-met Autumn at OSU their freshman year, she found the first person who ever ticked all the boxes. Finding Birdy shortly after had felt like lightning striking twice.

  Except tonight, when she was pissed at both of them.

  “What did Lita have to say about it?” Birdy asked.

  Bee punched her pillow into shape. “That Autumn is a social butterfly who needs to flap her wings.”