“I didn’t sleep anywhere that wasn’t my house until the first night of college,” Bee said. “I was such a scaredy-cat.”
“Seriously?” Jo asked. “What about vacations?”
“We never went anywhere.” Bee shrugged. “I probably slept at my grandparents’ apartment above the shop once, I just don’t remember.”
“What if,” Autumn mused, starting a thought that she hadn’t had time to formulate, “we had a sleepover? The three of us?”
“In my parents’ house or your studio?” Jo asked in a monotone that suggested she didn’t like either idea.
“Neither,” Autumn said, hoping thousands of dollars of improv classes would help fan an idea into a proposal. “A girls’ weekend. Just the three of us.”
“I couldn’t get away for a whole weekend, Autumn.” Bee frowned. “Not right now, not without a ton of notice—”
“But that’s just it!” Autumn said, verbally tap-dancing faster. She felt like she was eight years old, performing a one-woman show to try to get her parents to look at her and only her. “We could stay here! In town. In a vacation house. I’ve never stayed in Waterfront Cove. Have either of you? Bee, you’d be as close to home as you would be at work. Just on the other side of the hill.”
“Where are we going to get a vacation house?” Bee asked slowly.
“It’s not tourist season yet,” Jo said.
“It’s the start!” Bee said, counting problems on her fingers. “It depends on what surf groups are coming through town, what the weather for the next month looks like, whether or not the Tillamook Creamery scheduled their beer and wine weekend at the same time as the kite festival—”
“I’ll go ask Ginger!” Autumn blurted. “Ginger Jay owns vacation houses. I’ll see if she has an open weekend coming up. You guys can go through whatever else on the list you want to tackle that weekend. We could definitely cross off eating breakfast at midnight. And we could play all the sleepover games we used to!”
“I’m in,” Jo said. “Bee?”
“Okay,” Bianca said, nodding more and more resolutely. “Find a weekend and I will spend the night. But it has to be within city limits. Not even one exit up.”
“I promise to keep you out of Rockaway Beach,” Autumn said.
Bee lowered her gaze to the floor. “It’s not that I wouldn’t like to go somewhere farther, it’s just…”
“We get it,” Autumn said quickly. “You need to stay close to home. Just in case Lita needs you.”
“In case anyone needs me,” Bee murmured.
“Miss Kelly!” Eden exclaimed, bouncing toward them. “Those dances were so awesome! Why don’t the seniors get a dance break in 9 to 5? That’s from our showcase, isn’t it?”
“I had planned to use it for the Senior Showcase, but we cut it for time,” Autumn said delicately. It didn’t feel right to rat on a fellow adult. Wren was always saying that the faculty were supposed to present as a unit. Like parents getting paid to keep their shit together.
Unfooled, Eden stuck her hands on her hips. “You said that the Broadway Club learned it in a couple weeks! We have hella time before the Senior Showcase! Like a month!”
Autumn had rehearsed entire shows in less than a month. In college, she had stepped in to play Shelley in Bat Boy: The Musical halfway through tech week. Theater made anything possible. That was the magic of it.
Except.
“We’d have to ask Mrs. Markey,” she said.
Jo and Eden made identical faces of annoyance, although neither of them seemed to notice the other. Bee laughed.
“We’re co-directing the Senior Showcase,” Autumn stressed. “But if you want to come learn the dances on your own time, you’re welcome to join Broadway Club.”
“With the sophomores?” Eden scoffed. “No offense, Miss Kelly, but I don’t think so.”
“Jo is going to come learn a dance with us for the list!” Autumn said. She turned to Jo.
“Jo is definitely not that good of a dancer,” Eden said. When Jo shot her a dirty look, Eden’s shoulders came up to her ears. “What? We all saw the video of you dancing at karaoke.”
“Rude!” Jo said.
“But true.” Bee giggled.
“You should come learn the dances with me, Eden,” Jo said. “It could be fun.”
Eden chewed on her lower lip, looking pleased but determined not to show it. “I guess it could be.”
“And you ran out on the last list item you helped with,” Jo said, playfully swatting her sister on the shoulder.
“Yeah, because I didn’t need to watch you make out with the new VP,” Eden said. “But, whatever, I’ll think about it.”
“I already drafted an introductory email telling their parents that they were going to study with my new dance captain,” Autumn told Jo after Eden left to rejoin a group of friends. “I’ll just leave out the part where you have two left feet. Let’s hope none of them follow the Throwback List. Or maybe let’s hope they do?”
“You’re utterly ridiculous,” Jo said.
“And you are so competitive that with a group of fourteen-year-old experts and your sister, you will work a billion times harder than if it was just you and me.”
“That is”—Jo started to argue, but rolled her eyes instead—“probably true.”
COMPLETED ITEMS
TP Bianca’s house
Perform onstage
Get belly button pierced
Redo the yearbook prank
Eat the giant sundae at Frosty’s
Host a dinner party
Pose like a pinup girl
Get a pet
TO BE COMPLETED
Surf the Point
Have a glitter fight
Get stoned
Try everything on the menu at Days
Do a keg stand
Play hide-and-seek in public
Break something with a sledgehammer
Climb the giant anchor on the boardwalk (and survive)
Get a high score at the boardwalk arcade
Learn an entire dance routine
Have a bonfire
Eat breakfast at midnight
Dig up the time capsule
JO: What do I bring to a dance class? A water bottle? A snack?
AUTUMN: A can-do attitude and clothes you can move in!
BIANCA: I require photographic evidence of this casual moment, Jo.
I do not believe you own cozy clothes.
JO: B, I am home alone while my entire family is at work or school. I now take off real pants the second I walk in the door. I’m in sweatpants ALL DAY.
The following Monday, delighted to escape her parents’ day off, Jo drove to Point High with Safeway Starbucks drinks for her and Autumn.
During her tenure as Point High’s student yearbook photographer, Jo had spent a lot of time cataloging mush-mouthed stage readings of Our Town. It was almost a relief to be here to learn a dance from fourteen-year-olds, rather than listening to yet another George blather on about ice cream sodas.
The collection of Oregon Shakespeare Festival posters that had dominated the walls ten years ago had been replaced by the Broadway posters from the Kellys’ Main Street house and overlapping anchor charts covered in Autumn’s energetic handwriting. Vocabulary words, sentence diagrams, theater-history timelines, all written on gigantic white lined paper.
“You have list walls!” Jo observed proudly when she—and her first official visitor’s pass—had entered Autumn’s classroom. She clutched her heart. “And some of them are alphabetical?!”
Autumn laughed. “Am I literally watching you re-fall in friend love with me?”
“You knew what I was like when you invited me here.”
“I did!” Autumn beamed. “I can’t wait for you to see the organization system for my script library. But first: What are you doing this Friday night?”
Jo racked her brain. “I want to say nothing, but I feel like you’re going to tell me that’s wrong?”
“For serious?” Jo hadn’t had a sleepover in years. It also—to borrow a phrase from her sister—actively bummed her out to think about baby Bianca Boria never staying away from home. And while a hot tub overlooking the ocean wasn’t exactly the same as sleeping bags in the Main Street living room, it definitely wasn’t worse.
“Ginger Jay sent me the key code and everything,” Autumn said, tossing the phone on top of a pile of quizzes. “I told Bee at family dinner last night. You should make her a sample packing list. She’s only ever made sex-date suitcases. Very different.”
“Way fewer clay face masks than a sleepover requires,” Jo said.
“Fewer, but not none!” Autumn tittered. She checked the accordion wall and lowered her voice. “Speaking of sex dates, how are you and Wren? Are you going to see her while you’re here?”
“We’ve only spent one night together,” Jo said, feeling disloyal mentioning sex with Wren in Wren’s place of work. Even if Point High had once been the place where most of their fooling around happened. They were adults now. Adults who had sex in a prep kitchen and then pulled over on the way to Forest Grove just to make out. Jo couldn’t casually explain how the drive to Wren’s apartment had taken forever, how every King Princess song on the stereo felt like it was about them. Her skin felt hot as she tried to scrape the words together. “I texted her that I was coming to campus today, but I didn’t hear back from her.”
Wren’s reply had been an auto-responder.
WREN: This is W. Vos. I am currently in a disciplinary hearing and am unavailable until 5pm. Please refer PHS business to my email queue. Go Privateers!
Jo had never had enough power at a job to put an away message on her phone. It was an impressive power move, if needlessly formal.
“Don’t take it personal! Wren never checks her texts when she’s in a meeting. And she’s always in a meeting. She barely has time to eat while she’s here,” Autumn assured her.
“Oh, I know. Wren was a workaholic even before she had a job,” Jo said, comforted nonetheless.
“She’s a woman with a plan,” Autumn concurred. “Now, I hope you’re ready to dance, because it’s time for you to pay—with sweat!”
Thus Jo was surrendered to the sophomores on the undressed stage in the auditorium. Three hundred empty teal seats stared at them from the audience.
“Jo, meet the Broadway Club,” Autumn said with an introductory arm-swoop. “Orin, Ellen, Ayden, and Kayden P, this is my friend Jo—”
“Kayden G,” Kayden G corrected.
“They are going to help you learn one of the dances from their spring carnival performance,” Autumn explained to Jo.
“If you’re not a strong dancer, I would go 9 to 5,” Ayden told Jo.
“Are you Eden’s sister?” Ellen asked Jo.
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Ayden.
“No,” Ellen said. “She looks way less like Zoë Kravitz than Eden.”
Jo reflexively touched her own cheek, unsure if she was being insulted or not. Who didn’t want to be a Kravitz?
Orin broke free of the pack and stepped toward Jo, examining her without reserve. He sank his weight to one leg and crossed his arms. “If you had been allowed to take headshots when you were here before spring break, would you have excluded the nonseniors?” he asked.
“Um, no?” Jo guessed.
“Good,” Orin said with an officious nod. “Go ahead and take one of the plastic top hats stacked stage right.”
“No way,” Jo said. She looked at Autumn. “I was offered 9 to 5.”
The sophomores collectively groaned. “But Chorus Line is the more impressive dance!”
Jo stood her ground. “I need an underhand pitch, please.”
“And I need fewer sports metaphors coming from you,” said Orin. “Miss Kelly, would you please cue up ‘9 to 5’? Jo, you can watch us do it once and then—”
A metal side door opened in the audience, the sound of it like the opening of a safe. Sunlight flooded the entrance, a natural spotlight following the line of teens now walking up the aisle.
Beside Jo, Orin, Ayden, Ellen, and Kayden G gasped.
“The seniors,” Kayden G whispered in a reverent susurrus.
At the front of a group of her peers was Eden, who gave a wave that was mostly sleeve.
“You said we could come learn the dances you cut from the Senior Showcase,” she told Autumn. “Is that okay?”
Autumn hesitated for a moment, checking over her shoulder like she expected the bogeyman to leap out from behind the heavy black curtains. But she turned back an instant later, face bright. “Of course! Come in, come in, come in! We’ve barely even stretched!”
The seniors shuffled onstage.
“I’m glad you made it,” Jo told her sister.
Eden rolled her eyes to her friends but stood next to Jo.
The dance break jammed into the middle of Dolly Parton’s classic was, at least, slower than the rest of the song. It mostly involved what the kids kept calling “heaven hands,” which Jo knew to be shoulder presses.
It took half of their allotted dance hour for the group to master the step-clap jazz square and sugar-stepping that composed most of the routine, which meant that they’d started to rush by the time they got to the tricks. When Jo almost punted Kayden G offstage during a misaimed fan kick, everyone was granted a water break.
The seniors took turns stretching each other’s arms behind their backs.
Jo stood up. Stretching teens looming over her was creepy. Like an old PE nightmare.
“It’s coming along,” Orin said with the pre-disappointed weariness Jo’s mother had when anyone else offered to cook. “But I don’t know if Jo will be ready to be filmed by our next meeting. It’s only the day after tomorrow.”
“I promised that I would practice at home,” Jo said, taking a surly swig from an old Q-Co water bottle she’d found deep within her parents’ kitchen cupboard.
“Practicing only helps if you have all the steps perfect before you leave,” Orin said with a matter-of-fact frown.
Cruel, but true. Jo’s bones creaked as she set her water bottle on the floor.
“Back to places,” Orin called. “Let’s take it from the ‘get up and work’ breakdown. Five six seven and, straight arms, Jo!”
Jo said goodbye to the Broadway Club when they switched their focus to singing the songs they were dancing. Eden wanted to stay and lend her soprano to the Chorus Line harmonies. Jo had no soprano to lend and left.
Alone, Jo walked stiffly across campus, the setting sun stretching her shadow out long on the quad pavement. In the front office, she peeled off her visitor sticker and signed out on an actual pad of paper on a clipboard; lobby software apparently hadn’t made it to Point High.
She finished signing the unsearchable paper—she was positive the secretaries would throw it away at the end of the day—when she looked up and saw Wren in navy cashmere that made her eyes look like the sky over the sea.
“I just got your message,” Wren said, her shoulder wedged against the wall. She tipped her head, letting all the white-blond locks fall across her eyes. “Can I walk you to your car?”
Jo smoothed down her hair and prayed she was sexy-dewy rather than nasty-sweaty. It wasn’t that she hadn’t imagined running into Wren here, but none of her idle daydreams had included her edges sweat out.
“Of course,” she said, hyperconscious of the office manager and secretaries in the room.
Wren hadn’t been much for public affection before Point High was her place of employment and Jo was worried about her
own pit stains, so she didn’t push for a hug hello. The hair on her arms still rose when Wren brushed their pinkies together in acknowledgment.
The last time they’d seen each other in person was the morning after the dinner party. Whereas Jo found sex with strangers could be awkward and impersonal—clothes put back on immediately after, Ubers ordered—the history between her and Wren had made space for a familiar sensuality. They drank coffee in bed, feet tangled in the sheets. Jo could still feel Wren kissing her eyelids and the tip of her nose to wake her up.
In the intervening week, while Wren spent spring break with friends in Portland, Jo had worried over the dearth of contact between them. Wren responded to texts in five words or less, without the comforting lies of emojis or nonliteral LOLs. The long silences made Jo remember the abrupt shift of the first few months of Wren at Reed.
But now, as they fell into step leaving the office, Wren stayed close enough to her for their hands to graze.
Maybe Autumn was right and Wren really did just hate texting.
“How’d it go with the drama kids?” Wren asked.
Jo rubbed her sore shoulders. “I hope my parents have IcyHot because those children have springs for feet. They could make a killing teaching show-tunes aerobics.”
“Not a bad idea. This town could use a gym.”
Jo flashed her a smile. “Who are you telling? At least you can run in your neighborhood. I’m too afraid of eating shit on these sandy-ass streets.”
Wren held open the door at the front of the school, leading the way down the wide cement stairs. The air was misty and crisp.
“Do I get to see the video of your newfound dancing expertise?” Wren asked. “Or do I have to wait until it goes online with everyone else?”
“Ha! There is no video yet. I’m going to take an extra day of rehearsal,” Jo said, tightening her ponytail. A muscle in her back spasmed. Wow, she was so not fourteen anymore. “Wait, do you look at the Throwback List online?”
“I know what Instagram is, Johanna,” Wren scoffed. “Although speaking of the list, aren’t you worried that the lingerie photo is going to hurt your job hunt?”
The Throwback List Page 19
