The Throwback List

by Lily Anderson

  “Or phlebotomy school?” Jo offered.

  “Ha!” Bee gave an uncharacteristically maniacal laugh. “Wouldn’t that just be the pie at the bottom of the sundae if I redecorated this entire place and then went back to community college? That would show my mom for running off with no notice.”

  Autumn and Jo shared a silent moment, confirming that this was new information to both of them.

  “Your mom took off?” Autumn asked in a voice that sounded soothing-casual rather than worried-accusing, which is how she felt.

  “Oh yeah, Mom’s going out of town for a while and didn’t tell me. And then yelled at me about it. That’s why I’m asking Flo to move up the keg party. I need to be home in time to put Lita to bed. Who says I can’t have it all?” Her watch chirped, and Bee swiped the alarm away before gesturing to the longest wall in the room. “This will be mirrors and mood lighting. Over there will be a little retail corner. We never have a place to put out the aftercare product we sell.”

  As Bee described the aesthetician chairs she had ordered and the mural two of the shop’s employees were planning to paint downstairs in tribute to her grandfather, Autumn looked around the room, seeing it bloom through her friend’s imagination. It was definitely going to be awesome. Bee had waited a long time to take full control of the shop.

  “I’m done babysitting this place,” Bee announced. “This is my shop, and it’s going to look how I want it. I’m tired of waiting for other people to make the rules. This is my place! I make the rules!”

  “Just like Taylor Swift said!” Autumn grinned. She loved seeing Bee fired up and passionate about something again. It felt like a glimpse of College!Bee, the girl who had talked for hours and hours about how meaningful she found making pizza.

  “That’s right!” Bee cheered. “We’re the grown-ups! It already happened!”

  “Do you want me to take before and after pictures of the room?” Jo asked Bee, taking her camera out of its case. “Or pictures of you smashing the cabinets?”

  “No.” Bee skittered away like Jo was going to start paparazzi-shooting her to death. “I want to take a picture of you taking the first swing. For the Throwback List. If you hadn’t needed this room for the list, I never would have thought about fixing it up!”

  “Oh,” Jo said, eyes rounding with feeling. “Bee, that’s so nice. I’m so glad that my annoying need to borrow your space inspired you to use it more yourself!”

  “You totally inspire me to do more for myself!” Bee laughed. “I’m wearing a comfortable and sexy new bra, thank you for asking!”

  “Oh my God!” Jo dropped her camera back into her bag, flung her arms around Bee’s shoulders, and jostled the two of them in an excited hug. “I’m so proud of you!”

  Autumn couldn’t contain herself. She threw herself onto the end of the hug, squeezing both her best friends at the same time.

  “I’m finally redecorating the shop and my new bra earns a group hug?” Bee said in a constricted voice.

  “Friendship is magic!” Autumn cried. “Friendship centipede!”

  “Stop referencing that poop movie!” Bee begged.

  “Okay, okay.” Jo shimmied out of the group hug. “Let’s wreck this kitchen.”

  Properly attired in the safety gear the Chief had provided—goofy goggles and Ginger Jay’s gardening gloves—Jo picked up the sledgehammer with both hands. From the other side of the room, Bee and Autumn watched through the camera’s digital display as Jo took a practice swing like she was using a baseball bat.

  “Don’t crack your head open!” Autumn called to Jo, wishing she’d brought helmets from the Main Street garage.

  “Aim downward!” Bee coached.

  “I got it!” Jo said. She squared up to the cabinets and brought the hammer down hard. The slam shook the walls, scaring a storm of seagulls from the window. The cupboard stood strong. Jo geared up for her second swing.

  “Wait!” Bee cried.

  Jo flinched so hard that the sledgehammer dropped loudly to the floor. Autumn jumped aside with a squeal.

  “This moment requires music,” Bee said. She pulled her phone out of the wooden desk—a rare sighting of something she couldn’t delegate to her watch—and put on the Rolling Stones. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Everyone took a second to get loose, humming and swaying along to the music.

  Jo took the second swing, cracking the bottom out of the cabinet. Wood shards exploded onto the countertop. She pumped her fist in the air. She held the sledgehammer out to Bee. “Next!”

  “Get it, Bee!” Autumn cheered.

  “I was never very good at hitting baseballs or piñatas,” Bee said. “But maybe it’s easier with your eyes open?”

  With her knees bent and a panicked cry of “You get what you need!” she brought the hammer down on the cabinet, noisily pulling down one side. She lifted her knees in a victory jig.

  “Bring it all the way down, Autumn!” she said, passing the hammer.

  “Then we can start figuring out how to break the counter.” Jo snorted. “Do we think it’s glued or bolted to that wall?”

  When Autumn had gone to borrow the sledgehammer from her dad, she hadn’t imagined using it herself. Throwback List items were supposed to spotlight Jo. Even in writing it as a teenager, Autumn had known that the list was about convincing her über-practical friend that there were things in life that couldn’t go on her Stanford application.

  She took up the sledgehammer. For years, she had let herself believe that she’d failed in being the right friend to Jo. Growing apart had tarnished some of Autumn’s happiest childhood memories, making her doubt their validity.

  Seeing Jo bring joy to Sandy Point through the Throwback List gave Autumn those happy memories back.

  Here, in the endless possibilities of a room on the brink of transformation, Autumn could feel every version of herself rocking out in tandem. Baby bucktoothed Autumn, college unfortunate-haircut Autumn, present day Autumn in an oversize Patagonia hoodie she’d found on Main Street.

  She squared up with the lopsided counter, taking a moment to really feel being in exactly the right place at the right moment—with her two favorite people, trying something for the very first time.

  Swinging the hammer from her shoulder in an arc, as though she were hitting a carnival bell, she misjudged the angle, missed the cupboard, and cracked the laminate counter in half.

  “Good problem solving, Autumn!” Bee giggled. “But maybe we could go back to getting one piece down at a time?”

  “I’m strong as heck, but I can’t aim for shit!” Autumn said. She passed the hammer back to Bee.

  The three of them spent the morning singing and sweating and laughing over the crack and thud of demolition.

  Who knew a hammer could be a honeypot?

  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

  Learn an entire dance routine

  Get stoned

  Eat breakfast at midnight

  Have a glitter fight

  Try everything on the menu at Days

  Break something with a sledgehammer

  TO BE COMPLETED

  Surf the Point

  Do a keg stand

  Play hide-and-seek in public

  Climb the giant anchor on the boardwalk (and survive)

  Get a high score at the boardwalk arcade

  Have a bonfire

  Dig up the time capsule

  JO: It finally happened, guys. Jen G bagged all of my shit upside down. She broke the chips I’m bringing to the kegger.

  AUTUMN: Aww! You’re a real townie now!

  BIANCA: Are we the Anti Jen G club or is Jen G the Anti Us club?

  JO: Did you get stoned without us?

&n
bsp; BIANCA: I wish! What happened to the rest of the gummies?

  JO:

  AUTUMN: They help me sleep!

  BIANCA: Yeah but they could be helping ALL of us sleep

  JO: Share with the class, Autumn Breeze

  AUTUMN: Autumn Breeze sounds like an air freshener. What a bananas thing for parents to do to a baby

  I ate one of the gummies

  Bee and Birdy bowed out of going to the boardwalk arcade before everyone was scheduled to go to Florencio’s. Bianca swore up and down that they would join everyone when it was time to tap the keg.

  “Shouldn’t we have tapped the keg before we came down here?” Jo asked the Kelly siblings, scooping a handful of tokens out of the change converter—where you win every time! as Phil Freeman used to say. “I might be better at air hockey a little tipsy.”

  “One, you are never going to win the high score at air hockey,” Flo said. “Two, don’t be the drunk guy at a place for kids. It’s a bad look.”

  “He’s only saying that because I accidentally got too drunk at Knott’s Berry Farm during last year’s Birdy Bash,” Autumn explained to Jo. “Turns out that beer is still beer even when it tastes like juice! Lesson learned!”

  “But how many kids lost out on a nice day to you and Bianca puking purple on a log ride?” Flo asked drolly.

  “You are such a fucking dad sometimes.” Jo laughed and cuffed him on the shoulder. She thought about playfully mussing his hair, but that might cross the line between fun shit talk and actual fight. She wasn’t sure if the hair stood up on its own or if, like Wren, Florencio spent twenty minutes each morning with blow-dryer, texturizer, and pomade.

  High Tide USA Arcade was a wood-walled antique on the boardwalk, two doors down from Jo’s parents’ store. In California, Jo had been to movie theaters with better arcades than High Tide USA, but none of them had High Tide’s grimy indoor carnival unstuck-in-time vibe. Like KDEP radio, High Tide USA boasted the best of the eighties, nineties, and today—a crowded collection of recent-to-this-century electronics and classic wooden box games that could barely keep score in blinking yellow pointillist digits.

  “I have a high-score battle plan,” Jo told the Kellys.

  “Was there any doubt?” Flo asked.

  “I’m going to hit the oldest game in every corner of the arcade,” Jo said. “Skee-Ball, mini basketball, and shitty old gun games are my best bet, I think.”

  Autumn rubbed a crinkled dollar bill against the side of the machine, a move Florencio had taught them when they were just unsupervised kids let loose on the boardwalk.

  “And if that doesn’t work?” she asked.

  “I will take down the Dance Dance Revolution,” Jo said.

  “Ha!” Flo said. “People devote their lives to the Dance. You can’t defeat DDR on a whim.”

  Autumn giggled and stole Jo’s phone out of her tote, easily swiping past her passcode and protests. “I am setting an alarm on your phone. We’re meeting Bee and Birdy at Flo’s house at three thirty.”

  Flo posted an elbow up on the token machine as he scooped coins into his pocket. “Like that totally well-known saying ‘it’s always three thirty somewhere.’”

  “Don’t be mad because you’re hosting a midday rager,” Jo said. “Day drinking is a respectable pastime.”

  “I know it’s early.” Autumn sighed. “But if we want to see Bee and Birdy, they need to be sober and home by eight.”

  “But until then we rage,” Flo said, pretending to Hulk out. Veins snaked through both his forearms. How was he keeping his arms so jacked without a gym in town? Jo wanted to ask but was sure he would tease her so hard he’d forget to answer the question.

  The three of them made their way past the admissions booth onto the play floor. A group of passing kids hollered when they saw Flo, chanting “Coach Kelly” until he excused himself to play a round of foosball against one of his star middle school wrestlers.

  “This is why you don’t roll up to an arcade drunk,” he said knowingly to Jo and Autumn.

  “You gotta be sharp to beat a child at a child’s game?” Jo asked.

  “Don’t you know that eventually the younger generation inherits the whole world out from under you?” Flo snorted. “Like when your sister kicked your ass in the 9 to 5 dance.”

  “Ew, rude! Get out of here, Coach!”

  It took forty-five minutes for Jo to uncover her hidden talent as a digital fisherman as she racked up the high score at a bizarre rod-and-reel game called Bass Trolling. She was so proud of herself when the screen burst into the final win screen that she refused to put the fake fishing pole down until Autumn and Florencio—back from losing at foosball—took pictures of her backlit by the giant golden HIGH SCORE screen.

  Jo walked out of the arcade a winner.

  “If you like digital fishing, you should definitely come with us for the next Birdy Bash,” Birdy said as his crutches wobbled in the gravel in front of Flo’s shiplap matchbox house at precisely three thirty. “We’re heading to the Dave and Buster’s resort the week before Thanksgiving. It’s supposed to be out-of-this-world bonkers. Like Vegas but no one cool would ever ever go there.”

  “Keep selling, man, because I am definitely buying.” Jo laughed.

  Florencio’s house was so deep into the forest side of town that the trees blocked out the view of the beach.

  “I can’t believe you bought a house downhill. You can’t see the ocean,” Jo said, taking in the mostly gravel front yard.

  “You don’t even like the ocean!” Flo said.

  “I don’t,” Jo said. “But people do.”

  Florencio looked offended. “You think I’m people?”

  “I did until you bought a house in the flats like a real townie weirdo.”

  The house was rectangular, two hallways coming off the living room like wings. The walls were pin-pricked, evidence of where picture frames had been recently torn down, nails and all. Had the pictures been of Flo and Melody or impersonal beach art like Freeman Fine Arts once sold? College textbooks and a surprising number of sci-fi paperbacks were the only signs of personality in the place.

  Flo and Autumn were busy bickering about who was going to move the pony keg into the backyard.

  Autumn finally won by shrieking, “Let people help you!”

  She and Flo each took a handle of the keg and waddled it to the backyard. Jo popped open the freezer and found it packed with homemade meals in labeled Tupperware and three bags of ice. She claimed all the ice to save Bianca the trouble. Bee seemed busy helping Birdy maneuver down the single cement stair.

  Arms loaded down, Jo joined the group in the surprisingly unfinished backyard: a circle of wood lawn chairs around a firepit so obviously DIY that it was fair to call it a pit but not quite a feature of the house. Evergreen trees blocking out the neighbors and the ocean. Wild grass that wasn’t quite a lawn. A plain aluminum grill that Autumn was filling with charcoal briquettes. The squat keg was sitting close to the side of the house.

  “For support during your handstand,” Autumn explained.

  “Don’t you remember what Wu-Tang said?” Flo asked.

  Jo dropped the bags of ice on the ground. “‘Cash rules everything around me’?”

  “You’re a dream girl.” Flo snorted, shaking his head. “No, ‘protect ya neck.’ During the headstand. You can rest your legs up on the wall.”

  “Autumn,” Birdy called. “Could you help me drag this cooler to use as an ottoman?”

  “Sure thing!” Autumn gazelle-leaped across the yard like she was crossing the stage at the opening of The Lion King.

  “Show-off!” Jo shouted after her. She tore open a bag of ice and poured it around the keg’s base. “It’s a nice place, Coach. A little bare. I didn’t peg you for a minimalist.”

  “Oh yeah?” Flo swept a hand through his hair, making it stand up extra tall. “How did you want me pegged, Jo?”

  Jo cut her eyes at him as her nails split open another bag of ice. The c
old was a relief. It kept her cheeks from burning. “Do you ever worry about someone just coming by and picking the whole place up while you’re at work? That used to happen to real tiny houses in Silicon Valley. I mean, that’s what happens when you ignore a human-rights crisis like homelessness….” She trailed off. She had definitely lost this round of flirting.

  She was losing a lot lately.

  “Flo,” Bianca said, unknowingly bailing Jo out as she appeared at Flo’s elbow with her dark-penciled brows pulled together. “I brought a case of frozen taquitos for appetizers. Can I pop them in the oven, or should I use your microwave?”

  Flo sniffed. “I’m between microwaves. Autumn was starving to death without one. You can use the oven. You know where the cookie sheets are.”

  “You do?” Jo asked Bianca. Then, to Flo: “You have cookie sheets?”

  Bianca stuck her index finger into one of Flo’s dimples. “Flo used to host family dinner once a month so Lita could have a change of scenery. He’s used to me barging into his kitchen. We’re cousins from different islands.”

  “Colonized by the Spanish, ignored by the US government,” Flo agreed.

  “And now everyone assumes we’re Mexican.” Bee giggled.

  “The keg is High Life for you, mana,” Flo said.

  Bianca held her heart in a swoon. “You shouldn’t have, mano!”

  “I had to make sure you wouldn’t wuss out of helping us drain this thing,” Flo said. “We’re starting with plenty of time for you to sober up.”

  “I’m not getting drunk,” Bee said seriously before bowing her head in regal acquiescence. “But I will have a drink or two.”

  “Totally fine,” Flo said, holding his hands up in surrender. “When you go into the kitchen, will you put the onion dip on the counter?”

  Bee gave a thumb’s-up over her head as she went back inside.

  “Cindy Kelly’s famous church dip?” Jo asked, excited. “I haven’t had that since Autumn’s graduation party!”

  She checked her chin to make sure she wasn’t drooling. Caramelized onions had once represented the height of luxury to a young Jo Freeman, who had been brought up to believe French onion soup only came from white-tablecloth restaurants on trips to see Grandma. Her parents had never been home long enough when she was a kid to lovingly cook down onions for an hour. Certainly not just to make dip.