“Oh, so spending time with us is nothing?” Bee asked.
“I didn’t say that!” Jo said. She leveled a threatening finger at Bee. “Don’t project your shit onto me, Bee. I didn’t cancel your honeymoon.”
Bianca stepped toward her, growling, “Excuse me?”
“But we haven’t finished the Throwback List!” Autumn said with a hitch in her throat. She couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or scream. “There’s so much left to do!”
“Not enough to turn down a job,” Jo said firmly. “My parents want to do the bonfire as a goodbye party—”
“So you told your parents but not us,” Bee said.
Jo threw up her hands. “It’s been a couple of days! It all happened so fast—is happening so fast. As long as I can get in to see these furnished apartments and repack my clothes and—”
“When were you going to tell us?” Autumn asked. Her eyes felt hot. She hated how reasonable Jo was being, as though this were just another to-do list, not a stomping out of the sprout of their renewed friendship. “How long were going to keep it a secret that in a week you won’t even live here anymore?”
“This is exactly what I was knew was going to happen! I told Birdy that Jo was going to blow into town for a couple weeks and then bail—” Bee stormed past them, toward the parking lot. She pulled the keys from her purse and jangled them in her fist at Jo. “I can’t believe I pushed my whole schedule forward for you. You didn’t want real friends. You wanted to just waste time with the townies before you ran back to your real life! Well, fuck that! Waste someone else’s time, Johanna. Some of us are living our actual lives here. Not staging it for Instagram.”
The color drained from Jo’s face. “That’s not fair, Bianca! I don’t have to live here to be friends with you!”
“Of course you don’t,” Bianca said, batting her lashes with beatific innocence. “Because here you are. Not being a friend. I’m going to work. Autumn, I will call you when I can, but this week is very full of doctor’s appointments for Lita and Birdy.”
She got into her hatchback and roared out of the parking lot, music blaring against the closed windows.
“She doesn’t deserve this,” Autumn said, watching Bianca peel around the corner. She turned back to Jo. “You suck, you know that?”
Jo shivered in her coat, pulling the collar closer to her neck. “Wow, Autumn, real mature.”
“Suck my butt, Johanna Jordan Freeman! You just hurt my best friend’s feelings and my feelings. And when we have to tell Birdy and Florencio, it will hurt their feelings! Because these people actually like you! All of us have gone out of our way for you, for your list! Do you understand that? Do you care? You weren’t just killing time here. You were part of the friendship centipede and now you’re just blowing it all up for no reason!”
“I didn’t come here to stay, Autumn, you knew that!” Jo said. “I’m living in my parents’ house. My whole life is in boxes in the garage. What did you expect me to do? Find an apartment here?”
“Would that be so awful?” Autumn asked as an image crystallized in her mind: a two-bedroom house, maybe in the flats near Flo, filled with Jo’s ridiculously gray-scale belongings and the green piano and all the dishware from Main Street. Autumn had lived with many people, but never with either of her best friends. She hadn’t thought to wish for it.
“It’s not the plan,” Jo said, the pin in Autumn’s dream balloon.
Autumn folded her arms in a regal posture, hoping it would help to keep her from crying. “All of the plans you’ve ever made brought you right back here, Jo. Think about that!”
Autumn left first.
Blinking away tears, she drove and found herself at work, more out of habit than anything else. The substitute had her class in the auditorium, the students practicing their scenes on the stage, which should afford Autumn just enough time to sneak into her classroom for the quizzes she’d been putting off grading. She could while away the hours between now and Broadway Club slamming back free staff-lounge coffee.
The moment Autumn opened the door to her classroom, though, she knew she had made a mistake. The accordion wall was open, exposing the mess of music stands the last choir class had left on Pat’s side of the room. Pat herself was sitting at her piano—in case there was any doubt it was hers, she had inscribed her name in Sharpie on the side—rifling through papers.
“Oh, Autumn!” Pat said, looking up. “There you are! You have been gone all day!”
“I’m not officially here,” Autumn said. “I was supposed to be at the orthodontist. I’m picking up some quizzes—”
“Good! Then you have a moment to chat!” Abruptly standing, Pat scooped up a folder from the papers piled atop the piano and hugged it to her vest. “I heard what you were saying about the fall musical. About the transformative power of playing a juicy part and how the students deserved to have an audience they can really impact.”
“Yes!” Autumn said, for once not having to force a smile at Pat. “Transformative Power: The Adolescent Brain Onstage” had been the title of her thesis. “If we give the students a safe place to express the scope of their emotions, then they’ll be less likely to engage in riskier behaviors—”
“Exactly,” Pat said warmly. “So, I went ahead and I found the perfect show for the fall musical. It’s called Bully Away! It’s a musical intended to teach schoolchildren kindness and active antibullying techniques.”
Autumn blinked twice, but the words didn’t resolve themselves into something sensical. Pat thrust the folder into her hands. It was teal and had a logo crowded with animals wearing clothes.
Bully Away! A Musical with a Message!
Today was starting to feel like bizarro world. Autumn wanted to go home and put her head under the covers.
“I’m sorry,” she said weakly. “Doesn’t this look a little bit young for high schoolers?”
“Autumn!” Pat’s laugh was the ice-pick twinkle of the bell she used to control her classroom. “It’s very obviously for children. Our students are going to rehearse and perform the fall musical for the elementary school. That way they are guaranteed a captive and impressionable audience and the elementary school can stop hiring that ridiculous local clown. Everybody wins!”
Autumn hot-potato’d the folder back to Pat. She couldn’t trust herself not to tear it to pieces. “I don’t want to work on an antibullying play, Pat. This isn’t what the drama program is about. The students are supposed to be learning what it’s like to work on a professional-scale production. For a lot of kids—onstage and in the audience—it’s the closest they’ll ever get to Broadway.”
“Well!” Pat huffed, hugging the folder as though she could cover its virgin ears. “If you don’t want to participate, you could bring back staged readings. You must remember that Mr. Hearn’s charming readings of Our Town every year—”
“No one wants to do Our Town. No one wants to see Our Town.”
“Not with that attitude!” Pat chastised with an exaggerated frown.
“How will we convince the students that they want to dress up like a—is the skunk on the cover also a scientist? I mean, come on! Was this literally the musical directly next to Bugsy Malone in the bad-idea musical catalog or what?”
Pat stood as tall as she could, forcing her neck to extend out of her turtleneck so she could be a full five-three. “The rights are purchased, regardless of whether or not you agree to participate in the production.”
“You bought that?” Autumn asked.
“If you had bothered to look—” Pat sighed, displaying the inside of the folder. Backing-track CDs, a thin script, pictures of children wearing felt animal costumes and preaching against bullying.
“Oh. Oh no,” Autumn said. She tried to imagine showing pictures of those costumes to the Broadway Club. They would eat her alive. Before they all left the program. And if no one signed up for the drama program, Point High definitely wouldn’t need a drama teacher. She’d end up teaching speech or,
worse, PE. Sharing the school gym with her brother might actually kill her. “Did you buy this with the drama funds?”
Pat gave an imperious sniff. “That’s within my purview as the senior co-chair of the theater.”
“That title doesn’t mean anything! I am the drama teacher! That was the funding for my program!”
“And that is where you are wrong, my dear! This was supposed to be our program,” Pat said, elocuting hard enough to send spittle flying dangerously close to Autumn’s face. “You came in and didn’t want to make a single compromise. You’ve never been a classroom teacher, but, oh, you’re the authority on the theater. You choregraphed the entire Senior Showcase behind my back, pretending that it was just a harmless little side project! You have kept secrets and undermined me this entire year, but you will not push me out of my department, Miss Autumn Kelly. I will not let it happen. I will not be dismissed by anyone, but particularly not a former student. I watched your very first audition. You can’t go off into the world and then march back in here like you’re someone else. I hired you, and you may work beside me or against me. It will not change the course of my life one bit.”
With no trace of irony, she held out the Bully Away! folder.
Autumn took it.
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
Do a keg stand
Get a high score at the boardwalk arcade
Climb the giant anchor on the boardwalk (and survive)
Play hide-and-seek in public
TO BE COMPLETED
Surf the Point
Have a bonfire
Dig up the time capsule
AUTUMN: I know we’re fighting but my day got worse
I’m sending you the link for the show Pat bought for the fall musical
BIANCA: I’m sorry are those 8 year olds in animal pajamas?
JO: Why is the skunk a scientist?
AUTUMN: I accidentally started a war
JO: I know the feeling
AUTUMN: A fight isn’t a war
BIANCA: But for the record, it’s still a fight
JO: I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you I took the job.
Talking about it meant thinking about it more and figuring out all of the steps. I just wanted one more fun day with you both. Maybe that sounds selfish but it’s the truth.
The only way I can prove that I want to be friends with you is to keep being friends with you, no matter where I live.
My parents want to turn the bonfire into a goodbye party on the beach in front of the Surf & Saucer this Saturday. I’d really love it if you guys would come and invite your families. I appreciate that you’ve let me into your lives and I’d like a chance to celebrate that.
If not, then I’ll let you know the next time I’m in town.
BIANCA: I’d like time to process before I make a decision.
AUTUMN: Me too.
JO:
After a long afternoon of doctor’s appointments, Lita fell into a surly nap in the armchair she had demanded be moved beneath the Salty Dog’s former front door. She hadn’t barked more than food orders at Bee since the door came home last week. Asking for a chair was practically a hug.
For the first couple of days after Phil Freeman had bolted the door to the wall, Lita tried avoiding Bianca altogether, taking her pills only when Birdy handed them to her and shuffling out of the room when Bee came downstairs. Eventually Lita wanted to bathe, and Bianca was the only person around to help her into the tub until Bonnie came back from Washington.
The Boria women had begun a battle of haughtiness that completely dampened the brief euphoria Bee had experienced in wresting full control of the shop. Now there was only the churning panic of needing it all to work. The new aesthetician had to succeed. They had to make enough money for Bee to pay down the first line of credit she had ever opened under her married name.
In the silent wall between her and Lita and Bonnie, Bianca could sense not just the expectation of her failure, but her family’s hunger for it.
Is that how the Chief had felt when Florencio refused to acknowledge him? Like every unspoken word was a curse?
In the alarm-free time before dinner, Bianca told Birdy that she’d be back in time to heat leftovers and got in her car.
Jo’s apology texts and bonfire invite were sitting in her phone, waiting to be analyzed. And while Birdy had plenty of opinions on the matter—he wanted to overnight Lita a new outdoor walker so she could go to the beach party—his wasn’t the opinion Bianca wanted.
She drove to Autumn’s tiny house. In the matted-down lawn that was nearly a driveway, Autumn’s car and beach cruiser were parked beside each other.
Before today, going to the spring carnival on a whim was the closest Bee had ever been to dropping in on anyone. Usually, she liked to give lots of room for people to say that they needed time to be alone. Alone time was her most prized possession. And increasingly rare.
Second-guessing her plan to casually drop by, she started tapping out a text warning on her watch when she looked up and saw Autumn standing in the doorway, face scrunched.
Bee got out of the car. “Hi, sweets.”
“Hi,” Autumn said.
“I thought you might want company. Yesterday seemed hard for you.”
Autumn let out a sigh of relief. “I was afraid you were going to say someone was dead. You never drop by.”
“It was an impulse. I went with it. I regret it,” Bee admitted. “Do you want to go get a latte at Safeway Starbucks or do you want to watch soothing TV?”
“TV. I’m still marathoning My Little Pony, and I’m almost through season three. But maybe we should go to your house. You don’t want to sit on my bed-couch.”
“We’ll sit on the floor,” Bee said. She needed a break from her house. With Lita and Birdy home basically all day, every day, the air was starting to taste like everyone else’s exhales. Lita didn’t want anyone letting the heat out by opening a window.
Autumn’s shoulders slumped as she led Bee into the cottage.
The single-room house had always been snug with wood paneling and a general lack of square footage, but now cardboard boxes and odd bits of furniture crowded the room. Autumn’s bed didn’t have a frame, but beside it there was a solid oak coffee table with a checkerboard top and a brass floor lamp with a tasseled shade.
“What is all this?” Bianca asked.
“A couple things from Main Street.” Autumn sniffled. “I wanted to save some stuff before the dumpster deadline.”
“You don’t say,” Bianca said. She moved aside a covered dish that looked like a cabbage to get to the precarious stack of boxes beneath. Inside the top box were T-shirts, soft with age. Bee shook one out by the shoulders so that she could read the logo. “If You’re Not Front of the Pack, the View Never Changes. Autumn, there’s a dog butt on this shirt.”
“Those were the Chief’s!” Autumn said, snatching the shirt from Bee and folding it neatly into a Marie Kondo square. “He was going to send all of these to Thrift Town.”
“Oh no, not the dog-butt shirt?” Bianca said, lips pulled back in a grimace as she looked at the many, many other folded slogan T-shirts in the box. “Shirts? Why are there are multiple shirts about being a big dog?”
“That was Dad’s style back in the day. Back when he was the Captain,” Autumn said. She stashed the butt shirt with its brethren, then, with a shove and a pull, folded the box closed, hiding the rest of the dog slogans. “He doesn’t wear shirts tha
t say things now that he’s married to Ginger.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Bee asked. “I’ve been trying to convince Birdy to stop wearing inside-joke gamer T-shirts basically since the day we met.”
“It’s not bad. I’ll just miss them,” Autumn said. She gestured vaguely to a corner where a white sewing machine was crushing a box labeled St. Paddy’s Decorations. “I was thinking about making a memory blanket out of them.”
“So you could have your own big dog quilt?” Bee asked.
“This stuff is from my childhood, okay?” Autumn said. She put the cabbage back on top of the shirt box. “It’s nostalgic for me.”
“Just because it’s nostalgic doesn’t mean it’s good. Or that you need it,” Bee said.
Autumn crossed her arms. “Are you talking about the shirts or are you talking about Jo?”
“I was talking about the shirts, but since you brought it up, fine, let’s talk about Jo.”
After walking around the boxes, Autumn sat down on the edge of her bed. “You don’t want to go to the bonfire party.”
“No!” Bee said, glad to see they were on the same page.
Autumn picked up a fluffy throw pillow and held it in her lap. “Because Jo screwed up and doesn’t deserve a second chance.”
“I don’t have room in my life for liars, Autumn. If Jo doesn’t want us to know her business, then she doesn’t want us to be her friends—”
“You mean the way you never told me that Birdy canceled your honeymoon?” Autumn asked. “The way I had to find out because you mentioned it in passing in front of everyone?”
A verbal trap! raged Bianca’s inner child. How could you not see that coming, stupid?
Bianca backed up, calves running into the checkerboard coffee table. “You were busy! With Jo, I might add.”
“You literally sleep in a watch that can text me on command, Bee!” Autumn said with an incredulous laugh. “You just didn’t want to talk about it. You still don’t!”
“Why should I talk about it? It’s already done and decided!” Bee said. She clenched her hands until her nails bit into her palms. “But, yeah, it still hurts and it still makes me sad. I told you that at the sleepover!”
The Throwback List Page 29
