I don’t know why that matters so much, but it does.
“You going to do a flip this time?” she asks, clearly joking.
I roll my eyes at her, my legs still stinging. “Blake, I’m honestly just trying not to give myself a permanent wedgie this time. Last jump was a close call.”
We make our way back up the trail, faster now, the excitement of the first jump fueling us, even as the dirt clings to our wet feet. Blake pulls me back up onto the uneven rock, and this time I’m able to finally look out at the view.
Really look, now that my vision isn’t clouded by as much fear or vertigo.
The lake is glittering, there are trees as far as the eye can see, and… Blake’s mom was right. From up here, everything does feel small. What happened at Snyder’s Orchard with Matt. What happened at junior prom. Even the house that soon won’t be mine anymore.
But what she didn’t tell me to expect is that by everything else shrinking away, it leaves room for other things to become bigger. Something that sometimes feels so small and far away can suddenly feel closer than it has in years.
Three years, to be exact.
My mom. She taught me to live so fearlessly. And I’ve spent all this time since her death pushing that away because her words were so completely drowned out by everything that happened to her.
We jump for the rest of the afternoon, each plummet off the cliff less scary than the last. Blake, of course, does a flip or two. I cringe every time she does, holding my breath until her head resurfaces, completely unharmed.
After a while we sit on top of the cliff, our legs dangling over the ledge as the afternoon sun begins to set, sending a shower of deep orange and pink across the sky. I look down at the water underneath us, the surface sparkling in the fading light, and…
I’m officially not afraid anymore.
So why the hell am I afraid of the guy I’ve been dating for years? The boy who had always had a crush on me. The boy who my mom always wanted me to give a chance.
I remember the way her face lit up when he came to the hospital to keep me company, sunflowers clutched in his hand as he pulled up a chair next to her. I think, deep down, all my other friends were scared to come. Scared to see someone so young wither away so quickly, a person they knew suddenly skin and bones underneath a blanket, her own cells and body rebelling against her.
But not Matt. He came every weekend.
The second the door closed behind him one Saturday afternoon, she leaned over to say, “You really should give that boy a chance someday, Emily. Sometimes the best romances come from the best friendships.” She smiled over at my dad, the two sharing a knowing look. “That boy who has a crush on you could end up being the one you’re meant to be with.”
I didn’t feel… that way about him at the time. But I liked hanging out with him. I liked the way he narrated movies, and how he was always there for me, through crazy adventures and pranks and my mom getting sick. So, after everything, I couldn’t help but think she must be right.
I tap my heel against the rock underneath me and let out a long sigh.
So why is it so hard? What am I so afraid of with him? What’s stopping me?
Give him a chance.
I keep thinking I am, but if I’m always halfway out the door, I can’t really be. And I know that if I don’t fix things between us, I’ll regret it.
If I could jump off a cliff, maybe, just maybe, I can face him. If I dive in completely, without reservations, without overthinking it, maybe it’ll be the change we need. The thing that was always missing between us was maybe just me being too scared to actually make the jump.
Maybe we always just felt off because I was never really in. Not the way mom wanted me to be.
“Thanks,” I say to Blake.
She looks over at me, the sun casting a golden glow on the skin of her face and her body. “For not pushing you off?” she asks, reaching out to grab my arm and fake a push over the edge. I swat her away, laughing, but then her face slowly grows serious.
“Anytime,” she says. “I think it’s cool that you’re doing the list, Emily. Jumping off cliffs, buying books from old guys with impeccable mustaches. That you can still learn new things about your mom. Still make new memories that she’s a part of.”
I let out a long exhale.
“Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll forget things. Like the way she smelled, or the color of her eyes, or the sound of her laugh.” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to picture her face. The outline of her hair. The curve of her eyebrows. The fullness of her lips. It’s hard to piece them all together. “Then I have moments like today, you know? Where she feels so close, it’s like she’s been here all along.”
“Well, she has. In a way at least,” Blake says with a shrug. “You’re a part of her, you know? She can never be forgotten because you exist.”
I let out a long whistle. “That was… really deep.”
Blake nudges me. “I’ve had a lot of years to think about it.” There’s a look in her eyes that I recognize. A trace of the sadness that is always there when you lose a loved one. The sadness that changes size and shape, bigger in some moments, smaller in others.
We stand up, stretching, ready to make one last jump down and head back. We count down from five together, and at the last second, without even thinking about it, I grab Blake’s hand, pulling us both toward the cliff’s edge as the two of us launch into the air at full speed. Our hands pull apart as we hit the water, but our eyes lock through the sea of tiny bubbles as we swim to the surface.
We paddle to the shore one final time, our legs struggling way more now to fight against the current, until we splash noisily onto the bank, exhaustion setting in. Slowly, we head back to her truck to dry off and begin the drive back to my house.
The sun dips below the horizon as we spend the whole ride home debating which item to go for next.
“Tattoo,” Blake says, without even a second thought. “Gotta be tattoo. I mean, how fun would that be?”
“Uh, no,” I say as I shake my head. Clearly, our idea of fun differed on that particular subject. “Between today and getting chased out of Snyder’s Orchard, I need a break.”
I find a black felt-tip pen in Blake’s glove compartment, checking off “2. Get over my fear of heights,” as my eyes scan the rest of the list, the next two items jumping out at me.
3. Go on a picnic.
4. Try a new food.
I smile to myself. My mom was a notoriously picky eater. This one will be a breeze for me, but I bet this one had been just as hard for her as facing her fear of heights.
“How about we go on a ‘try a new food picnic’? Kill two birds with one stone?” I ask as I quickly tally the number of days I have left, Blake slowing to a stop outside my house.
Eleven. Only eleven.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Blake says as I scoop up my bag and unclick my seat belt.
“I’ll bring the food,” she calls out the window as I hop out. “I’ll text you this week to make sure it’s something you’ve never had before.”
“Deal!” I call after her, waving goodbye. I wait until her truck fades from view before heading inside, my heart feeling full.
Feeling invincible.
I don’t know if it is the fact that I’ve lived through jumping off a cliff with her, or the fact that she seems like she could be friends with just about anyone, but I feel different around Blake. Not only is she practically a ray of actual sunshine, but… she doesn’t treat me like the girl who lost her mom. The ghost of the girl she used to be.
She’s the first person I’ve felt like I could be completely real with in a long time. Like there’s no unspoken expectation, no Kiera and Matt exchanging glances when they think I’ve looked away. Olivia mouthing “mom” and rolling her eyes to Ryan when I bailed on a weekend trip out of town, worried something would happen to my dad while I was away.
She’s the first person I feel like I can talk to about my mom, because she un
derstands without being too close. Without there being so much shared grief, like with my dad and Nina, that it’s suffocating.
Blake doesn’t just want to make me feel better, like my friends do, and she doesn’t need me to share her grief. And something about that helps me feel like I’m not so completely frozen.
A couple of weeks ago, when Kiera was leaving for camp and everything was so broken, it felt almost like the last straw. Like I was at the end of my rope.
When I heard Johnny and Blake were moving to Huckabee and we were going to bingo, I never would have guessed this would happen.
But… I feel like she’s got me back in the game. And for the first time in a long time, I feel ready to play.
14
I wake up the next day still riding the high from cliff jumping and my new, list-inspired goal.
Talk to Matt. I finally feel ready. Like if I stop thinking about it and just go for it, the right words will come to me.
The feeling builds and builds through my shift at Nina’s, time moving at a glacial pace despite the morning rush and the batch of blueberry scones I spend the afternoon baking.
For once, the familiar rhythm of whisking, and adding ingredients, and shaping doesn’t bring me the same kind of comfort, my mind too distracted to fully concentrate on what I’m doing.
“You good?” Nina asks as she peers at my misshapen triangles. “First you get banned from Snyder’s, and now you think a triangle looks like a football.”
I grin sheepishly. “Sorry, Nina.”
I’ve thought about telling her about the list, but something always stops me. Where my dad can hardly talk about my mom, Nina is… almost the polar opposite. The Julie Miller pain is always a sentence away, always just within reach. And it’s heavy and awful, the shared grief between the two of us enough to make you feel like you got run over by a train.
So, today, like all the other days, I decide not to say anything.
By the time the clock strikes two, I’m already sprinting out the door. The bells jingle behind me as I grab my bike out of the rack and pedal quickly down the street before I can talk myself out of it.
The pool is less than a mile away, situated just outside the center of Huckabee and down the road from the hospital. I usually make it a point to avoid this route, going through a development and tacking on an extra half a mile, but I don’t want to waste another second. I’ve wasted too many already.
Before I know it, I’m turning into the parking lot and locking up my bike, the too-familiar sound of kids splashing in the water and muffled music pouring out of an ancient boom box filling the air.
Is Blake still working? I know she was here this morning. I don’t want her to hear this.
But if I can fix things now, maybe she’ll never have to.
I start power walking, skidding to a stop in front of the plastic chair by the front gate, where Jake is sitting, the chair tilted back on two legs, a silver whistle swinging around his finger. His eyes widen when he sees me, and he flails, righting himself before he completely tips over.
“Oh shit,” he says, pushing his shaggy blond hair out of his face to give me a once-over. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“Nice to see you, too.” I crane my neck, looking past him, my eyes scanning the deck. “Matt here?”
“Uh, yeah.”
I go to slide around Jake, but he stops me. “Pool fee?”
I put my hands on my hips, giving him a look. “Jake. You can’t be serious.”
He doesn’t say anything but keeps his hand outstretched. I let out a frustrated sigh and dig into the pocket of my jeans for the tip money I just made, peeling off five ones and handing them to him.
He slips it into a black leather bank bag, nodding toward the rusty vending machines outside the bathrooms. “He’s over there.”
I follow his nod to see Matt peering through the glass in a pair of red swim trunks, debating between salty and sweet, just like he always does. My heart begins to hammer noisily in my chest.
“By the way,” Jake says as he leans back in his chair again, pointing at my left cheek with a smirk. “You’ve got flour on your face.”
“Better than rotten apples,” I mutter, rubbing away at the flour as I move past him. I walk right up to Matt without even a second thought, like I’m running straight toward the edge of a cliff.
“Hi,” I say, jumping off.
He looks over at me, surprised, a strand of his brown hair falling onto his forehead. “Hi,” he says, brushing it away. For a second he smiles, like a reflex, but then he clears his throat, plastering on a serious glower. “What are you doing here?”
My stomach drops, and I feel my breathing hitch. I open my mouth to say something, and wait and wait until I realize… this isn’t like cliff jumping at all.
I would’ve hit the water by now, but instead I’m still falling, my arms flailing wildly around, a belly flop damn near inevitable.
“I just wanted to say…,” I manage to get out. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
His eyebrows fall into full brooding mode. He doesn’t say anything. He just crosses his arms and glances to the side at the lifeguard table, where a sea of eyes peer at us intently. Cassie Evans, an upcoming junior who’s had a crush on Matt for the past two summers, looks like she’s trying to murder me using just the power of her mind.
But that doesn’t come close to the look on Matt’s face. I’ve never seen him this upset before.
“Matt,” I say, leaning forward. “I want to make this right. Tell me how to make this right.”
“I’m honestly surprised you want to, considering you haven’t even tried to talk to me in weeks. Never even bothering to give me an explanation.” Matt shakes his head in disgust and turns back to the vending machine. I watch as he plugs in a few numbers, opting for salty, and a bag of chips falls to the bottom. He pushes the door in and grabs them, letting out a long exhale before facing me again.
“Matt—” My voice cracks, and I see him pause, see the tiniest hitch in his breathing.
He reaches for my hand, just like he used to. At my locker, or before his football games. But he stops short, and I see his fingers fold into his palm, his hand balling into a fist, his arm recoiling as he turns and walks away.
I don’t understand.
I thought the words would just come, but they didn’t. Still, all I’ve got is that I want to fix it. Nothing more than that.
But Matt wants to know why it broke. And I still don’t have an answer to that.
I watch him go, with his swoopy brown hair and his broad shoulders, tan now from his days spent on a lifeguard stand.
He’s beyond cute. Every girl in our grade knows that. He’s sweet. He remembers every anniversary and holiday and birthday, big or small. He actually listens, and everyone in our friend group, not just me, knows he’s the person you go to if you have a problem.
And he gets me, just like I get him. He knows that I like rom-coms more than horror movies, and my favorite triple-layer chocolate cake recipe, and that I get quiet when I’m upset. Just like I know that his favorite director is Wes Anderson, and his favorite Nintendo Switch game is Fortnite, and that he hates when people are late.
But I still can’t stop the feeling that always used to blindside me during our relationship from suddenly swimming back into my bones, settling deep in the marrow.
The feeling that something is… off, no matter how perfect Matt Henderson is.
Which… means that something about me needs to change for it all to click. Maybe I’ve been too busy looking at him, when I need to look at myself. If what I needed to say didn’t just come to me, then maybe it’s a problem with me.
Is this all because of how much I changed after Mom died? Maybe I still have more lessons to learn from the list before I can figure it out.
Or… maybe it’s something else entirely?
My eyes travel past Matt to the deep end, where Blake sits, her hair in a messy bun. I’m both reli
eved and anxious to see her. She pushes her sunglasses up onto the top of her head when she sees I’m looking at her.
“You good?” she mouths, only for me, and the wrongness melts away.
I nod, but I’m really not, and for some reason it feels wrong to lie to her.
I swallow and look quickly away, noticing the lifeguard table is still hard at work, staring at me like I’m auditioning for a Broadway musical. I make a beeline for the exit, eager to get right the hell out of here. I’m definitely not in the mood to stay and give them any more of a performance.
I know now I can’t just wait for the right words to come, for the switch to flip. I need to figure out what’s wrong and fix it. Only then can I really show Matt how sorry I am. That I can still be the same person he fell in love with.
I just need the list to show me how.
I also don’t want to stick around and risk Cassie Evans actually figuring out how to kill someone using her glare. If anyone was petty enough to succeed, she’d be the one.
15
I meet up with Blake after work on Friday at the local park for our picnic, eager to be anywhere but home, obsessing over the Matt drama as I sit in my empty living room.
With the uptick in house showings, and our boxes very nearly packed, I would’ve thought we’d be looking at places to move into. But we haven’t looked anywhere yet.
When I sent Dad a few listings I’d found online this morning, even one for a nice apartment just above the hardware store in town, he’d just ignored me.
“I’ve got it handled,” he murmured before heading off to work.
Whatever that means.
Blake has gone for the full stereotype for our picnic, a checkered blanket unfurled on the big grassy field just up the hill from the playground. I bring some of the apple tarts Nina made with the apples we picked, and Blake brings a square container, her fingers tapping on the edges.
The Lucky List Page 12
