The Lucky List

by Rachael Lippincott

  “Here,” she says. I look down to see the bracelet in her open palm, seagulls identical to the ones that just flew by stamped carefully onto it.

  I reach out and she takes my hand, her fingers carefully moving to wrap the bracelet around my wrist. “Your mom gave it to my dad when they were in high school, and my dad gave it to me when we were moving to Huckabee. He said she got it on a beach trip they went on. I’ve honestly been trying to find a time to give it to you, and, well… this feels pretty perfect,” she says, snapping it on. “It’s made its way home now.”

  It’s like my question is answered. I look down at the bracelet and realize… she did feel like this. She knew.

  She found that feeling in Huckabee. With Dad and me.

  Tears spring into my eyes and I move to wipe them away, but Blake gets there first, her hand finding my cheek, her thumb gently catching them as they fall.

  My heart begins to race as I look at her the same way I did last night at the pool, the setting sun painting all her features in a golden light, from her honey-colored eyes to her full lips.

  Only this time, I’ve pulled all my walls down, making room for a realization to swim into my stomach that I’ve been avoiding since even before my mom got sick.

  Blake looks straight at me, her gaze so steady, it nearly pulls the truth right out of me.

  19

  The summer my mom was diagnosed was the year I did my one-week stint at Misty Oasis.

  There was a girl in my bunk. Dominique Flores.

  I remember how cool I thought she was. How nice her black hair looked in a ponytail. How my cheeks turned bright red every time she talked to me.

  I remember the bus ride home from camp, the tiny pang of something that I now recognize as heartbreak over maybe never seeing her again (or, definitely never seeing her again, because I was sure as hell NOT going back to Misty Oasis, no matter how much Kiera begged).

  I wanted nothing more than to get off that bus and talk to my mom about it. To tell her while we were unpacking that night, or to sit on the floor of her closet the next morning as she was getting ready, the confusing mess of these unexpected feelings from this past week spilling from my lips.

  But the second I saw my mom when I got off the bus, I knew something was wrong. In the car ride home, she didn’t talk about the bingo fundraiser happening the next day, and she kept rolling the lucky quarter around and around in her hands.

  That’s when I noticed it.

  The Band-Aid where an IV had been. The dark circles under her eyes. Months of headaches and dizziness and nausea finally investigated… and added up to stage IV cancer.

  We got so swept up in doctor’s appointments, and surgeries, and my mom getting sicker and sicker, withering away before my eyes, that I just ignored it. I pushed it down. Our closet time in the morning turned into her perched on the edge of the bed while I brought her a change of sweatpants or an oversize T-shirt. Our bingo fundraiser Fridays turned into late nights at the hospital, machines beeping noisily all around us while I ran to the vending machine to get her a snack she would be too nauseous to eat. Her brown hair, identical to mine, was cut short and then, in the blink of an eye, gone completely.

  Soon the feeling was nothing more than a tiny blip on my radar, something so small and insignificant compared to everything else going on. And then Matt began showing up to keep me company in the hospital, bringing my mom flowers, and holding my hand in waiting rooms, my mom whispering to finally give him a chance. Looking so certain about this one thing. This boy I’d been partners in crime with all through middle school, who had an unyielding crush on me, was there when I’d needed someone more than anything.

  So, I finally did.

  But the blip never went away. After my mom died, it just became impossible to face.

  The sobering thought of Matt and my mom brings me crashing back to reality, to the course set for me all those years ago. Which is probably why I pull away from Blake so hard that the entire surfboard tips and I go splashing into the water.

  I get caught in the surf and washing-machine my way to the shore, head over heels, surfboard flying from my grip as my nose fills with enough salt water to make my brain hurt. Just when I think I’ve regained my footing, another wave takes me out, launching me out of the water like a Fourth of July firework. I lie on the sand, gasping for air while Blake rescues the board, then comes over to see how I’m doing.

  Nice to know she’s got her priorities in check.

  “You good?” she asks, trying not to laugh at my dramatically shipwrecked self.

  I grimace and sit up, sand plastered to my back, seaweed stuck to the side of my head. “Blake, I swear… if you laugh, I will…”

  My voice trails off as she ducks her head, her shoulders silently shaking with laughter. I peel the seaweed off my face, not in the mood to joke just yet, and grab the surfboard, heading back up the beach to the truck.

  “Em! Come on. I’m sorry,” she calls, chasing after me.

  I don’t say anything as we drop off the surfboards and grab our stuff to get changed.

  When I’m locked tightly in the bathroom changing stall, I turn around, leaning my head against the back of the door.

  Come on, Em.

  I’m not going to ruin my night of freedom over a capsized surfboard. And some… pretty enormous butterflies.

  When I duck outside, Blake is standing there holding two oversize cones of pink cotton candy, the white cone invisible underneath all the poof. She holds one out to me, a sheepish grin on her face.

  “Sorry I laughed at you.”

  I take it, nudging her lightly. “It’s okay.”

  We walk along the worn wood of the boardwalk, dodging in and out of people, the air filled with voices and laughter, the sweet, sugary cotton-candy cloud melting on my tongue. A bell rings noisily next to us, announcing a victory in the water-gun-race game, the reward an oversize bear, roughly the same size as Blake’s dog, Winston.

  Blake pauses, her eyes following the bear through the crowd. “Do you want to—”

  The money is already out of my wallet and in the vendor’s hands, her sentence left unfinished. I slide onto one of the open wobbly stools, ready to go.

  Blake sits down next to me, two kids and an old man taking up the remaining three spots.

  The vendor goes over the rules while I close one of my eyes and line up my water gun.

  Shoot water at target. Raise platform with creepy bear on it. Win prize.

  Easy.

  “Ready to lose, Clark?” Blake whispers as the vendor starts counting down from three.

  “You wish.” I smack her water gun out of alignment and start firing my own at the sound of the bell, hitting the target instantly, my red bear soaring through the air to narrowly beat the grandpa two seats over.

  “Damn,” Blake says as the alarm bell rings noisily over our heads. I look over to see her yellow bear hardly moved an inch. “I took my contacts out to go in the ocean and I literally can’t see anything. My eyes were too dry to put them back in.”

  “Excuses, excuses,” I say as I’m rewarded with one enormous bear, a bumblebee-yellow bow tied neatly around its neck.

  I turn around to see Blake digging around in her backpack. She pulls out a glasses case, grimacing as she flicks it open and puts on a familiar pair of glasses, bigger than the state of Texas and nearly identical to the pair all those years ago.

  She. Looks. Adorable.

  She groans. “They’re awful, aren’t they?”

  “Definitely not.” I shake my head. “They’re really cute, actually.” I feel my cheeks turn bright red at the words.

  But not redder than Blake’s.

  Her eyebrows rise, incredulous, her eyes slightly magnified by the thick lenses. “Wait. Really?”

  “Yeah,” I say with a nod. “Very Christmas 2011.”

  Once her glasses are on, it’s game over for me. Literally.

  She wins ring toss, balloon darts, and Skee-Ball, our
hands lightly brushing together as we walk from stand to stand, tiny stuffed animal heads sticking out of Blake’s backpack. Every time her fingers graze the back of my hand, it’s like a shock of electricity, warm and tingly in a way that’s new and unfamiliar.

  As we head back to the truck, we stop at a snack stand filled with brightly colored signs shouting, FUNNEL CAKE! BEST ON THE BOARDWALK! and, FRESHLY SQUEEZED LEMONADE! even though I can see the tub of lemonade mix still sitting on the back counter. We get the two-for-five-dollars hot dog special, complete with two plastic cups filled to the brim with not-so-fresh lemonade, and drive the two blocks to her aunt’s house, eating the hot dogs along the way.

  When we get there, a female Johnny Carter in a white button-down and flip-flops throws open the door to the small white bungalow, directing us to drive around to the backyard. I’ve only seen her in pictures or heard stories about her from Mrs. Carter. She moved out of Huckabee right after high school and only comes back when she absolutely has to.

  “Aunt Lisa!” Blake says, her door screeching open. She hops out to give the woman a hug.

  “Nine o’clock,” Aunt Lisa says, checking her watch. “You kept me up past my bedtime! You know daybreak is the best time to surf around here.”

  She smiles at me, one arm still slung over Blake’s shoulder. “You must be Emily! God, you look just like your mom.”

  Should’ve known it was coming. But it doesn’t sting as much as it used to, Blake’s words from that day we found the box becoming my reality this summer, keeping her memory alive.

  A warm feeling comes with it, radiating across my chest.

  I smile politely. “Thanks for letting us stay—”

  “In my backyard?” She snorts, throwing her hands up.

  We’re planning on camping out in the back of Blake’s pickup truck in an effort to get “6. Sleep under the stars” checked off the list too.

  “Oh, come on, Aunt Lisa. You’re telling me you didn’t do worse when you were our age?” Blake says, the two sharing an identical mischievous look, eyebrows raised, smirks plastered on their faces.

  “You got me there, Blake,” she says as we head up the back steps and through a screen door to a covered back porch, decorated with blue-and-white-striped outdoor furniture, a white ceiling fan chugging away above us. I pull out my phone and shoot my dad a quick text to let him know we’re here.

  “So, how’s Huckabee treating you?” Aunt Lisa says as we plunk down in the chairs. She swings her feet up to rest on the small wooden coffee table. “I’m honestly surprised you didn’t bail to come see me sooner.”

  “Not too bad. Definitely still getting used to…” Her voice trails off as she searches for the right word. “Well, everything, I guess.”

  “Yeah.” Aunt Lisa nods. “I don’t think I ever got used to it. And I was born there!”

  She asks us about what we’ve been up to this summer, and while we leave out the list, we fill her in on our cliff-jumping adventure, and skinny-dipping at the Huckabee Pool, and stealing an apple from Snyder’s Orchard.

  She laughs at the last one. “Oh, you bet your ass I tried that once. Got tackled about halfway through the Gala section. Had a mean black eye for a week.”

  Soon we all start yawning, and Aunt Lisa takes us inside to get some pillows.

  The bungalow is just as cute inside as it is outside. Wooden floors, with white walls and light-colored furniture, high ceilings with exposed beams.

  “Bathroom is through there,” Aunt Lisa says, leading us down a small hallway. She points to a door. “Spare bedroom is here,” she adds, pushing another open with her foot. She starts handing us pillows off the two twin beds just inside. “If it gets too cold out there and you guys weenie out, you’re welcome to just pop right in here. I’ll leave the back door unlocked.”

  She throws a buffalo-check blanket onto Blake’s pile, completely covering her like a ghost.

  “Looks like you’re all set,” she says, chuckling to herself as we head back down the hallway to the screen door. She holds it open for us as we stumble outside. “Let me know if y’all need anything else. Otherwise, I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  “Thank you!” we chorus, the screen door closing behind her.

  Blake takes the surfboards out of the back and lays the blanket out in the truck bed for us to sit on. Both of us hop up to sit against the cab, the mound of pillows just behind us, what’s left of our oversize lemonades clutched in our hands. I can still hear the whisper of the ocean, the tide coming and going.

  When Blake’s arm brushes up against mine, like it did so many times on the boardwalk, I don’t pull away. I don’t know if it’s purposeful, or purely an accident, but for just a moment, for just tonight, I let myself be right where I am. Right here with her.

  It fills my chest up with a feeling that makes the lemonade sweeter, the night alive, the wind tugging at my wet hair as we sit here together, the soft hum of a radio somewhere in the distance.

  I look over at Blake as she reaches out to grab a pillow, catching sight of a tattoo just under her black bralette, visible through the hole in her tank top, “I love you” painted neatly across her rib cage.

  “I like your tattoo,” I say, wondering what it would be like to reach out and touch it. To trace the words. “I didn’t know you had one.”

  Blake glances down at the writing on her side, smiling. “It’s my mom’s handwriting. She wrote me a letter the day before she went into labor.” Her face is thoughtful as she carefully props the pillow up behind her. “It’s like she knew, you know? It’s like she knew she wouldn’t make it.”

  “Maybe she did. Maybe, on some level, she knew.” For the first time in a long time, I think about my mom on the day she died. “The week before my mom died, she was in so much pain.” They tried everything. Morphine. Fentanyl patches. None of it worked. “Then, on the last day, she was… completely peaceful. There was almost this calm that settled around the room. Like she knew it was coming.”

  We’re both silent for a minute, the only sound the hum of the radio, the crashing of the waves as they roll steadily onto the sand, falling over one another.

  “What did it say? Her letter?” I ask.

  Blake takes her glasses off and leans her head back. “A lot of stuff. That she loved me. That she wanted me to live a full and happy life. That I was her favorite person in the world and she hadn’t even really met me yet.” A smile pulls at her lips. “But also stuff that means something new to me now, you know? She had a line in there like, ‘Take it from me, Blake, even the most unexpected places and people can turn into the greatest adventures.’ And then I moved to Huckabee, and met you, and it became real in a whole new way. I feel like every time I read it, I get something else out of it.”

  I can’t deny the fact that I literally stop breathing for a second at her words.

  “I definitely get that,” I say when my air finally returns, and Blake shifts to look at me.

  “What’s it like?” she asks. “Doing the list?”

  “Well, it’s kind of like what you said that day at my house. It’s made me feel closer to her.” I think for a minute, about how much has changed since the day I found the list. How much I have changed, the list and my mom guiding me forward in new and unexpected ways. That moment of clarity I had at the beach about getting out of Huckabee. The free fall of the cliff jump. Even this moment now, talking about her. “It’s more than that, though. Doing this list has made me feel more like myself again. More like I did before…”

  My voice trails off and I shrug, shaking my head. “I don’t know. It’s made me feel like I don’t have to worry about losing everything all the time, or getting hurt, or having everything come crumbling down around me. Like I can take a risk and everything won’t be the worst-case scenario just because it once was. Like I’m… I don’t know.”

  “Lucky?” Blake asks, and the word feels electric.

  It’s the word my mom would use.

&nbs
p; “Yeah,” I say, nodding, the word feeling right for the first time in a long time, not a burden or a lie anymore. A feeling I thought had completely run out. A feeling I thought I would never get back. “Lucky.”

  “That makes it more than a bucket list, then. It’s a lucky list,” Blake says, and I can’t help but like the sound of it.

  “God, that’s so my mom,” I say. “She was lucky right up until she got cancer, let me tell you that.”

  Blake’s silent, leaving a space for me to continue or to bail.

  For once, I don’t bail. I let myself feel everything, let the pain and the hurt come seeping in.

  “She was like a walking rabbit’s foot, always jumping into things like the odds were already in her favor. Like they had to be. I remember going to the Huckabee Fall Festival, and she put one raffle ticket in for the grand prize basket. People buy thousands of tickets for that, and she won it with one.” I shake my head, remembering how outraged Jim Donovan had been. “She was always so sure. Even when she started having these bad headaches and dizzy spells, I think she thought she was fine. I think I thought she was fine.”

  I picture her lying on the couch, a compress pressed to her head while she waited for the pain pill to kick in.

  “That summer, I went to Misty Oasis, where my best friend is now. I knew she was finally going to the doctor while I was away, but I just… wasn’t even worried about it. I didn’t think anything of it.”

  Tears spring into my eyes, but I fight to keep going, words I’ve kept hidden inside tumbling out. “I should have been. Stage four. Glioblastoma. I should have pushed her to go to the doctor sooner. I should have stayed by her side every minute. Even after her diagnosis, I thought she would beat the odds, because she always had. I thought she would beat the odds because she thought she would. Up until the last week.”

  I take a deep breath, picturing my mom, her body frail, her face sunken in, the way her hand felt in mine on that last day. Bony and weak and fragile. The unfamiliar look on her face, knowing what was coming. Saying it was fine when it wasn’t. We could’ve at least had a fighting chance if she had been more careful. If she had gone to the doctors sooner. “It was like all the bad luck she never had hit at once. It wasn’t one of those small miracles where they say you have weeks to live and you get months, or a year, or a decade. They gave her six months, and she didn’t make it two.” I look over at Blake. “Her luck ran out, Blake. My luck ran out.”