The sunflower on my arm looks alive. Like it was plucked straight from my mom’s garden. The petals are an identical, glowing yellow, the stem a soft green.
“Good?” Big Eddie asks hesitantly.
I nod, trying again not to cry. “It looks just like the flowers from my mom’s garden. Thank you.”
It’s a part of her. A part of me. A part of us that can never be taken away. No matter where I go, I’ll always have this.
He puts a clear wrap over it, taping it carefully down as he goes over basic care instructions. For once in my life, I hardly listen, my eyes fixed on the sunflower and the bright red skin around it. My vision blurs as I think about my mom’s forearm, her tattoo in the same spot as mine, another shared experience we’ve now had.
I didn’t think we’d have any more of those, and now I have so many of them.
I finally relax and let go of Blake’s hand as we walk to the front, my palm tingling without the constant pressure of hers against it. She flexes her fingers, grinning at me.
“They all still work! I’m shocked,” she teases.
I smile at her as I pay Big Eddie. A warm, happy feeling begins to build, swelling like a balloon until it takes up my entire chest.
Soon I am pushing through the front door, the bells looped around the handle ringing noisily behind me.
“I fucking did it! I got a tattoo!” I scream to the empty street, adrenaline coursing through my veins.
Blake gives me a big smile, watching with an amused expression as I dance around.
Before I can process what I’m doing, I throw my arms around her, my skin buzzing as her hands wrap around my waist and my chin rests on her shoulder.
I pull away before she can feel how fast my heart is beating.
21
When we pull up to my house, I’m surprised to see that my dad is home, his truck sitting in the driveway.
“That’s weird,” I mutter as I slide into a zip-up hoodie from my backpack.
It’s a Monday afternoon. He should be at work. He’s always at work.
I feel my stomach flip-flop with nerves, the worst-case scenarios inevitably swimming into my head. I hope everything is okay.
“Thanks, Blake,” I call as I throw open my door, scooping up my enormous teddy bear. I pause to meet her warm brown eyes, my stomach flip-flopping for a different reason. I glance toward the house and let out a long sigh. “I kind of… don’t want to go.”
She flashes me a smile that lights up her whole face, the gap in her teeth showing. “You could hop back in and I’ll head right back to Sycamore Street Tattoos. Turn that sunflower into a whole sleeve.”
I laugh, the two of us falling silent as we look at each other, the same energy from last night filling the air.
“See you at the lake trip?” she asks.
I nod. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
I close the door and wave before jogging quickly up the driveway and the porch steps to throw open the front door.
“Dad?” I call as I kick my sand-laden flip-flops off and cross the threshold. “You here? Is everything all right?”
“Em!” He pops his head out of the kitchen, like he’s been waiting for me to get back. I study his face, relieved to see he’s fine. Everything is fine. “Drop your stuff! I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I drop my backpack by the stairs like he said, placing the bear on top of it, but narrow my eyes at him, suspicious. “A surprise?” I ask, watching as he grabs his car keys off the entryway table. He opts for his nonwork boots instead of his work boots, the only difference being distinctly less mud, yet another weird sign. “You have off today?”
“Took the afternoon off,” he says, spinning the key ring around on his finger, like this is totally normal. He’s still in his white Smith & Tyler T-shirt, a smattering of dirt on his chest, but an enormous smile is plastered on his face. He tilts his head eagerly as he pushes open the screen door. “Come on. I’ve got something to show you.”
I frown and spin around to jog after him, jamming my feet back into my flip-flops as I go. All I want is a shower and a real nap, not in a truck bed, but I haven’t seen him with this much pep in his step in about a hundred years.
“Where are we going?” I ask as I slide into his truck, buckling my seat belt while he zips out onto the road, the truck engine revving.
“You’ll see!” he says, turning the radio up, Billy Joel crooning at us while we drive past the McMansions and the gas station and the highway entrance, straight into south Huckabee. I peer out at the sea of identical town houses, doors barely hanging on their hinges, torn screens in the windows.
I’m surprised when my dad flicks on his turn signal, pulling into a parking lot and driving past a row of yellow and blue town houses to park right in front of a row of white ones, wilting flowers and bushes lining the paths to each door.
He flashes me a big smile and swings open the truck door. “Ready to see our new place?”
“Wait,” I say, my insides turning to ice as I fumble for the handle, hopping out and following him toward a small house on the very end. “Our what?”
“Our new place!” he repeats, nodding toward the handwritten SOLD sign staked straight into the dying flower bed. “We move in two weeks.”
Sold. Not pending. Not for sale. Sold.
I feel the ground shift underneath me.
Stunned, I follow him inside. I try to register everything, but it’s like I’m underwater, a wave pulling me down and holding me there. Faded white carpet. The worn linoleum of the breakfast bar in the kitchen. A sliding door in the living room that falls off the track when he opens it.
I clutch the banister as he takes me up the narrow steps, trying to fight my way to the surface.
My room is to the left now instead of the right. The handle gold instead of silver. I walk across the hardwood and push through the door to see the walls are a bubblegum pink, the tiny space closing in around me as I gravitate to the window.
The view is… the parking lot: rows of cars and the communal Dumpsters in the corner, currently overflowing with trash.
Not a sunflower in sight besides the one on my arm.
My fingers find the windowsill, grabbing on to it as I hear the sound of my dad’s boots on the floor, walking toward me.
“We can paint this, of course,” he says. “White. Or beige. Or yellow, even. Whatever you want.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to keep my shit together.
I think about this entire summer, boxes and boxes of my mom’s stuff thrown in his truck to donate, and now this. I thought we’d look at places together. The places I sent him. Places we decide on together. Places other than the town houses my mom’s family had been offshored to when their farm had been bought out from under them.
I thought he’d at least talk to me. I thought even when the offer came in that we’d have more time. It’s like he’s hit the fast-forward button on everything.
“It’ll be good, Em! You’ve got a bigger closet now, and you’ll be closer to school. It’s a new start,” he says, his hand landing on my shoulder.
A new start.
I push it away, whirling around to face him. “Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re joking.” My voice cracks unexpectedly on the last syllable.
His eyes widen and he takes a step back, stunned. “I don’t—”
“I mean, I know we don’t ever talk about anything, but you didn’t think to talk to me about this? About any of this? What good is a bigger closet when all we’ve been doing this summer is getting rid of everything! All her stuff! Like she doesn’t mean anything anymore!” I say, my hands balling into fists.
“I thought you were… fine with all of this. You’ve been so happy this summer, I just thought—”
“Yeah! And you want to know why? Because of the list. Her list. The list you would barely talk to me about,” I shout. “I’m not fine with any of this, Dad. I don’t want a fresh start. I don’t want to move into a place so compl
etely different from what she would have wanted.”
He softens, his eyes filling with so much disappointment, it makes me feel awful about being mad. Awful about ripping his enthusiasm to shreds. Awful about feeling like this is such a total and complete betrayal.
But it is.
“Em…,” he starts to say, but I shake my head, cutting him off.
“Forget it, Dad. Let’s just… let’s just go,” I say, pushing past him and walking down the narrow steps, across the faded white carpet, past the SOLD sign.
We don’t speak the entire ride home, or for the rest of the day. My words opened a box that we usually keep tightly closed.
As I’m drifting off to sleep that night, I hear his footsteps coming down the hallway, the door to my room creaking open.
“I love you, Em,” he whispers into the dark.
I want to say it back, but if I talk, I don’t know what else will come out. How could he be so fine with any of this? Fine with just packing everything up and moving on and forgetting her. Fine with moving into a place she hated.
I know the bills. The debt. I know it’s the only choice we have, but why is he so happy about it?
I squeeze my eyes shut as the tears begin to fall, my fingers finding the leather bracelet around my wrist, sitting just below the tattoo I was so excited about only a few hours ago.
She felt so close then. But now? Now I cry myself to sleep in the house that is no longer my home.
22
Kiera’s home.
I fly across town, putting the past two days with my dad behind me with every stroke of my pedal, the thought of seeing my best friend after what has felt like an eternity able to push everything else away. Even some of the frustration and anger I felt when I found out she wasn’t coming back until the day before the lake trip ebbs.
For the first time in a while I just… need to talk to someone who understands. Who knows my mom. Who knows what those town houses mean. Who has experienced these past three years.
I swerve into the center of Huckabee, past Hank’s, past the library and Nina’s, to where the historic houses sit, red brick and white siding, tiny plaques nailed beside each door declaring they are old enough to have had George Washington breathe on them.
I see her from down the block, sitting on the front steps, her hair pulled back, an oversize heather-gray Misty Oasis T-shirt on.
“Kiera!” I scream as she jumps up, waving frantically.
I skid to a stop in the driveway, hopping off the bike as she launches herself at me, scrapes on both her knees, chipped red nail polish despite all the bottles I sent her. “Oh my gosh, dude! I missed you!”
“I missed you!” I say as we giggle our way inside. Nina peeks out of the kitchen, used to me stealing Kiera away as soon as she gets back, a small smile on her face.
“What’ve you two got planned to bake this year?” she asks.
“Carrot cake!” I call back as we kick off our shoes and start up the creaky wooden steps to Kiera’s bedroom.
We push open the door, dodging around the huge, dented suitcase sitting on the patterned carpet, and launch ourselves onto her bed.
“Welcome back to the twenty-first century,” I say with a laugh.
Kiera giggles, nodding. “I missed cell phones. And warm showers. And Netflix.”
“So, how was camp? How was Todd’s house?”
Kiera rolls over on her side, grinning at me. “Camp was… probably the best year yet? None of the campers was seriously injured, which was a bit of a miracle. Not a single squirrel incident.” She smirks, the both of us remembering a pack of squirrels that had completely trashed a bunk two summers ago. The story had gone viral after a local news company tweeted a picture of one squirrel stuck in a pair of polka-dot underwear. “My entire group got along. We went on, like, a million cool hikes, which you know is my favorite part. And, hanging out at Todd’s house was so amazing, Em. He’s amazing.”
I roll over to see a dreamy look plastered on her face.
“It was just like camp, but with Wi-Fi, and pizza, and a roof that doesn’t leak. Good people, fun times, no drama, you know?”
No drama. I feel a small jab at that.
“Plus, he only lives forty-five minutes away, so it shouldn’t be too hard to see each other this year. I think the group will really like him. And, we both want to go to Colorado State next year, so it’ll definitely be easier then.”
Wait, what?
“Colorado State?” I ask, surprised, reaching up to push my hair behind my ear. “I didn’t know you wanted to go there.”
Since when? It’s so far away, it makes my chest hurt already.
“Yeah, there’s a ton of hiking around there, and—” She freezes, her eyes locked on my arm. “Holy shit. Is that a tattoo?”
“Yeah, I… got it a few days ago. With Blake,” I say as she sits bolt upright, reaching out to grab my arm.
“You got a tattoo with Blake?”
“Well, not with Blake. I mean, she was there, but she didn’t…” I can see the glint of jealousy in her eyes, so I continue quickly.
“Anyway, I did it because of this.” I pull my arm out of her grasp, reaching into my pocket to pull out the folded list. I hand it to her and she carefully unfolds it, her eyes widening when she sees what it is. “I found it in a box of my mom’s high school stuff. I’ve been trying to get it done before the end of the Huckabee Lake trip.”
I reach out, pointing at all the different colored check marks, the new red ones from my trip to the beach, and sleeping under the stars, and getting a tattoo.
“This is so cool,” she whispers, her eyes getting a little teary, and I know she gets it. “You’ve been doing them? Just like she did?”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “And it’s so crazy, Kiera. I feel like I’m myself again, you know? I feel like she’s been guiding me this whole summer, back to who I was. Who I should be.”
“What do you have left to do?” she asks, her thumb moving down the page.
“Just two more and then I’m done,” I say, watching as she stops at “7. Go on the Huckabee Lake trip” and “11. Find a four-leaf clover,” and…
She completely unfolds the paper, revealing the hidden number twelve. “Kiss J. C.,” the one I’ve been intentionally ignoring all summer.
I don’t know what to think about this one now.
I can’t help but have Blake’s face pop into my head.
“No way,” she says, turning it around to face me.
I know in a nanosecond Matt’s popped into hers.
“Oh, well, the initials don’t even match his.…”
“This is scarily perfect, dude,” Kiera says, cutting me off, her voice going up half an octave with excitement. “The Huckabee Lake trip. A kiss? It’s like your mom knew. Like she knew you’d need to make things right with Matt. That the trip tomorrow would be the perfect way to do that.”
I freeze, my eyes flicking between my best friend and my mom’s handwriting, the promise of everything going back to normal. Everything being okay, our friends’ angry faces and Matt’s silence gone, a drama-free senior year actually possible. It is what I want. Isn’t it?
I think about what just happened with my dad two days ago. What’s been happening this entire summer. The town houses. Packing. My life being uprooted from underneath me. How I want nothing more than uncomplicated normalcy after all of this.
“I mean, your parents got together during the Huckabee Lake trip, didn’t they? Talk about a sign.”
A sign. It does feel like that, doesn’t it?
I roll onto my back to look at the glow-in-the-dark stars we put on her ceiling when we were in elementary school. I think of the stars that night at the beach with Blake, that invincible feeling that something more could be possible. But all of it seems so distant now, my real life, my life in Huckabee and all the expectations closing in around me. The house still slipping away.
If I don’t listen to her now, about this, about Matt, I’
m no better than my dad, throwing her stuff into boxes, forgetting her, ignoring her. The list has led me in the right direction this entire summer. Why would it not now?
23
The second Nina pulls into the parking lot at Huckabee High the next day and I see the navy-blue and silver charter bus, my heart starts hammering in my chest. It’s about to be filled with classmates I haven’t seen since June. Classmates who know what went down at junior prom, Matt somewhere in the hustle and bustle, and, on top of it all, Blake just… being Blake.
This is like eighteen cliff jumps and six tattoos rolled into one.
I pull my mom’s black cardigan closer to my body as Kiera and I hop out of the car, duffel bags slung over our shoulders. The last person to wear it was my mom, and I can already feel the worn wool giving me strength.
Or maybe I’m just hoping it will.
“Have fun, ladies!” Nina calls, holding two bags of chocolate chip cookies out the driver’s-side window for us.
I grimace at the word “fun” but manage to plaster a smile on my face before she can see.
“Molasses?” I ask as I peer into the bag at the cookies.
Nina shakes her head, yet another rejected secret-ingredient guess. “Nice try!”
I tuck my arm into Kiera’s as we head toward the bus, half hiding behind her as we wade through the line and check in with Mr. Sanders, what feels like a million eyes following my every move as I bend down to slide my bag into the under-bus compartment. It’s better now than it was at the end of school, their gazes less scalding, but it still makes my skin crawl.
Just wait, I tell myself. In a few hours I’m going to put this right. And no one will care anymore.
I take a deep breath and square my shoulders as I straighten up, the list making me stronger. Making me ready for any judgment that comes my way, ready for all the whispers, ready for—
I spin around and run smack into Blake.
She reaches out to stop me from toppling over, all honey-brown eyes, and messy sun-streaked hair, and full lips.…
“Blake!” I say, the feelings from the night in the truck bed slowly starting to swim back into my stomach. I quickly push them away, turning my head to scan the crowd for Matt. “Hey. Hi.”
The Lucky List Page 17
