I head back to the dock, chucking the donut onto the worn wood, purposefully avoiding Blake’s gaze. I go to push myself up, stopping short when her hand reaches out to help me.
My fingers slide into her palm, and she pulls me up until her face is inches from mine. My gaze moves from her honey-brown eyes to her lips, then back again.
The same moment with Matt a moment ago.
Only this time, my heart can’t keep time in my chest.
I pull my hand away, quickly stepping back.
“You heading back up?” she asks.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, pushing my hair behind my ear.
“I want to grab some water from the dining hall,” she says as she grabs her sketchbook off the dock.
We head up the forest path to the lodge, the trees wrapping around us as we walk, her hand bumping lightly against mine. I cross my arms to stop it from happening.
The path narrows so she steps ahead of me, and I watch as she tucks the pencil she was using behind her ear, calling back to me, “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah,” I say, unsure of what she’s going to say.
“Are you avoiding me?”
“What? No!”
She turns around to look at me, her eyes searching my face for a long moment. Finally, she nods, clearly not buying it. “All right. Sure.”
We keep walking, but I can tell she’s upset. I reach for her arm as we step out of the woods, the lodge coming into view. “Blake, I—”
“Why Matt?” she asks, cutting me off as she whips around to face me. “You told me that it didn’t feel right that day we had the picnic. If it didn’t work out the first time… if it didn’t feel right the second time or the third time or the fourth time… why do you still want to be with him?”
“I…” I hesitate, opening my mouth to reply, my mind scrambling for an answer. “Because he’s a great guy, Blake. He’s nice and sweet and reliable and my mom always wanted me to be with him, especially after she got sick. And now, after doing the list, I feel like this is what she would want me to do. I feel like all of it has led me to this moment, where it’s actually going to work.”
Blake nods, holding my gaze as she processes what I’m saying. “So, you think that by doing the list and by becoming more like the person you were, things are just going to suddenly work out between the two of you?”
“Yeah,” I say, rising to the challenge. “I do.”
“Doesn’t that completely erase what you’ve been through, though? Who you’ve become because of what happened? Who you are now?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
I cross my arms and look away, at the path leading back to the lake.
“Let me just ask you. Is this what you want, Emily?” she says.
She’s asking more than just that. I can see it in her eyes and in the way she says it.
“Yeah,” I say, drawing a line in the sand. “It is.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding. “Got it.” She turns on her heel and heads quickly up the steps of Huckabee Lodge, leaving me standing there, watching her go.
26
“Tonight’s the night, Em,” Kiera says as she leans back, appraising her makeup-application skills. I turn right and left, checking myself in the bathroom mirror. Kiera cuts me off though as she leans forward, sweeping on another layer of mascara for good measure.
I’m wearing an off-white floral-print dress that I am not a huge fan of, but Matt said he liked it this past spring on a date, so it feels a bit like a good-luck charm. My long brown hair is half up, and gently wavy thanks to Kiera’s skills with a curling iron.
With a satisfied nod, she turns to meet my eyes, pointing the mascara tube at me. “This list is getting done tonight at the bonfire. The grand finale. You’re officially getting your J. C. back.”
Done. I can hardly believe it. I look at the paper, unfolded on the bathroom counter, the multicolor check marks next to almost every number.
“And, I mean, we can find a four-leaf clover before we board the bus tomorrow,” she says with a wave of her hand. “It can’t be that hard.”
I’m going to have to get up pretty damn early. I’ve literally looked the entire month of July. This thing is about as elusive as you can get.
Unless you’re Blake, I think, remembering her stack on our picnic.
I lean against the counter as she zips up her makeup bag, biting my lip warily. Is it okay that I still haven’t found it? Am I ready for this next step with Matt, the “grand finale” as she called it, even though I haven’t?
I look at myself in the mirror one more time, letting out a long exhale before following Kiera out of the bathroom. Blake’s sitting on the edge of her bed, and my jaw nearly drops when I see her.
I’ve seen her a million times this summer, but not like this.
The thin line of eyeliner and the gloss on her lips and the coating of mascara emphasize her features and sweep them into a level of beautiful that is both hard to look at and impossible to look away from.
Kiera lets out a wolf whistle, nodding, and I remind myself my admiration is totally normal. Blake is objectively hot. It doesn’t have to mean anything. “Looking good, Blake!” she says, before rubbing her hands together in excitement. “All right, team! Game plan for item number twelve. Sealing the deal with Matt.”
She grabs my hand, plunking me down on the bed next to Blake. My cheeks instantly turn red as Blake’s shoulder brushes against mine. I shoot a sideways glance at her, and she gives me a small, thin-lipped smile.
Kiera puts her hands on her hips and starts to pace around the room, her feet padding along the green carpet. “Three words.” She spins around, her hair swaying behind her. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth or dare?” Blake asks, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes,” Kiera says, nodding eagerly. “Truth or dare. I start a game around the bonfire. No one is going to pick Emily right now since she’s the school pariah.” She stops pacing and shoots me a sympathetic look. “No offense.”
I roll my eyes. “None taken.”
“So,” Kiera continues, zeroing in on Blake. “Whoever gets picked first between the two of us dares Emily to kiss someone—”
“Uh,” I say, cutting her off with a raise of my hand. “Quick little thing. Given the fact that I… kissed… another guy publicly, is this really the best…?”
Kiera waves her hand, brushing my words away. “That’s kind of why this’ll work, you know? It’s a good way to make amends. Right the wrong, by kissing the right person this time.”
I frown, processing. Does that make sense? It probably would in a movie, but this is real life.
“Okay,” she continues, zeroing in on Blake again. “So, we dare her to kiss someone, she kisses Matt, there are fireworks in the sky, bing bang boom, mission accomplished.”
Mission accomplished. Just like that, everything will click back into place.
For a long moment Blake doesn’t say anything. She’s quiet, and the two of them are pretty much left just staring at each other.
I watch as Kiera blinks, waiting for Blake to match her enthusiasm. “So, are you in?”
Blake runs her fingers through her hair, hesitating, her expression unreadable. I get distracted by the faint highlighter on her cheekbones as I try to decipher it. “Yeah. I mean… I know how much the list means to Emily, so… of course I’m in.”
“Sweeeet!” Kiera claps, satisfied, throwing herself onto my bed and checking her phone.
“We’ve got half an hour until midnight,” she says, rolling over onto her back. “This is the first time in my life I’m actually early for something.”
“If you want to kill some time, I found something cool this afternoon,” Blake says as she turns to look at me. “I think you’ll probably want to see it.”
With nothing else to do, we creep quietly out of our room and tiptoe down the long hallway after her, phone flashlight guiding the way as we loop through the lodge. Around one corner,
we come face-to-face with a ginormous stuffed bear, its pointy teeth illuminated in the light.
I let out an unintentional squeak, and Kiera claps her hand over my mouth, shushing me.
“Emily Clark,” she hisses. “Shut up.”
Stifling our laughs, we head around another corner and up two flights of steps before squeezing through a tiny, dusty door to the attic.
Blake feels her way to the corner and flicks a light switch. A tiny light bulb pops on, and the sloped, cobweb-covered walls are brought to life in the soft light. They’re filled with writing, words and pictures carved into the ancient wooden rafters.
“Oh my gosh,” I say as I take a step closer, finding a heart, and HUCKABEE LAKE TRIP 1966, and HEATHER AND TIM 4EVER. “This is so cool.”
“It gets cooler,” Blake says, walking over to the corner and tapping a section of the wall. Kiera and I shuffle over, squinting to read in the dim light.
No. It can’t be.
I gasp, reaching out to touch the initials in front of me. J. M. + J. C. ’99. My parents. They were up here all those years ago, on the weekend they officially got together.
It’s the final sign. That this plan, that Matt, that all of it is the right thing to do. Four-leaf clover or not. That this is my way to my own version of what they had.
We’re all silent for a long moment, Kiera slinging her arms around me and Blake as we stare at the wall, taking it all in.
“We should carve our names up here!” Kiera says, whipping a pocketknife out of her pocket like this is an episode of Naked and Afraid.
“Whoa, there, buddy,” I say, holding up my hands.
She grins sheepishly. “My bad. Still in Misty Oasis mode.”
We find a free spot by my mom and dad’s initials, going one at a time, our own small part in this massive tapestry spanning generations and generations. Kiera giggles excitedly, peeking out the tiny attic window as Blake finishes her C.
“I see people heading out. It’s time!” She turns and grabs me firmly by the shoulders. “You ready, Em?”
I look at my parents’ initials on the wall and all of ours below it, nodding. “Let’s do this.”
27
This is exhilarating.
My adrenaline is pumping as all of us pour out of the building, tiptoeing our way through the halls and through the forest as we find our way down to the lake. We’re near the back of the pack, Kiera leading, Blake just behind me, the night alive around us with whispers and laughs and the sound of twigs snapping underneath our feet.
Ahead of me, I see the light of the bonfire start flickering through the trees, and finally a whoop echoes through the air. We made it.
I’m surprised when Blake’s hand grabs on to mine, stopping me. The feeling of her fingers lacing through my own is familiar enough to recognize.
I look back at her in the soft glow of the moonlight as people slide around us.
There’s an uneasiness in her gaze I’ve never seen before. Something is unsettling her.
“Can I talk to you?” she whispers, an unfamiliar twinge of urgency in her words.
I hesitate as a wave of nervousness blindsides me, my excitement swallowed whole. I look between her and the light of the bonfire, debating.
Finally, I nod, calling out to Kiera to let her know we’ll be there in a second. Kiera yells something back to us over her shoulder, but her words blend together with the noise of the bonfire as her flip-flops fade into the distance.
Blake pulls me off the path, through the trees, a safe distance away from everyone.
And then… it’s just the two of us, the air around us prickling as Blake looks at me.
“Emily…,” she starts, her voice trailing off as she swallows. “I don’t know. I just, uh…” She looks down at her feet, shifting uneasily like she’s working up to something. I’ve never seen Blake scared of anything, and something about that terrifies me. “I know there’s this whole plan tonight, but if I’ve learned anything this summer from your mom’s list, it’s how important it is to put yourself out there and take chances. And… this right here is literally the last chance I have to tell you how I really feel.”
I freeze as the air gets punched right out of my lungs. I want to pull my hand from hers and clasp it over her mouth before she can say it. Before she can say exactly what I want to hear and exactly what I don’t.
She looks at me with those warm brown eyes that find their way into every single one of my thoughts. “I like you, Emily. I really like you. To be honest with you, I was pretty scared to move to Huckabee. But then I sat down next to you at that bingo fundraiser, and you smiled at me, and I knew almost instantly everything was going to be okay.” The corner of her mouth ticks up into a smile as she talks. “I’ve loved every minute of this summer with you. I’ve loved planning with you, and listening to you talk about your mom, and how brave you’ve been when you have to jump off a cliff and you really don’t want to. I love how you tell jokes when you get nervous, and the way you smile when you talk about baking, and how it feels when you look at me. And I love all the things about you that you’re scared to show people. Your sadness, and your pain, and your fear, because without it, you wouldn’t be you.”
All at once I’m hit with two overwhelming emotions.
The first dances around my chest in a way I have never experienced with anyone, the stars above us shining brighter than ever. It feels real, and overwhelming, and so dizzying, my entire world shifts.
The other is an overpowering dread that sits heavy in my stomach, the feeling the same as when I stepped off the Misty Oasis bus that summer and saw that something was wrong with my mom.
I never got to tell her what I felt, and who I felt it for. Never got to know what she would have said. What she would have wanted for me.
So I shoved it down so deep, I could pretend it never happened. If I was with Matt, though, I could know. I could know she would’ve been happy.
And I could pretend I was fine with her never knowing, because maybe there was nothing to know in the first place.
But there was.
There is.
I stare at Blake, words escaping me. Both sides fighting within me.
“I know,” she says, when it’s clear I can’t form a sentence. “I know you think your mom wanted you to be with Matt. I know you think that finishing the list and being with him is how you can keep her with you and live your life the way she wanted you to live it. I can understand that. But—” Her grip tightens on my hand and she takes a step closer. “But, Emily… from everything you and my dad have told me about her, from everything this list has taught me about her, what she would have wanted, more than any fairy tale, is for you to be happy. For real. She would have wanted you to try your luck on something real.”
I pull my hand from hers, taking a step back.
It’s not that simple, Blake, I want to shout. But… she can’t possibly understand. She didn’t grow up in Huckabee, where this is still pretty far from the norm. More important, though, she didn’t have her dying mom tell her how right things could be if she gave this one specific boy a chance, like she’d given my dad a chance all those years ago. A boy that was pretty close to perfect, bringing flowers to the hospital and being there for me during the hardest moment of my life.
But not perfect for you.
The thought comes to me like a traitor, from the part of me that wants nothing more than to kiss her right now. The part of me my mom never knew. Can never know.
The part that for all those reasons… I can never be.
“Blake, I… I can try my luck a hundred times, but I can never bring her back. I’ll never know what she really wants. Except for this.”
It takes everything in me to break this pull between us, but finally I turn, pushing through the trees, everything hazy as I fight my way along the path to the bonfire. I break into the clearing, the light and the sound overwhelming me, colors and shapes all morphing together. I take a deep breath, trying to steady
myself.
“Em,” I hear Kiera say, feel her pressing a beer bottle into my hand. “You’re just in time to play truth or dare!” She leans in as she pulls me over to the group, whispering now. “It’s showtime.”
I sit down on a giant log, joining the circle formed around the bonfire. Looking up, I see Matt sitting across the way, his lips pulling up into a knowing smile as Kiera ushers more people over. She’s always able to get things going, and tonight is no exception.
“I like your dress,” he mouths, motioning to his torso and then to me.
I smile back at him, but it feels so forced and wrong, just like this white floral dress he likes so much.
I try to match everyone’s enthusiasm, but I feel… completely thrown off-balance, the ground unsteady underneath me.
But, with or without me, the game still begins, the plan set into motion.
It’s a blur of dares lobbed back and forth across the circle, truths spilling out of people’s mouths. Leah Thompson confesses to cheating on her bio final, and Brad Hammond eats a worm, and Jake strips down to his underwear and jumps through the bonfire like an actual lunatic.
I watch as he grabs a beer from someone, chugging the rest of it before spinning around and pointing the empty bottle at…
Blake. I hadn’t even noticed her come join us, my mind still spinning from her words a moment ago.
“Blake Carter,” he drawls, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Truth or dare?”
She crosses her arms, raising her eyebrows at him. “You know I’m always game for a dare, Jake.”
Jake laughs, an evil glint in his eye. Everyone goes quiet with a palpable excitement, watching the exchange, eager to see what the new girl will do. He points to the rusty lifeguard stand at the end of the dock.
“I dare you to jump off that. Into the water.”
Blake doesn’t even bat an eye. And she definitely doesn’t look at me.
Everyone cranes their necks to watch as she walks down the dock, some even stand up to get a better view. I watch her climb the rickety ladder up to the top, silently praying that she doesn’t follow through with her part in the plan.
The Lucky List Page 19
