by Lee Matthews
Lauren snorted a laugh. “That was supposed to be Damon, before he turned out to be the biggest jerk ever.”
“Well. I’m glad you didn’t go there,” Loretta commented.
“Me too,” I replied.
I bent forward at the waist then, realizing anew that my whole list project was down the tubes. Loretta was right, in theory. The list really only existed in my mind. There were probably two other things I’d never done in my life that I could complete before tonight. But that just felt wrong. And it partially felt wrong because Christopher wasn’t here. He’d inspired me to make the list. He’d helped me write it in the first place. He’d been there when I’d laminated it and when I’d crossed off the first item. I wondered if he knew, yet, that Damon had confessed. Suddenly, I really just wanted to talk to him. He would help me figure out what to do. But it was pretty clear from his texts last night that he was done talking to me.
I lifted my head and looked at my family.
“Come on,” I said morosely. “Let’s just go get a burger.”
TESS’S NEW YEAR’S BUCKET LIST
Make a paper airplane that actually flies (20 seconds at least) ✓
Sing in public ✓
Strike up a conversation with a stranger ✓
Wear high heels outside the house ✓
Make out with a guy whose last name I don’t know (???)
TP someone’s house ✓
Get Adam Michel’s autograph ✓
Get a short, stylish haircut ✓
Ski a black diamond slope ✓
Eat sushi
Sitting in the back seat of Loretta’s car, I wished I could just go back home right then. I needed this trip to be over. But all that was waiting for me back home was a house without Dad. I wondered how much would look and feel different without him there. Had he taken all his old movie posters out of the basement? Would we still have the pasta bowls he always bragged he’d bought on sale when he was a bachelor? I was certain he’d taken his favorite backyard BBQ apron. The one that read “Sauce Me” on the front. I never really knew why that was funny, but he always loved it.
Loretta and Lauren were chatting about Lauren’s travel plans for next year—Loretta listening for once instead of constantly shooting down all of Lauren’s ideas. I took out my phone and put it faceup in my lap. Part of me felt like a loser for continuing to try. Especially after last night’s message from Christopher and the fact that he hadn’t replied to the picture of me Lauren had sent him. But I had to let him know that the whole list experiment had crashed and burned. It was over. I felt like he somehow deserved to know.
I snapped a pic of the unfinished list and sent it to him, followed by a message.
Epic fail. Couldn’t get #5 and #10 done. Had a good run, though. Turns out I’m allergic to sushi. Who knew? And #5, well…I think that one is just not my style.
I stopped typing and blinked back tears, holding my breath. Should I tell him? It might break my heart if I told him and he didn’t reply. Again. But if I didn’t tell him, I was pretty sure I’d always regret it. I let the breath go, and just went for it.
I like you Christopher. And I’m sorry if I did anything to hurt you. I just thought you should know that before New Year’s. Thanks for inspiring me. I may not have finished the list, but I wouldn’t have done any of it without you.
I hit Send, then turned my phone off and leaned back in the seat, closing my eyes until we got back to Evergreen Lodge.
* * *
• • •
That night, I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling while Lauren got ready for the New Year’s Eve party. I felt like such a failure. Maybe it had been too much to take on—ten things I’d never done before in five days. Maybe I should have come up with five. But come on, it wasn’t like I’d added “travel around the world” to the list, or put “have a baby” on there, or even “skydiving.”
Skydiving. My heart gave a pang. I looked at my phone, which I’d tossed on the desk when I’d come in earlier. But I refused to turn it on. I didn’t want to know for sure that he hadn’t texted me back. I wasn’t sure I could take that kind of disappointment right now.
The bathroom door opened, startling me, and steam poured out. Lauren, wrapped in a towel, stared at me.
“You’re not getting dressed?”
“I’m not going,” I told her, flopping down flat again.
“You can’t not go,” she told me. “It’s New Year’s Eve!”
“It’s just another night,” I told her, which made her groan. “Besides, I don’t have anything to wear. The nicest thing I brought with me are my black jeans.”
“Wear something of mine!” she said. She strode across the room, flung open the closet, pulled out three dresses—she’d hung something up?—and laid them across her unmade bed. There was one purple halter dress, one red dress with a plunging back, and a black strapless thing I could never even imagine wearing.
“You would look amazing in this,” she said, holding up the black dress. “With your new haircut?” Her eyes shone as she walked over to my side of the room. “Stand up.”
“Lauren,” I whined.
“Stand. Up.”
I knew that when she got in this mood there was no denying her, and I had no energy to argue. I pushed myself up and let her hold the dress up in front of me. Her smile widened.
“You don’t even need heels! You can wear your black ballet flats and you’ll look gorgeous.”
She shoved the dress at me so that I had to take it. I wrapped one arm around it and let it fold over, the hanger dangling toward the floor.
“I don’t do strapless,” I told my sister in a flat voice.
“Great! It’ll be one more thing you’ve never done before that you can get in before the new year!”
Lauren brushed past me, pulled my list out of my bag, grabbed my Sharpie, and crossed out “Eat Sushi” before I could stop her. I gasped as she wrote next to it, “Wear a strapless dress to a party.”
“Lauren! You can’t just edit the list!”
“Huh. That’s funny. Cuz I just did.” She popped the cap back on the pen like a punctuation mark, then tossed it on the desk and walked back into the bathroom. “Put that on and then I’ll do your makeup.”
She slammed the bathroom door.
I stared down at the list. All that laminated perfection. All my perfect little check marks in a row. And now she’d gone and scribbled all over it. But then again, it was never going to be actually perfect. It was never going to have ten check marks. My genetics had made sure of that. Maybe this should be one more bucket list item—stop obsessing about perfect to-do lists. Start being a little more flexible.
I walked over to the full-length mirror on the back of the hotel room door and held the dress up against my body. The flouncy skirt would hit just above my knee. I was sure the bodice wouldn’t fit—my sister was much curvier than I was—but if we could figure out a way to pin it…
“Fine,” I grumbled to myself.
Nine items down. One to go. And even in my grumpy mood, and even though it wasn’t perfect, the thought made me smile.
* * *
• • •
“This isn’t half bad for a, quote, teen party!” Carina shouted in my ear as we danced in the middle of a crowd of sweaty people.
“I know, right?” I replied, executing a twirl so the skirt on my borrowed dress flared out. I couldn’t believe how crowded it was. I hadn’t seen this many kids my age around the lodge all week. Where had they come from? Whoever they were, I’d caught a few of them glancing at my hair or doing double-takes as I walked by, which meant I’d been blushing half the night. I felt pretty. I felt like I was being seen for the first time.
“Are you having fun?�
�� Lauren asked, joining us.
“I guess,” I said, glancing at the door.
“You have to stop doing that!” she shouted at me.
“Doing what?”
“Watching the door,” Carina put in. “If he shows, he shows. But you’ll look much cooler if you’re not staring at the door when he does.”
Lauren lifted her hand and Carina high-fived her. I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I’m not waiting for him. He’s not coming back. And even if he did, why would he come here? He can’t dance. If he even tried to step on the dance floor, he’d basically get killed.”
“Woo-hoo! It’s the hottest girls in the room!”
Lauren stopped dancing and shot a look over my shoulder, just as Damon wrapped his arms around me from behind. Just the scent of him—coffee and gum—made my stomach turn. I whirled around and shoved him away from me with both hands. He stumbled backward into a group of kids dancing behind him, and one girl squealed as she spilled her soda.
“Sorry!” I shouted to her, though I wasn’t sure if she heard me.
“What’s your problem, Tess?” Damon said. He was wearing an open-collared button-down shirt and pants that were too tight. His hair, normally back in a ponytail, hung long over his shoulders. It was longer than mine now. I didn’t like it down. It made him look much older and, weirdly, skeevier.
“My problem? What are you even doing here? My grandmother fired your ass!”
“So, I snuck in. So what?” he shot back, like he could not understand what the problem was. “Why are you freaking shoving me into people?”
“Are you seriously asking me that right now?” I turned my palms out. “Do you not even remember what happened last night?”
“Last night?” he said. “You mean when you and your stupid prank got me and all my friends dragged down to the police station? And then I got in trouble with my aunt and uncle, and Tarek told on me to Loretta as punishment. Yeah, I remember that. That was awesome. But I forgive you.”
My jaw hung open, my face heating up as I realized we were starting to draw attention. The people dancing closest to us had stopped and turned around to stare. A couple of them were even filming on their phones. Carina took a few steps back, and I knew it was because she didn’t want to get caught on social media in the middle of a melee. My sister, though, stepped up right behind me.
“You shoved me to the floor the second the cops showed up and basically let me get trampled,” I said. Okay, I was exaggerating, but just a little. That was how it had felt at the time. “And then you blamed the whole thing on me.”
“It was your idea!” he blurted out.
“Yes, it was my idea. But you said it was fine! You got Chase’s okay, you bought the toilet paper, you helped us do it.” I shook my head. “But you know what, forget all of that. You also purposely knocked my friend off the slopes and broke his leg. Do you think I’d really want to talk to you after that?”
“Not likely!” Lauren chimed in.
“I don’t like you, Damon,” I added, crossing my arms over my chest. “And I’d appreciate it if you would go away.”
Damon took a breath. He looked like he was about to say something else, but then he glanced around at our audience, at their phones, and something shifted on his face.
“Whatever. You’re not worth it, anyway,” he said to a chorus of “Oooooh” and “Burn!” Then he turned and walked away.
“All right, everyone. Show’s over. Go back to what you were doing,” Lauren said to the crowd, adding a shooing motion with both hands. Carina rejoined us as everyone went back to dancing, and I felt my shoulders relax.
“That was awesome,” Carina said.
I glanced at the door again. Couldn’t help it. But there was no Christopher. Is it wrong that a little part of me was hoping he had seen that? That he’d arrived at the exact right moment to witness me telling off Damon?
My sister reached out and squeezed my hand. “Maybe it’s for the better that he’s not here,” she told me. “You don’t want to kick off the year with someone who’s not for real.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic. I had really liked Christopher for those first few days. But this whole ghosting thing he was doing now? It wasn’t right. I didn’t deserve to be treated this way. I deserved to surround myself with people who cared about me.
“I’m glad you guys are here,” I told Lauren and Carina.
They both hugged me, one from each side, mushing me between them.
“We are, too,” Lauren said, releasing me.
Carina threw her arms in the air. “Now let’s dance!”
* * *
• • •
And we danced. But then we got tired. Or at least I did. It had been a long few days, not to mention an exhausting twenty-four hours. At this time last night I was being hauled off in a police car for the very first time. I guess the stress of that and then sitting in the police station for hours and then getting into a fight with my grandmother, getting up early for breakfast, and having my hair lopped off had taken a lot out of me. With a few minutes left until midnight, I was sitting at a table, slumped so low in the chair my butt was hanging of the edge, and I really didn’t feel like celebrating. Lauren and Carina were still on the dance floor, taking selfies with props they’d stolen from the photo booth—huge sunglasses, paper crowns, fake moustaches—and I saw the opportunity to make my escape.
With their backs to me, I got up and slipped toward the perimeter of the room, sliding past raucous dancers and edging my way by the dessert table.
“Only eight minutes left until the new year!” the DJ announced, and everyone cheered. He’d been doing that every sixty seconds for the past half hour, and it was making me tense. I got to the door and could taste my freedom, feel my pajamas on my skin, when a hand wrapped around my wrist and stopped me short.
“Carina!” I cried.
“You are not leaving this party before midnight,” she admonished me.
I glanced past her for Lauren, but she was still on the dance floor, wearing her crown, dancing with Tarek. At least they weren’t teaming up on me. Carina, I could handle.
“Come on! Is this all because of that list!? So, figure out something else to do!”
“Like what?” I asked.
Her eyes went wide, incredulous.
“There must be loads of things you’ve never done before.” She looked around the room as if the answer was going to pop up in front of her. “I don’t know…moon a party? Do ten cartwheels in a row? Go streaking?”
“Okay, (A) I’m not doing any of those things, and (B) Do we need to talk about the fact that two of your three suggestions involve partial to full nudity?”
She laughed. “Come on, Tess. You can’t go back to your room alone to ring in the new year. The very thought of it makes me depressed.”
“The thing is, Carina, I like being alone.” I pulled her in for a hug. “I’m fine. I swear,” I said, though I could feel my voice wanting to crack. “I really do just want to go to bed. I appreciate it, though. I really do.”
I kissed her cheek and pulled away, looking into her eyes. “Happy New Year!”
“Happy New Year,” she said grudgingly.
And she let me go.
I tucked my chin and walked down the carpeted hallway, marveling at how the ridiculously loud music quickly became nothing more than a thumping beat. My ears rang from all the noise, and my heart felt full. Inexplicably, my eyes welled with tears. Maybe I should go back. Maybe Carina was right and I shouldn’t ring in the new year alone.
But it felt too late to turn back now. I’d be okay. As soon as I got to my room, I’d feel better.
I just wished…I don’t know what I wished. That I’d finished the list? That Christopher had texted back? That any of this had turned out the way I’d imagined it would?
One tear slipped out as I reached the lobby. And then, I heard my name.
“Tess?”
I looked up, and there was Christopher.
TESS’S NEW YEAR’S BUCKET LIST
Make a paper airplane that actually flies (20 seconds at least) ✓
Sing in public ✓
Strike up a conversation with a stranger ✓
Wear high heels outside the house ✓
Make out with a guy whose last name I don’t know (???)
TP someone’s house ✓
Get Adam Michel’s autograph ✓
Get a short, stylish haircut ✓
Ski a black diamond slope ✓
Eat sushi Wear a strapless dress to a party ✓
He was standing right next to his couch, the fire roaring in the fireplace behind him. On the coffee table where we’d rested our hot chocolates while we pored over the list, there was a bottle of champagne and at least a dozen glasses. In fact, there were champagne bottles and glasses all over the room, the staff having prepared for every guest at the lodge to have a chance at a New Year’s Eve toast.
“Hey,” Christopher said, his eyes taking all of me in. “You look…amazing.”
I blushed. “So do you,” I said. Christopher was wearing a suit. An actual suit with a light blue shirt under it and a dark blue tie. Plus he was standing—no crutches—balanced on one foot. Standing up straight for the first time since I’d known him. And from what I could tell, we were exactly the same height.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked.
