The List

by Melanie Jacobson

  Cover image: Beach Vacation © arekmalang, courtesy of iStockphoto.com.

  Cover design copyright © 2011 by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  American Fork, Utah

  Copyright © 2011 by Melanie Jacobson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect

  the position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Covenant Communications, Inc., or any other entity.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.

  First Printing: March 2011

  978-1-60861-301-4

  Dedication

  For Kenny,

  My dream come true

  Acknowledgements

  Writing, like reading, is no fun without companions to share the journey that every book takes you on. I found myself in the best company on this journey as friends and loved ones cheered me on. My husband, Kenny, was again the biggest fan of nightly story time, revelling in the plot twists that each day brought. He also proved to be a fabulous surfing consultant. Amy Lou Bennett and Jen Schumann were honest and insightful critics. Becca Wilhite and Susan Auten were generous with their time and praise in reading my manuscript through, and once again, I found the opinions and feedback of my critique partners Aubrey Mace and Sue Marchant to be invaluable. I owe a special thank you to Josi Kilpack, who spent far more time and effort than she needed to in the midst of her own deadlines to offer suggestions and counsel that strengthened not only my plot points but me as a writer.

  I also owe a thank you to the family, both immediate and extended, who have supported me and encouraged me, and to my children, who let me carve out a little time each day to visit my imagination.

  Chapter 1

  I needed Matt Gibson in a bad way.

  He stood before me in sun-bleached surfer glory, the solution to all my problems. Too bad he was at the center of the singles ward linger longer hive, surrounded by a half dozen girls vying for queen bee status. Stifling a sigh, I began calculating the odds of enlisting Matt as my personal surf coach this summer. Rumor had it he had taken on his five-student limit already.

  Everyone wanted lessons from Matt Gibson, either for themselves or their kids, and they paid a premium to get him. I hoped to get some instruction for the bargain price of my company and offbeat sense of humor. If I didn’t learn to surf this summer I might never get the chance again, not to mention that The List would be all screwed up.

  My cousin Celia was watching him too. “Um, Ashley? What are you going to do if you can’t talk him into it?” she asked.

  “I’ll convince him,” I said.

  “Right. But if you don’t . . .”

  “I will. It’s on The List,” I reminded her.

  Celia didn’t roll her eyes, although I could tell she wanted to. I’d probably even let her get away with outright mockery since she was cool enough to share her bedroom with me for the summer while I crossed “learn to surf” off my list of twenty-five things to do before I got married—or died, if it took too long.

  The late August start date for my grad program at BYU loomed in front of me, a dark vacuum of a deadline sucking up all my future fun. I needed to knock out the next five items on The List fast before I drowned in the book stacks of the campus library, drained dry by research and devoid of the will to live, much less finish off a list of adventures. That’s why Matt Gibson was so essential to item thirteen: learn to surf. Two weeks in Huntington Beach and I still couldn’t stand on my board without falling. And that’s when it was on the sand.

  Okay, that’s an overstatement. But not by much. My current teacher, Celia’s older brother Dave, just returned from a mission to Bulgaria, and he had two years of his own surfing to catch up on. If the waves were good, he headed out without me—his hopeless surfing neophyte of a cousin—in tow. If the waves were mushy, he’d try to squeeze my lessons in around his schedule at the Beach Sport Warehouse, but bad waves aren’t any better for beginners than they are for veterans.

  I needed the sensei of surf, the Obi-wan Kenobi of boards, the . . . oh, whatever. I needed Matt Gibson.

  The question was how to get him.

  I studied the situation with a critical eye. Matt topped the Beachside singles ward hierarchy with the guys because he could shred on the waves, and with the girls because . . . well, he’s hot. Even by Beachside standards. My three Sundays in the ward had been long enough to determine a few key facts: people in Orange County, California, are largely blond, tan, and even more attractive than the glut of TV shows based here make them out to be. The very best-looking of them litter the halls of LDS chapels like life-size Abercrombie & Fitch posters. Except with more clothes on.

  The three girls in Matt’s immediate orbit were no exception. Dressed in cute cotton summer dresses, they stood with their perfectly manicured toes peeking out of trendy sandals and their bright hair shining even in the unflattering fluorescent light of the cultural hall. A polite smile flashed over Matt’s face, revealing his even white teeth as he listened to their chatter.

  “He’s so hot,” Celia sighed.

  “Not the point,” I reminded her, waving a hand in front of her face to snap her out of her mini-trance. “Focus.”

  I surveyed the linger-longer ebb and flow for another moment. The activities committee had set out popsicles for everyone to snack on while flirting—er, visiting. The tropical flavors came in neon hues that turned more than a few tongues green or orange. Matt passed on the popsicles, standing instead with his hands in his pockets and rocking comfortably back on his heels as he listened to his entourage of fresh-scrubbed femme fatales.

  They were no doubt cute, but growing up in Utah, the land of countless Scandinavian descendants, had prepared me well for competing with blondes. While I admired their pale, shiny locks, I learned long ago to embrace my sister Leila’s beauty advice: “We look stupid as blondes, so don’t bother. Sun-In is not your friend. Work with what you’ve got. And by that, I mean work it.” Which is how I’d learned to see my loose chestnut curls as an asset and to realize brown eyes are only boring if they’re the wrong shade of brown. My sisters and I all have a shade that’s gold-flecked. Artfully wielded mascara and plum eyeliner does wonders to make them pop. And Barrett girls learned early on to bat their lashes with the best of them.

  However, I needed a different tactic here. Matt already had a flock of conquests lash-batting like mad. Even with my darker, curly mane to differentiate me, I was going to need a little something extra. I looked past him to the refreshments and back again, a plan blossoming in my mind.

  “I need to get a popsicle,” I said to Celia.

  “You said you weren’t hungry.”

  “I don’t need to eat it. I just need to get it.” My small head nod clued her into the fact that a trip to the table would take us directly through Matt’s path.

  Understanding dawned. “Oh, I get it. You’ll walk past Ma—”

  An elbow in the ribs silenced her.

  “This will work if I time it right,” I said. I watched Derek, a scruffy but cute beach-bum type, head to the table. I had figured out during last week’s ice cream sandwich linger longer that Matt usually hid behind Derek when he got tired of girls. They would devolve into highly technical surf conversations that discouraged all but
the most hard-core surfers from joining in.

  I wandered over to where Derek stood pawing through the open cardboard box looking for the right flavor. When he noticed me waiting, he offered a sheepish grin.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was trying to find a lime one.” He offered me the box so I could take a turn.

  “I’m not in a rush,” I smiled. “Can you snag a red one if you see it in there?”

  “Sure,” he said, staring for a second longer than he needed to before redirecting his attention to his flavor hunt. A moment later, he waved a popsicle at me.

  “It’s red!” he announced, which kind of went without saying, but I accepted it with another smile. If I was going to dye my tongue with artificial food coloring in the service of The List, I was at least angling for a color that might occur in nature. I eyed the bright red popsicle. Maybe.

  “You’re new, right?” Derek asked, pulling a green one out and wrangling the plastic wrapper off.

  “Yeah. I was here last Sunday too,” I said.

  “So are you from around here or just visiting?”

  It was a common question in a ward that regularly quadrupled in the summer.

  “Both, I guess. I’ll be in HB all summer, but then I go back to school,” I answered. As we talked, I angled my body to keep Matt in my peripheral vision. I listened to Derek’s chitchat about a barbecue later in the afternoon and felt a small sense of satisfaction when I saw Matt break away from his entourage with a smile and head to Derek. And me, by default.

  He nodded at me with a slight air of distraction before turning to Derek, who offered him a fist bump.

  “Maxed out on chicks, yeah?” Derek asked with a smirk.

  Matt flushed slightly but dipped his head to indicate that Derek had nailed it. I fought a smile at his obvious relief over escaping his admirers, which caught his attention.

  “Sorry,” Matt said. “Nothing personal.”

  “No worries,” I answered. “Besides, how could it be? You don’t even know me.”

  “Oh yeah,” Derek interjected. “I didn’t get your name. It’s . . .”

  “Ashley,” I said.

  “Ashley, nice to meet you.” Derek turned to Matt again and explained, “We were just talking about how she’s in town for the summer and I thought I ought to do the neighborly thing and invite her over for our shindig later.”

  “Sure,” Matt shrugged, looking around the room. His enthusiasm was overwhelming.

  “You up for it?” Derek asked, turning back to me.

  I offered a shrug of my own. “I don’t think so. Thanks, though.”

  Matt’s left eyebrow crept up slightly and he exchanged a look with Derek. Now I had his attention.

  “You a vegetarian or something?” Derek asked. “We got veggie burgers too—you know, for the misguided people who don’t get that we’re at the top of the food chain.”

  I laughed. “It’s not that. It’s just . . . I’m guessing there will be lots of people there?”

  “Yeah. We do this all the time in the summer. We get a pretty good Sunday dinner crowd,” Derek said.

  “Well, there’s the problem. It sounds like I’d have to socialize.”

  “You’re antisocial?” Matt finally spoke again, a slight trace of amusement in his tone. “This linger longer must be downright painful for you, then.”

  “I’m here because my cousin Celia said I had to be. She really wanted a popsicle and she’s my ride, so I get a popsicle whether I want one or not,” I said. I gave the unwrapped popsicle in my hand a little shake to illustrate.

  “Okay, so you hate popsicles and socializing. What do you like?” he asked.

  “I don’t hate popsicles. I’m just not confident enough to pull off a neon tongue,” I said. Derek stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes in an attempt to stare at it, apparently checking to see if it was green. It was.

  “What if I found you a banana-flavored popsicle?” Matt asked. He took a quick inventory of me, not in a sketchy way, but in a curious analysis. Instead of the bright summer dresses that most of the girls around me wore, I had on a white pencil skirt and a killer pair of yellow suede heels that I couldn’t resist last week at the Steve Madden clearance sale. I topped it off with a yellow button-down blouse. The sleeves had tiny little gathers at the shoulder for a soft, feminine look, and clever tailoring in the bodice darts. As long as I didn’t turn around, he’d never see the Star Wars bandage on my calf covering the fading bruise I’d picked up from a stingray on my second day in the water. Note to self: buy normal-colored bandages.

  “Banana could work.” His theorizing snagged my attention again. “Maybe people would just assume you were making a fashion statement by matching your tongue color to your outfit. Like those watches with the bands you can swap out.”

  “Are you comparing me to a plastic Swatch?” I asked.

  “That’s high-quality Swiss engineering,” Derek interrupted, trying to help his buddy out. “Like a BMW.”

  “BMWs are German,” I said.

  “Yeah, but the Swiss speak German,” he said.

  “Okay, but I don’t think they eat as much sausage, so it’s really not the same thing,” I said.

  “Yeah, I guess . . .” Derek trailed off, looking confused. I bet he wore that expression a lot.

  Celia wandered up right then, brimming with nervous energy but trying to play it cool.

  “Are you ready to go?” I asked.

  “Not so fast,” Derek protested. “Is this your cousin?”

  “Boys, this is Celia. Celia, meet Derek and . . .” I turned to Matt with an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  Celia’s eyes widened at this little falsehood, but she didn’t say anything.

  “It’s Matt,” he answered. “It’s nice to meet you, Ashley,” and he held out his hand for a shake. I always think it’s kind of awkward when people my age do this, but I took his hand. He surprised me by squeezing mine lightly instead of shaking it, then letting it go. “Hi, Celia,” he continued, including my awestruck cousin in the introduction.

  She blushed and squeaked out a mangled “hi” in return.

  “So now that we’re old friends, you’re coming to the cookout, right?” Derek wanted to know.

  “I don’t think so, but seriously, thanks for the invite.” I turned to Matt. “And I don’t hate socializing,” I said, smiling. “I just have a lot of stuff to do.”

  He looked intrigued but was too polite to ask what else I had planned. Celia, unfortunately, was not so polite.

  “What stuff?” she demanded.

  “Boring stuff that no one wants to hear about,” I said, cutting off her next protest with a warning glare. I felt Matt’s gaze following the whole exchange with interest.

  “I’m out of here, I guess,” I said, addressing our two onlookers. “See you around sometime.” I threw the last remark over my shoulder, having already turned to head for the exit with Celia reluctantly in tow.

  “Definitely,” Matt said. “Nice Band-Aid.”

  As soon as the doors clicked closed behind us, Celia whirled on me, bristling with irritation.

  “Why aren’t we going to the barbecue?” she almost wailed. “Do you know how hard it is to get an invite?”

  “No, I don’t. It sounds like they have a ton of people over every time.”

  “People your age,” she said. “They don’t notice anyone under twenty-one. My friends would kill for an invitation to their place.”

  “Then your friends don’t have enough going on,” I said.

  “I don’t get it,” she complained. “You want Matt Gibson to teach you to surf, but you just rejected his invitation to hang out.”

  “I turned down Derek’s invitation,” I corrected her. “When Matt Gibson invites me, I’ll say yes.”

  “But you don’t know if he’ll do that,” she said. “Especially since you already said no.”

  “Oh, he’ll invite me again,” I said. “He has to. Bec
ause Matt Gibson just became number seventeen on The List.”

  Chapter 2

  Celia dropped me off and headed to a friend’s house. I climbed on my bed and dug The List out of my beat-up scripture tote. It was yellowing a little at the edges, and the purple gel pen I wrote it in was fading, but wear and tear aside, the content looked exactly like it did the night I made it. The List was born six years ago as an act of rebellion on my eighteenth birthday.

  When the last candle flickered out on the cake that night, my older sister Leila had joked, “Good for you, Smashley. Now you’re officially old enough to get married without needing Mom or Dad to sign the license.”

  That had gotten a good laugh from the rest of my family. As the third of four kids with my only brother after me, I’d watched both of my sisters marry and start popping out kids by the time they were twenty. Everyone assumed I would follow the Barrett family tradition of settling down young. My mom had done it, encouraged both of my sisters to do it, and now their sights were set on me. Too bad I had other plans.

  “Good one, Leila,” I said. “But I’m not getting married.”

  My mother’s smile had died a quick death.

  “I mean I’m not getting married right away,” I had clarified. “I’m going to graduate from college and have some life experiences first.” I didn’t add that Leila’s epic battles with her husband for the past three years and Juliana dropping out of college at twenty when her twins were born had helped fuel my determination. That night, I sat eating the excess frosting off the cake board and brainstorming my list.

  Some of the items I blame on a sugar-induced stupor (Learn to tango? Really?), but I’ve never changed or altered it, checking each item off one by one. It’s not a deep list, but there’s a strange, convoluted logic to it. If it sounded fun and I thought it would be impossible to do with a family to worry about, it went on The List. Funny how a half-hour brainstorm has dictated the last six years of my life.

  Celia nagged me into letting her see it after I took over half her room. She had all kinds of questions. “Read a Russian classic?” she asked in puzzlement. “First, why would you want to? And second, why can’t you do that after you’re married? Are you not allowed to read anymore?” But I know the idea of finding time for a little Dostoevsky would make my sisters laugh hard enough to shoot the chocolate milk they filch from their kids out of their noses. Celia’s lack of understanding was exactly why almost no one saw The List.