The List

by Melanie Jacobson

  Anyway, there’s stuff that you just can’t logistically do with a kid, like a service project in a developing nation. How was I supposed to dig freshwater wells with a toddler clinging to my legs? And hello, the sports car thing? It’s not like the backseats are made for baby carriers. Not to mention the things I wanted to try that would be stupid to risk once I have kids, like snowboarding on a black diamond trail. Chasing after babies in a full body cast seems like an awful lot of trouble. And then there’s all the stuff that falls under the vague category of overcoming my fears, like skydiving or learning to surf. Or singing karaoke. My pathological aversion to singing in public made wading through The Brothers Karamazov seem easy by comparison.

  In hindsight, I did put some stupid things down. I might have also read too many chick lit novels as a teenager with their ideas about what cool girls should do, be, and have. Own a pair of Louboutins? I worked two or even three jobs all summer long, every summer, so I could pay for school. I would never blow a whole semester’s tuition on a pair of shoes, but patience and crafty bidding scored me a killer pair of red stilettos on eBay. Saving like a maniac and compulsive bargain hunting took care of some of my other high-ticket items too, like the sports car. I bought a Miata at a police auction. (The List didn’t specify that it had to be a cool sports car.) The police had seized the car in a drug case, and I got it for a song. But I sold it after a year for two reasons: First, a Miata is a very bad idea in a Utah blizzard, and second, I had a recurring nightmare that one day I’d get pulled over and the officer would let Killer, the drug-sniffing police dog, check out my car. It ended with me busted for a cache of drugs undiscovered in a wheel well before the car went to the auction. I ended up switching the Miata for a Jeep Wrangler with a few miles on it and no obvious history of drug dealer ownership. I still got to cross it off, though. Bye-bye, number sixteen.

  Some of the items on my list I thought would be impossible, but they turned into easy cross-offs with creative planning. I worked three jobs the summer before my junior year of college, waiting tables at a fancy mountain resort at night, doing an early morning call center shift for an appliance store, and working as a part-time manager at a bookstore during the day so I could afford a semester abroad in the winter. The hard work led to three fabulous months in Spain where I polished my beginning Spanish skills and studied the Moorish influence in their country for my senior project paper. I traveled with other university students for short trips to the surrounding countries, too, and got to see other parts of Europe. Study abroad, travel Europe, and learn a foreign language . . . Done!

  The basic Spanish I learned was enough to get me sent on a mission to Ecuador—number seven. When I got home, my stake president asked me to chaperone and translate on a youth conference trip doing a home-building project for a poor village in Mexico. That took care of number fifteen. When that ended, I pretty much hit the ground running. I finished my bachelor’s in liberal studies and called my aunt and uncle for a place to stay. Now I had a whole summer in Huntington Beach to tackle surfing. Oh, and Matt Gibson.

  This was the summer to focus on list items still undone before the stress of grad school put a cramp in my style. Which of course meant it was time to bust out my Bible. Number four was taking too long and I blamed the Old Testament.

  * * *

  A light flicked on and woke me up. I lifted my head from the crinkled page in Numbers that had defeated me. I think Numbers was so named because of the countless times I had tried and failed to make it through. I blinked my eyes, trying to clear my vision. The blob in front of me materialized into my cousin Dave sporting the Huntington Beach Sabbath uniform of white shirt, chinos, and flip-flops. Celia’s bedside clock revealed I’d been asleep for at least an hour.

  “You’ve got a little drool on your chin,” he said.

  “It’s a natural moisturizer,” I retorted but wiped it away.

  “I don’t have to work tomorrow. You want to hit the waves in the morning?”

  “You mean, like when they’re actually good?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Maybe you’ll stand up this time,” he said.

  “I’m in. What time?”

  “Seven-ish. I’m not coming to wake you up so if you’re not ready when I leave, I’m going on my own.”

  “I’ll be ready,” I promised.

  “Cool.” He turned to leave.

  “Dave?” I waited until he turned around. Mustering my most syrupy voice, I cooed, “Thanks for making my dreams come true.”

  He snorted and flipped the switch off again as he left. After fumbling my way over to the switch and flipping it back on, I pulled out my iPhone and clicked on my calendar. I had thirteen weeks of summer to figure out. I am a compulsive planner, as if The List weren’t proof enough. Celia got me a job at Hannigan’s, the steak house where she’s a hostess, and based on my table tips for the last two weeks, if I worked about twenty-five hours a week I could earn enough to cover my summer expenses and my fall tuition. I already had a teaching assistant job lined up for the school year as a glorified paper grader in the Intro to Art History class, so I wouldn’t need to worry about my monthly expenses when the semester started.

  If I budgeted my time creatively, my work schedule still left me plenty of play time. List time. Time to figure out how to pull off something like skydiving. Or sushi classes. I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as sushi classes, so I did what any college graduate with a research-driven degree would do: I pulled out my laptop and fired up Google.

  Prior research had already netted me the names of some local casting agencies so I could investigate the movie-extra thing. Another hour and a few detours on time-sucker Google Earth later, I discovered which local joints had karaoke nights and where to get skydiving lessons. I also stumbled onto a couple of LDS dating sites. I might already have my summer fling victim identified, but I figured I should start lining up a handsome and sympathetic Prince Charming for the fall when I needed the occasional distraction from my textbooks. I had to finish number twenty-four,, anyway.

  So far, the most promising site was called LDS Lookup. It reminded me less of cruising the cultural hall at a dance for fresh meat and more of hanging out in the halls at church and striking up a conversation with a stranger. Low threat, laid-back vibe. I took the free site tour, checking out profiles of different people, making sure they were normal and would be allowed to hang out at my house. Still, I hesitated to set up a profile. I might have thought Internet dating sounded good at eighteen, but . . .

  How was I supposed to fit this in on top of everything else? I glanced at The List again. The whole point of this summer was to get stuff out of the way since I expected grad school to be crazy busy.

  With a sigh, I filled out the profile prompts on my preferences, favorites, and criteria for a match. Now anyone who cared to look could find out that I have a chocolate addiction, listen to alternative rock, compulsively watch Gilmore Girls reruns, and squeeze in the occasional snowboarding, plus a dozen other pieces of random information. Nosy things, these dating profile questionnaires.

  With that done, I tucked The List back inside my scripture tote and turned with a sigh to the Old Testament. Yanking it toward me, I found my place in Numbers again and began reading for the twelfth time.

  Chapter 3

  Seven o’clock rolled around extra early on Monday morning, but I didn’t want to miss my chance for some tutelage on the good waves. Dragging myself out of bed, I pulled on a cute blue-striped tankini, a cotton knit cover-up, and located my beat-up Reef flip-flops wrapped inside a damp beach towel underneath the bed, all in the dark. I only heard the tiniest moan from Celia. I snagged my wetsuit from the chair by the door, proud of myself for having the foresight to leave it there the night before so I didn’t have to grope for that in the dark too.

  I was halfway through a bowl of peanut butter Cap’n Crunch goodness when Dave rolled in, looking disheveled and still half asleep. He grunted at my breakfast choice, grabbed a
banana, and downed it before he was alert enough to comment, “Your cereal is gross.”

  I scooped up the last three nuggets floating in my milk and heaved a blissful sigh. “No matter how nicely you ask, you still can’t have any,” I told him.

  He rolled his eyes and headed for the door, which opened onto the driveway. Three seconds later, he was back.

  “Keys,” he said.

  “Why mine?” I objected. “We can take your truck. More room for the boards.”

  “My dad needs it to haul our old dryer somewhere. And you’re not driving if I’m in the car, so give me the keys.”

  “I keep telling you, I’ve never had an accident.”

  “Probably because it wasn’t on The List,” he muttered, barely audible.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that’s just luck, you maniac.”

  “Wimp.”

  “Surfing by myself . . .” he threatened.

  “Not unless you walk,” I said.

  “Fine, Ashley. You’re a great driver who never, ever goes too fast. I just golly-gee-whillikers would sure like to drive your fancy Jeep.”

  “You had me until the fancy part.” My Jeep is utilitarian at best, although I did try to liven it up with beach-friendly, hibiscus-print seat covers, fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror, and a yellow smiley-face ball on the antenna. My sister Juliana dubbed it the Cliché Cab, which meant she got the joke. When I got a free moment, I planned to find a couple of lame bumper stickers and an engraved license plate frame to finish off the look. I’m leaning toward the classic, if you don’t like my driving, stay off the sidewalk, flanked by a BYU sticker and some kind of CTR decal.

  Deciding that a real surf lesson was worth giving up the driver’s seat, I followed Dave out and around back to the shed so he could grab the new board he’d just bought with his first post-mission paycheck and I could snag the one Celia gave me, one of her old ones. We loaded them into the back of my topless Wrangler, and Dave pointed us toward Pacific Coast Highway. Barely ten minutes later, we were parking on Ninth Street to surf Taco Reef. Dave usually took me farther north to Bolsa Chica State Beach where the waves are gentler. Noting my surprise, he explained, “I’ll have a shot of catching a decent ride here too.” I shrugged and jumped down from my seat. We had prime parking next to the abandoned Taco Bell that gave the surf spot its name, so we didn’t even have to do the ritual of hunting underneath the seats for quarters to feed the meter on PCH.

  I grabbed my board and my gear, followed him down to the sand, and after dropping the whole load, I yanked off my cover-up and started the undignified little dance required for getting into my wetsuit. Squeezing into the black neoprene looks like a spastic hokey-pokey, except way less cool. After completing the little contortion to pull up the back zipper, I strapped the leash around my ankle and stood up, ready to go. Well, equipped to go, anyway. In case of a wipeout, a leash tethers a surfer to her board via an ankle strap. The idea is that the board stays with the surfer and doesn’t get lost or bang someone else in the head. So far, mine made sure that my board stuck around to bang me in the head. Regularly.

  It was almost eight o’clock by now, and the waves were dotted with guys enjoying a morning ride on the rhythmic swells. I did see the occasional female paddling out and even a few little kids, which Dave told me to call “groms.” That’s short for grommets, which for reasons he couldn’t explain, is slang for kids who surf.

  I took a deep breath before hitting the water. Since there’s no way to brace for the cold slap of the Pacific, I charged in and yelped, but I kept going until it reached the top of my thighs.

  “Do the stingray shuffle!” Dave yelled.

  I waved to show I heard him, dragging my feet along the sandy bottom to avoid stepping on one. Dave told me on our first day at the beach that I should worry way more about stingrays than the puny sand sharks that hung out in Huntington. He showed me how to avoid startling the rays by shuffling along the sandy bottom to let them know I was coming. A stingray had zapped me on the back of my calf the week before when I forgot, and I wasn’t about to make that mistake again. My aunt had laughed after making sure I was okay when I limped in that day.

  “Your uncle Joe has lived here his whole life, and I’ve been here for twenty-five years, and no one in this family has ever been stung. Leave it to you to do it inside of a week.”

  I pushed farther out into the ocean, stingray-free. When the water crept to my waist, I hopped on my surfboard, lay on my stomach, and began to use my arms as paddles on either side, propelling myself out far enough to catch a wave.

  This part, I had down. I could wax my board like a pro, strap on a leash like I’d done it for years, and even had enough endurance built up to paddle out without giving away my novice status by wheezing and puffing. In fact, I had the whole surfing thing down perfectly until the part where I had to actually stand up and ride a wave. For the first few lessons, Dave would follow me out without his board so he could hold mine for me. It reminded me of being six and trying my bike without training wheels. When the white foam of a wave formed behind us, Dave would push me off. That was my cue to look for the right moment to get to my knees, then move to a standing position. So far, in eight outings, I had failed dozens and dozens of times. It felt like the second I stood, my feet propelled the board in front of me at light speed but sent me the other direction. And then: whack! A nice little crack on the noggin when I surfaced, spluttering, and my board reinforced its dominance in our relationship. As if I needed the reminder.

  Today, I felt a little niggle of optimism. The waves were about four feet high, perfect for a beginner, but consistent enough not to be boring for an experienced surfer like Dave. I could even see a couple of groms hopping up like pros. I stopped for a moment to watch, studying how different people pulled it off. Dave made me spend one entire lesson last week practicing that move over and over again on the sand, but it didn’t translate in the water.

  “Ashley!” Dave’s shout caught my attention. He was about ten yards ahead of me, and I waved to show I heard him.

  He gestured for me to hurry up, so I paddled faster. When I pulled even with him, I mimicked his stance by pointing the nose of my board toward the shore and then straddling it.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “We don’t leave until you get up by yourself today. So I’m only taking one wave for every two of yours. That way, we can focus on you standing.”

  I nodded, trying not to show a lack of faith in myself. It might be a very long day.

  “Remember, grip the sides, wait for your moment, and then hop up. When you’re secure, stand. It’s easy. You’ll get it,” he said.

  “Except for the part where I keep picking the wrong moment,” I answered.

  “I’ll help you,” he promised. “Just do what I say when I say it, and you’ll be fine.”

  “You’re bossy,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. And that’s an incentive to help you . . . how?”

  “What I meant to say was, yes sir, Dave. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  He pushed a damp lock of hair from his forehead. “I thought that’s what I heard. Just wait for the board to plane.”

  “This will go better if you don’t use physics-type words,” I grumbled.

  “Or if you weren’t such a smart aleck.”

  “How smart can I be if I don’t understand your surf vocabulary? Explain it another way, please.” I clasped my hands in front of me and begged.

  He sighed. “Okay, you know how when you’re driving in the snow back home and you hit a patch of black ice and the car skids because it doesn’t have any traction?”

  “Yeah. That’s bad, right? Because that’s when you wreck, and I’m looking for the opposite here.”

  “Stop talking, Ashley. Just listen.”

  I decided that was probably a good idea. “Okay.”

  “So that’s bad when it’s on ice, but that same feeling is exactly what you want when you’re trying to ca
tch a wave.”

  “Okay . . .” I said again, this time with some uncertainty. A heaping gob of uncertainty, because I didn’t follow his logic. I couldn’t quite get the black ice analogy to jibe.

  “Give it a shot,” he said. “There’s a nice set rolling in.”

  I lay flat on my board and watched behind me, trying not to tense as the water swelled to form a mound that hurtled toward me way too fast. Still, when Dave gave my board a slap and hollered, “Go!” I paddled like crazy, helped along by the momentum of the wave building beneath me. I concentrated hard on feeling for the “plane” that Dave described, even though I didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. Taking a guess, I braced myself in push-up position on my knees, ready to clamber to my feet, and then watched with a strange detachment as the nose of my surfboard plowed into the water in front of me despite my manic splashing. Steeled for a face full of water, I entered what experienced surfers call a classic pearl dive. I’d seen enough other beginners do it to know what they were doing wrong when I saw it happen, but somehow I couldn’t figure out how to avoid the same mistake myself.

  With a sense of resignation, I felt myself slip off the front end of my board and into the frothy surf. I prayed as I scrabbled up through the brown water that maybe this time my board wouldn’t be waiting to deliver a well-deserved head thump for being so pitiful. I broke the surface and drew in a frustrated breath, grabbing my board in time to prevent a whacking. Standing, I pointed it toward Dave and began the trudge out to him again. “What did I do wrong?” I asked when I reached him.

  “You fell off,” he said, smirking.