by Trish Doller
“You promised,” Taylor repeated. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Willa’s voice was flat as she said, “I wanted to take this trip with her.” She didn’t say not with you, but Taylor heard it anyway.
“You’re such a bitch.”
Willa tried to shrug it off, but not before Taylor saw the flash of hurt in her eyes. “If you want to go,” Willa said, walking away, “don’t let me stop you.”
That was where they’d left it.
Until Taylor decided maybe this was something she could do on her own. To her way of thinking, the biggest challenge would be the actual sailing part of the trip. Motoring through canals and down the Intracoastal Waterway would be kind of like driving a car, and she was an okay driver. Just one tiny fender bender when she backed her mom’s SUV into a telephone pole. Taylor would just have to keep the boat between the channel markers, and those were like roads, right? Her dad could teach her how to set an anchor. And if she needed to dock the boat, she would go slowly and use lots of fenders.
Taylor wanted to believe she was brave enough to go it alone. She fantasized about keeping a blog of her adventures, and maybe the newspaper would do an article about how she was solo sailing as a tribute to her dead best friend. Finley would be super proud of her.
But the closer Taylor got to the leaving date, the more her nerves twisted into knots. What if she fell overboard? What if the boat sank? What if a freighter plowed over her in the middle of the night? There were so many ways the trip could go wrong. More than once she considered apologizing to Willa, but pride pulled her back every single time.
Today, when her mom drove through the sailing club gate and Taylor saw Willa’s sleeping bag and pile of grocery bags, her insides went soft with relief. But now she’s relieved and irritated at the same time. She hates the way her own mother makes it seem like Willa’s last-minute change of heart is heroic. Like she never believed Taylor could do this on her own.
“Oh, goodness!” her mom exclaims. “We forgot Pumpkin’s food. I’ll run home and get it.”
“And, uh—I need to get something from my truck,” Cam says, making Taylor wonder if he’s just trying to keep from getting caught in the crossfire. Especially when the next thing Willa says is, “You’re bringing your cat?”
Taylor’s teeth clench as she says, “Looks that way.”
Her family has a mess of outdoor cats that live in the barn and prowl the fields for mice, but Pumpkin is their only indoor cat, a calico that Taylor chose from the shelter when she was eleven. They’ve grown up together, and Pumpkin sleeps wherever Taylor sleeps, usually curled in a ball against the back of her calves. Taylor couldn’t bear the idea of leaving her cat behind. She’s taken by surprise when Willa tickles Pumpkin behind the ears and smiles.
“She’ll be good company.”
Taylor wonders if Willa means the cat will be better company than her, but she decides not to overthink it. She doesn’t want to fight before they’ve even left the dock. “I thought so too.”
“You have to deal with anything that comes out of her butt, though.”
Taylor laughs, and a twinge of guilt pings her heart. It seems too soon for laughing, even though Finley probably would have found it funny too. “I, um—I shouldn’t have called you a bitch. She wanted us to do this together, and I need your help.”
“I shouldn’t have left you hanging until the last minute.” Willa looks around. “So . . . what’s the plan?”
It’s not lost on Taylor that neither of them actually apologized, but it was close enough. “Maybe get everything arranged first? So I—so we know where to find things when we need them.”
Willa nods. “Good idea. That gives us time to remember what we forgot. There’s always something.”
Taylor’s dad built some shelves inside the empty engine compartment under the stairs, creating a makeshift pantry for their nonperishables—ramen noodles, cans of soup, granola bars, instant mac and cheese, and a giant Tupperware of her mom’s homemade snickerdoodles. They have no oven or refrigerator, only a built-in cooler and a small propane camp stove, and the toilet is little more than a glorified Porta Potti that will need to be emptied regularly. It will be like living in a floating camper for the next two and a half months.
“God, this boat is tiny.” Willa stashes a couple of textbooks in the hatch beside her bunk. “Three of us would have been stepping all over each other.”
Taylor bristles, until she realizes Willa is just making conversation, not pressing a bruise. They haven’t spoken to each other since the funeral. Taylor’s mom sent Willa an invitation to Taylor’s graduation party, but Willa never showed up.
“Finley would have figured it out,” Taylor says. “Remember that time she crammed six people in her Fiat to go looking for Gore Orphanage?”
One of the most popular local urban legends was one in which an orphanage near Vermilion had reputedly burned down with all the children inside. The ruins of the house were said to be haunted and that if you went there at midnight—especially on Halloween—you could hear the children screaming. Finley was a sucker for weird attractions and urban myths, so they’d all piled into her car to go looking for the remains of Gore Orphanage.
Willa laughs. “How can I forget? I was smashed in the back seat between Owen and Brady, and all the while she was driving in the wrong direction.”
“At least you didn’t get poison ivy.” Taylor had gone home that night with an itchy red rash circling both her ankles and, in places, climbing up her shins. She still has a faint scar from where she’d scratched herself raw.
“Ouch.” Willa’s nose crinkles as she winces. “True.”
They fall silent, and in that long moment Taylor misses Finley with a longing so fierce it steals her breath. She doesn’t want to cry anymore, but she doesn’t know how to keep the tears from coming. “I wish we had to figure out how to fit three of us on this boat.”
“Yeah.” There’s a note of wistfulness in Willa’s sigh. “Me too.”
Finley would have offered Taylor a hug, but Willa has always been the opposite of touchy-feely. Prickly-resisty. So Taylor ends up wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her T-shirt. By the time her brother returns with a large kraft paper box, it almost looks as though she hasn’t been crying at all.
“We need to do this before Mom gets back.” Campbell pulls out his phone and cues up a video of Finley wearing her blue Coraline wig. Taylor and Willa lean in as he clicks play.
“Two years ago, we bought an old boat and made a plan to sail to Key West,” Finley begins, and Taylor covers her mouth to hold back a sob. She remembers this Finley from their last sleepover, before the Donoghues brought in a hospital bed and a round-the-clock hospice nurse. That night they’d watched a Doctor Who marathon and made Belgian waffles at two in the morning. By the time the short video is over, tears are streaming down Taylor’s face and Willa’s fingers are threaded tightly through hers.
“Where is the list?” Taylor demands. “Why did Finley give it to you?”
“Because I’m Switzerland . . . and she wanted you to work together.” Cam points a look at their linked hands before working open the lid of the box. Willa lets go.
“Just give us the list,” Taylor says.
“Relax. There’s an order to this.”
The first thing Campbell pulls from the box is a plastic baggie of marijuana. Even though smoking pot is one of her brother’s favorite pastimes, Taylor has never touched the stuff. Just seeing it makes her nervous, and she imagines the drug dogs at the nearby police station suddenly sniffing the air. She has no frame of reference to know how much is in the baggie, but any amount feels like too much.
“Thanks.” Willa takes the baggie, and Taylor’s jaw drops. This is a side of Willa she has never seen, and now she can’t help but wonder if Finley smoked pot too. Did the two of them blaze up whenever she wasn’t around?
Cam senses her outrage. “It helped Finley feel better during chemo,” he explain
s. “And getting high is way more fun with friends.”
“I was her friend.” Taylor has always been privately paranoid that Willa and Finley had more fun without her. In Taylor’s imagination, they had smarter conversations and did more interesting things. She hates that her brother may have been part of their secret world. “You could have invited me.”
Willa rolls her eyes. “Not everything is about you.”
Taylor opens her mouth to retort, but Cam cuts her off.
“We have no time for arguing,” he says, rummaging around in the box like some sort of degenerate Santa Claus. This time he comes up with a pair of fake IDs. Even though the Ohio DMV has tried to make it impossible to counterfeit driver’s licenses, Campbell is a wizard with passport photos and an X-Acto knife.
“Seriously?” Taylor is aware she’s quickly becoming a buzzkill, but she can’t help herself. She’s not a fake-ID kind of girl. She’s a listen-to-records-in-her-bedroom kind of girl. “I’d like to make it to Key West without ending up in jail.”
Cam laughs. “Finley wanted you to have them.”
“Why would we even need fake IDs?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” He looks perplexed for a moment, then skeptical, as though he’s wondering if they even share the same DNA. Taylor often wonders that herself.
“Please don’t let the next thing in that box be a gun,” she says.
Again her brother laughs. “It’s not, but there is a speargun in one of the cockpit lockers. Just in case.”
In case of what? Taylor can’t imagine a scenario in which she would need a fishing speargun or a bag of weed, but she supposes she should have faith in Finley’s plan, even if it doesn’t make much sense yet.
The next thing Campbell takes from the box is a spiral-bound book called Getting Loopy with Captain Norm, a self-published guidebook to America’s Great Loop. The Great Loop is a series of connected waterways that form a circle around the eastern half of the United States. Some “loopers” spend months, or even years, traveling the full circle, but Finley narrowed their trip to just one section. She bought the book because of the silly title, but it’s actually filled with marina recommendations, anchorage locations, and boating tips.
Finally, something useful.
“Is there a list in there?” Taylor asks impatiently.
“I’m getting to it,” Cam says, pulling out a Jolly Roger. Above the skull, in pink lettering, it says NO QUARTER, and below the crossed cutlasses, it says NO SURRENDER. “This flag was in the box with the boat name lettering. So she probably meant it as a surprise.”
“So cool.” Willa breaks into a huge smile, and even Taylor has to admit the flag will look badass fluttering up in the rigging. Willa wraps it around her shoulders. “What’s next?”
Campbell reaches into the box and brings out a sheet of paper.
This is it.
Before Willa has a chance to react, Taylor snatches the list from her brother’s hand, greedy for this last bit of Finley. Taylor has a shoebox stashed on a high shelf in her closet filled with all the notes they ever wrote to each other, dating all the way back to kindergarten, when they drew pictures of their favorite animals, giraffes (Taylor) and elephants (Finley). Taylor takes comfort in Finley’s familiar sloppy scrawl.
1. Start here.
2. Music is good for the soul.
3. Make time for wonder.
4. Time travel whenever possible.
5. Don’t lose your head.
6. Take a bite out of life.
7. Make your own luck.
8. Give a “ship.”
9. Get a little wild.
10. Believe the unbelievable.
11. Stay young.
12. Reach for the stars.
13. It’s not the destination . . . (You know the rest.)
Willa
THE FORGOTTEN THINGS HAVE BEEN remembered-including the cat food, Taylor’s retainer, and Willa’s bike—and the boat is ready to sail, when Mrs. Donoghue shows up unexpectedly. Seeing her is like looking at Finley through a time machine. She is Finley in middle age, her light-brown hair highlighted to cover the gray and crinkles at the corners of her eyes. Willa feels a squeezing sensation in her chest—as though a fist just tightened around her heart—at the loss of a Finley she’ll never know. It takes everything not to excuse herself for some air. She stays because Finley’s mom has done more for her than she can ever repay.
Willa and Finley were in the same grade at school—but not friends yet—when the Boys and Girls Clubs partnered with the sailing club to offer lessons to underprivileged kids. That summer Willa showed Finley that the tiny girl who was always picked last in gym class was the first to learn how to sail. Finley saw Willa in a new light. She saw her as a sailor.
When school started in the fall, Finley invited Willa to sit with her friends in the cafeteria, and Finley always found spare lunch tickets in her backpack for Willa so she could join them eating terrible tuna casserole and Friday pizza. Mrs. Donoghue altered Willa’s uniforms to fit her properly. Once Finley’s mom gave Willa a pair of shoes, claiming she’d accidentally bought the wrong size for Finley. Even after Willa was old enough to realize the depths of their generosity—that Mrs. Donoghue had been buying extra lunch tickets all along—Finley and her mother never made Willa feel like a charity case.
“It looks like you’re all set.” Mrs. Donoghue smiles, but sadness lingers in her eyes. Willa has no idea how she’ll ever get over losing her best friend, but she can’t begin to imagine how Finley’s mother must feel. Mothers aren’t supposed to lose their daughters. “But before you go, I have a couple of things for you.”
She hands Willa a prepaid debit card. “It’s Finley’s savings for the trip.”
“I really—I can’t accept this.”
“Please don’t be stubborn, Willa. Finley wanted you to have it, and I don’t want you girls to be caught short.”
Being given a substantial amount of money is a much bigger deal than a pair of school shoes or lunch tickets, but Willa’s biggest fear is that her meager savings won’t carry her through the entire trip. Taylor frowns at the debit card, and Willa worries this will become another wall between them, but she needs the money. “I’ll, um—I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t be silly.” Mrs. Donoghue wraps her arm around Willa’s shoulder and kisses her temple. “If I learned anything from my daughter, it’s that you only get one life. Make the most of it.”
Willa nods. “I will. Thank you.”
Finley’s mom turns to Taylor and offers her a small glass bottle filled with what looks like gray sand. “We didn’t honor any of Finley’s funeral requests because . . . well, can you imagine my eighty-eight-year-old mother at a bonfire party on Cedar Point Beach? But Finley’s dad and I thought you girls might like to scatter some of her ashes when you reach Key West. She’d approve, don’t you think?”
Taylor nods, her eyes shining with tears as she takes the bottle, leaving Willa to speak for both of them. “Definitely.”
“Well.” Mrs. Donoghue smiles again. “I should go.” She embraces Taylor first, then Willa. “Finley would be so proud of you. Have a wonderful summer.”
“Okay, so the first clue is ‘start here,’ which is obviously Sandusky.” Willa pull a notebook and a pen from her backpack and unfolds a small map of the United States to compare against the list. “And ‘music is good for the soul. . . .’ ”
Taylor finishes the thought. “That sounds like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Do you think she wanted to go there?”
“Possibly,” Willa says. “But I was thinking that she might have written these clues after she realized she wouldn’t be coming with us. These might be places she thought we would like to go.”
Taylor is quiet for a moment, then sniffles as her tears begin again. Willa’s conscience prods her to be kind, but she refuses to offer any comfort. Every time Willa starts to feel sorry for Taylor, awful memories bubble to the surface. She can still hear Taylor screaming
at her in front of the entire sailing team, calling Willa a backstabber and a friend-stealing bitch. Willa weathered those insults without flinching because they weren’t true, but she still gets mad when she remembers how Taylor called her trailer trash.
Willa and her mom had been living in Greenfield Village at the time, which sounds like a tidy little mobile home park with tiny squares of green grass and smiling neighbors. There were a few friendly senior citizens who lived in the park, as well as some kids that Willa played with after school, but mostly living in Greenfield Village was like living in an episode of Cops. More than once Willa had been awakened by red and blue lights flashing on her bedroom wall.
The thing is, Willa can shake off being called poor. It’s as much a fact as having brown eyes or being right-handed. But poor carries the implication that someday your status can change; trash suggests that if the bottom of the barrel is right beneath you, that’s exactly where you belong.
Taylor never apologized. She pretended she never said it and—for Finley’s sake—Willa pretended she never heard it. Now, as Taylor wipes her tears with the sleeve of her T-shirt again, Willa knows Finley would expect her to be the mature one, but instead of offering sympathy, she says, “The third clue is ‘make time for wonder.’ ”
“That has to be Niagara Falls,” Taylor says. “You know how weird she was about that place.”
Finley’s obsession with the falls began after her family vacationed there when she was ten, when her parents were still married. Afterward, she read every book she could get her hands on about Niagara Falls. She did a fifth-grade science fair project about hydroelectricity so she could build a model. And in middle school Finley wrote a persuasive paper arguing that Niagara Falls should replace Victoria Falls as one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
Even in high school, when her obsession had finally waned, Finley kept a framed photo on her bookshelf of her family wearing the translucent yellow tour ponchos, their hair flattened by the mist coming off the falls. Finley and Regan were happy little girls in the picture, but their parents wore the forced smiles of a couple who would be divorced a year later. Maybe Finley never noticed—or maybe she chose to ignore it—but Willa wonders if Finley loved Niagara Falls because it was the last vacation her family took together.
