“I’m looking through you,” Frank said, shaking his head, and Collins pointed to my brother.
“With a little help from my friends,” he said, defensively. “Since when is that not allowed?”
“Anyway,” Dawn said, turning toward me. “I want to set you up with someone.” This was surprising enough that I just blinked at her, and saw Frank turn his head sharply to look at Dawn.
“I’m so tired,” Collins was saying as he flipped through the menu. “Maybe I’ll get some coffee.”
“I don’t . . . ,” I started. I was about to tell Dawn that I wasn’t interested, even though I really couldn’t have said why. It wasn’t like I still wasn’t over Gideon, or anything like that. “Um, who is it?”
Collins was snapping his fingers at Frank, who said, sounding distracted, “Right. Um . . .” A moment later, he seemed to realize what he’d done. “Wait,” he said quickly. “Help. You can’t do that. . . .”
“I just totally won!” Collins yelled, pumping his fist in the air. “There is not, to the best of my knowledge, a Beatles song called ‘Right Um.’ ” He drummed his hands on the table excitedly, then leaned back against the booth, like he was settling in. “Bucket, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a place called Liverpool . . .”
I looked at Frank. “Sorry you lost,” I said, even though I couldn’t be happier this game had ended.
Frank just shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll do it again at some point,” he said. “Every few years, we seem to need to try and prove who’s a bigger fan. But listen,” he said, suddenly looking serious, the way he did when we were strategizing about my list. “I have the perfect solution for number thirteen.”
Thirteen was “Sleep under the stars,” and I looked across the table at my brother, who seemed absorbed in learning about how Paul and John met. While I appreciated Frank’s initiative, I’d had an idea for this brewing ever since I’d talked to my mother on the porch. “I’ve got that one taken care of.”
“You do?” he asked, sounding surprised. “Oh. Okay. What is it? And when?”
I just looked at him, suddenly knowing the exact right way to answer this. “It won’t be long,” I said, and was rewarded when Frank smiled, suddenly, like I’d just surprised him.
That night, I tiptoed into my brother’s room, trying not to make any noise, but finding it difficult when I kept impaling my feet on the toys that seemed to cover his floor more evenly than his carpet. “Beckett,” I whispered when I got close to his bed. “Hey. Beck. Ow.” I tried to take a step closer, and felt something small and plastic lodge itself in my foot.
“Em?” Beckett sat up in bed, blinking at me in the faint glow of his nightlight, which he always swore he didn’t need. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, trying to shake what turned out to be a Lego from my foot as I limped over to him.
“Then why are you here?” he asked, sitting up farther.
“I had an idea,” I said, crouching by the side of his bed, trying not to put my feet any new places. “Want to go camping?”
Beckett sat all the way up, pushing his curls out of his face. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, let’s sleep outside. I have the whole thing set up. Mom and Dad won’t care.”
Beckett just looked at me for a long moment, like he was weighing whether I was being serious, or maybe if this was just a very realistic dream. “But how?” he finally asked, which was how I knew he was getting on board. “We don’t have any camping stuff. Dad and I were supposed to get it together.”
“I think I’ve figured it out,” I said, crossing my fingers in the dark that I had. “Meet you in the backyard in ten.”
Ten minutes later, almost exactly, Beckett stepped outside in his pajamas, still looking dubious. “Ta-da,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t think it was stupid, or turn around and head back in. I had set up a mini campsite, in the very center of the yard. Since we didn’t have a tent, I’d just laid out two sleeping bags and pillows head to head.
“Really?” Beckett asked, taking a small step forward, beginning to smile.
“Put this on first,” I said, tossing the bottle of bug spray at him. It was the one thing I was worried about—since we would be sleeping out in the open, I had a feeling that unless we took precautionary measures, we were going to get eaten alive by mosquitos.
Beckett sprayed himself until he was coughing, then ran over to the sleeping bags, tossing the spray in my direction. I doused myself in it, then crawled into my own sleeping bag.
I settled back into my pillow and looked up. I was glad that these sleeping bags were the crazy insulated you-can-take-them-on-mountains kind, because despite the fact the evening was still warm, it felt cooler at ground level, and a little damp. I looked straight up and just took in the stars shining above us, with nothing blocking their view, and suddenly regretted all the nights I’d slept with anything between me and the sky.
“This is cool,” Beckett said, and I turned my head to see him looking up, his arms folded behind his head. Neither of us knew any constellations, so we found our own, groupings of stars like Crooked Necktie and Angry Penguin, and made up the corresponding stories that went with them. Beckett’s voice had started to slow down halfway through the origin of Basket of Fries. I had a feeling he was about to fall asleep, and I knew I wasn’t going to be far behind him. I closed my eyes only to open them once more, and make sure it was all still there—the riot of stars above me, this whole other world existing just out of reach.
“Can we do this again?” Beckett asked.
“Sure,” I said, as I let my eyes stay closed this time. “We’ll do it next month.”
“Okay,” Beckett said. After a stretch of silence in which I was sure he had fallen asleep, he asked, “What about Sloane?”
I opened my eyes and pushed myself up on one elbow to get a better look at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . we won’t do this when she comes back, right?” My brother’s voice was small. “You’ll probably be too busy.”
It was my first instinct to deny this, to assure him that nothing would change. But a second later, I knew that I wouldn’t be here, now, with my brother, if Sloane was still in town. I would either be hanging out with her or waiting to hang out with her. “It won’t matter,” I finally said. I could hear the certainty in my voice, and just hoped Beckett could too. “You and me. Next month. I promise.”
“Awesome,” Beckett said around a yawn. “Night.”
A moment later, I heard his breathing get longer and more even—it was a running joke in our family how quickly Beckett could fall asleep, and apparently being outside wasn’t impeding that.
I rolled onto my back and looked up at the stars. Beckett’s words were reverberating in my head, but for some reason, I didn’t want to think about what would happen when Sloane came back, how things might change. Instead, I looked over at my brother, already fast asleep, before letting my own eyes drift closed, feeling like maybe I’d been able to set something right.
8
PENELOPE
Just because I knew what Sloane had intended with some of the items on the list didn’t necessarily mean that I wanted to do them. The next day I’d stood at my dresser, my neck itching from where the mosquitos had gotten me, staring down at number five. I knew what she meant by “Penelope,” and I also knew what she wanted me to do. Even though I knew it hadn’t moved, I reached into my top drawer and pulled it out, staring down at it, my picture and the unfamiliar name, realizing that this was probably the one I needed to do next.
MAY
Two months earlier
“Okay!” Sloane said as she got into my car, slamming the door behind her and turning to smile at me. “Are you ready?”
“I guess,” I said with a laugh. “I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to be ready for.”
Sloane had arranged for us to hang out on this Friday night a whole week in advance, which was unusual, but
I was grateful for it. She was always with Sam, and while usually one night a weekend it would be me and Sloane and Sam and Gideon, it wasn’t enough, especially since her attention was focused on her boyfriend when we were all together. There was also the fact that she was different around him. It was nothing I’d been able to put my finger on for the first few times we’d hung out together. But I’d come to realize I didn’t like the way Sam treated her, and I hated the way Sloane acted around him.
I had really tried for the first month. Sloane obviously liked him, and saw something really special in him, so I’d done my best to do the same. But the more time I spent with him, the harder it got. To start with, he didn’t like me. He was alternately possessive and dismissive of Sloane—something I really didn’t like to see—but from the beginning, he had seen me as some sort of threat. He always seemed to be trying to stir up trouble in subtle, hard-to-define ways. He would look at me a little too long when I came into a room, or stand a little too close to me and just smile blandly as he did it, as though daring me to call him on it, or say something about it. He corrected me whenever he got the chance. And on the occasions when Sloane—or Gideon—would say something about it, he would just shoot me a big smile and say, “I’m just messing around. Emily can take a joke, right?”
“It’s just his sense of humor,” Sloane would say the few times I’d tried to broach the subject with her. “He’s actually really shy, and that’s how he compensates.”
And even though I didn’t see this, I figured that my best friend knew him better than I, and so I’d let it drop, not wanting things to be strained between us, any more than they already were. So the possibility of a night that was just the two of us was something I’d been looking forward to all week.
She had told me to “dress to impress” and then we’d spent a full hour on the phone as she went through my outfit options with me. We didn’t even need to video chat, since Sloane knew my wardrobe as well as her own. When we’d selected an outfit that worked, I’d put it on and wondered just what was going to happen tonight. I was wearing the shortest skirt I owned—it was actually a skirt of Sloane’s that she’d given to me, and you could tell, since I had several inches on her. She’d paired this with a gauzy white one-shouldered top, and told me she would bring a red lipstick for me to wear that would make the whole thing pop. Sloane was dressed much the same, in a tight-fitting dress, her hair long and a little wilder than usual, her eyes done smoky in a way that I could somehow never pull off without looking like I’d been injured.
“I’ll give you directions,” she promised, clapping her hands together. I pulled to the end of her driveway and looked at her expectantly. “Left,” she said with great authority, as she cranked the music—her mix—and I headed away from Stanwich, and toward Hartfield.
I hadn’t spent much time at all in downtown Hartfield, and was glad that Sloane was providing directions. Considering it was also a weekend night, the main strip of bars and restaurants was packed, crowds of people walking along the sidewalks and spilling into the street, the slow-moving parade of cars trying to edge past them.
“We should try and find parking,” she said, as I passed a lot where the prices had been raised to ten dollars for the night, and guys with glowsticks and flags were trying to direct people in.
“So we’re doing something around here, then,” I said, glad to have some indication of what was going to be happening tonight.
“Maybe,” Sloane said, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe not. Just—there!” she pointed ahead, where the car in front of me was, miracle of miracles, pulling out of its parking spot.
I put on my blinker and turned quickly into the spot, and it was a good thing, because three other cars had zoomed forward toward it, one from the opposite side of the street, and were currently blocking traffic. “You know what?” Sloane said, as I killed the engine and handed her my iPod to lock in the glove compartment. “I think that’s a good sign. I think it means tonight’s going to be the best ever.”
“So?” I asked as I unbuckled my seat belt and turned to face her. “Do I finally get details?”
Sloane pointed across the street. “McKenzie’s,” she said with a grin.
I turned to look, not quite understanding how this was going to happen. McKenzie’s was a straight-up bar, with no all-ages dining area, which bugged Sloane to no end, since there was also a stage at the back and great bands were always performing there, and we could never get in to see them. “Did they change their policy or something?”
“Nope,” she said. She pulled something out of her bag with a flourish, then took my hand, opened my palm, and dropped something into it. I picked it up and held it up to the light from the streetlights to get a better look. It was a Nevada state ID card, with my picture, an address I didn’t recognize, and the name Penelope Entwhistle. “What is this?” I asked, looking closer at it and seeing a birthday that was five years earlier than mine.
“Your first fake ID,” she said, leaning over to look at it. “Want to see mine?” She dropped it into my palm, and I could see that hers was from Utah and her name read Alicia Paramount.
I smiled at that. “Nice name.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking it back. “Ready to go?”
It hit me, much later than it should have, that we were going to use these IDs to get into a bar. And we were going to do it now, before I’d had any time to wrap my head around the idea. “Wait,” I said, as Sloane’s hand was already on the door handle. “We’re going to use these for McKenzie’s?”
“That’s the best part,” she said with a smile. “Call Me Kevin is playing there tonight. Totally not advertised. We’re going to get to see them in a crowd of, like, fifty. Isn’t that amazing?” She grinned at me and got out of the car, leaving me to scramble out behind her, locking my door and then hurrying to join her as she crossed the street, darting across the traffic rather than waiting for the light to change.
“Sloane,” I said, as she got into the line that led to McKenzie’s entrance. I saw that the door was guarded by a hulking guy in a black leather jacket, who was shining a flashlight down on the IDs people were handing to him.
“Alicia,” she corrected.
“I don’t think we should do this.” I lowered my voice as I looked forward in the line. Everyone around us seemed much older than we were, and I was sure they—and the door guy—would all be able to tell that we were high schoolers attempting to get in somewhere we weren’t allowed.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Sloane said, lowering her voice as well. “I had the guy who made Sam’s do these for us. And he never has a problem with his.”
I could feel panic start to rise up, and I didn’t even know why, exactly. “I just . . . ,” I said as I looked down at the ID. In the glare of the streetlight, it looked incredibly fake, like it had been made at home on someone’s computer. “Why Penelope?”
Sloane laughed. “I don’t know, I just thought it sounded right. Oh,” she said, leaning closer to me as the line moved forward and my heart started beating double-time, “don’t forget to memorize your address and birthday. Just in case they ask.”
“Are they going to?” I asked, and I could hear my voice coming out high and stressed.
“I don’t know,” Sloane said, starting to sound exasperated. “It’s my first time.”
“I don’t think . . . ,” I said, even as I took a step forward. “I don’t think that this is a good idea.”
“Emily, come on,” Sloane said. We were just one person away from the door guy, who now seemed twice as big up close. “Just relax, okay? It’ll be fine.”
“No,” I said, not joining her as she took another step forward. “I don’t want to.”
She looked at me, and I could see the confusion on her face. “It’s okay,” she said with a smile, but glancing back behind her at the door guy. The people behind me in line were starting to shift, and I knew that I was holding things up by not moving forward. “Come on.”
r /> “I’m not going in,” I said, taking a step out of the line, and the couple behind me immediately filled my place.
“Why are you—” Sloane started, then let out a breath and shook her head. It felt like we were in uncharted territory, like we suddenly had to use a language neither of us was fluent in, because Sloane and I didn’t fight, not ever. She told the couple behind her to go ahead, and they took her place eagerly. “I want to go in,” Sloane said, and I could see that she didn’t understand why I wasn’t just agreeing with her.
“I don’t,” I said quietly. I didn’t know how else to explain it.
“Okay,” she said, glancing at the door guy, then back at me. She looked at me for a moment, and it was like I could feel her waiting for me to change my mind, go along with her like I always did. After a long moment she said, “I guess I’ll see you later.”
I drew in a breath; it honestly felt like someone had punched me. I’d just assumed that Sloane would leave with me, that we were in this together. The vagueness of her later was terrifying to me. “Sure,” I said, not telling her any of this, not telling her what I was feeling, just making myself give her a trembling smile. “See you.” I turned to head back to the car, my ankles wobbling in the heels she’d picked out for me, the clothes she’d chosen for me feeling too tight and itchy.
“Emily,” Sloane called after me, half pleading, half annoyed. I didn’t let myself look back right away, just concentrated on walking away from my best friend, even though it was the last thing I wanted to be doing. After a moment, I turned back, and saw her smile as she pocketed her ID and stepped past the door guy into the darkness of the bar.
I sat in my car, and when the sedan outside my window slowed, I shook my head for what felt like the hundredth time that night. When people saw me in the driver’s seat, parked in an ideal spot, they all got really excited and turned on their blinkers, thinking I was leaving, any minute now. I would shake my head, and motion for them to go around me, but still they seemed wildly optimistic, sitting there with the lights flashing, waiting for me to give up the spot and go.