The Throwback List

by Lily Anderson

  “It wasn’t the Throwback List, really. Just the pictures of the Sunday Sundae Surprise,” Jo said, hoping to brush the whole thing aside. She didn’t want to say that she celebrated making it onto an aggregator website by having Taco Bell delivered to her hotel room. Not in front of Wren. “They love cutesy local shit. It got more eyes on my account, so I can’t complain.”

  “Jo has a lot of list left to tackle,” Autumn said to the table. “I call dibs on ‘learn an entire dance routine,’ but everything else is up for grabs.”

  “You have a plan for the dance routine?” Jo asked Autumn.

  “Who else is going to teach you a whole dance number?” Autumn asked loftily. “I have dance numbers coming out of my butt. Pat won’t let me put them in shows; please let me give them to you!”

  “What do you mean ‘Pat won’t let you’?” Wren asked. “She’s your co-chair, not your mother. You had dancing in the fall show.”

  “Not as much as I wanted,” Autumn said. “But that’s not the point. We’re dividing up Throwback List tasks because everything is more fun with friends.”

  “You didn’t make a printout of the list?” Flo asked his sister.

  “He’s right,” Wren said. “If this were a staff meeting, you’d lose the room about now.”

  “There’s the arcade, climbing the anchor, a glitter fight, a keg stand,” Autumn recited from memory. Her obvious time investment was touching. Even Jo didn’t have every item memorized. She kept forgetting about needing to get a pet. “Public hide-and-seek definitely needs more than just me. That would be the saddest.”

  “And I need a place to stage the pinup shoot,” Jo said. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d feel less sexy than my childhood bedroom. I need a blank wall and privacy.”

  Wren’s fingertips settled in the curve of Jo’s arm, holding her ever so lightly in place. Jo turned to look at her, watched the intake of breath between her pink lips—

  “I have a blank wall!” Bianca blurted. The tip of her tongue was starting to turn wine-grape red. The last time Jo’s mouth had been that color, she’d launched six rolls of toilet paper at the Boria-Birdy maple tree. “You could use the room upstairs at the shop. It’s empty other than a desk and a candle.”

  “Lita’s apartment?” Birdy asked.

  “No one’s using it! It has a ton of natural light, room for your umbrella thingies,” Bianca said, swishing a hand dangerously close to the nearest lighting tree. “I think it’d be a great spot for a photo shoot. I could even help with your makeup, if you wanted, Jo.”

  “That would be amazing! I’d love to harness the power of your makeup skills,” Jo said, surprised by the offer. She hadn’t expected Bianca to help with any of the list items. She had sort of assumed Bianca wanted to stay at a distance from her, the in-person version of social media mutuals. Cool but not close. But one-on-one help could be like a real friend thing.

  “Does the whole list have to be done in Sandy Point to count?” Wren asked, with a questioning pulse of pressure to Jo’s arm. She withdrew her hand, stretching out to rest her heels against the nearest empty chair. Jo wondered if she still had a sweeper’s quads under those sensible green trousers. “No offense to the townies, but I already commute to the anthill five days a week. Can I entice you to handstand on a microbrew keg in the real world, Johanna?”

  Flo stood, reaching for his plate and Birdy’s. “Everyone pass me your plates. Phil and Deb gotta serve breakfast out of here in the morning.”

  “Cleaning up after everyone else’s good time is part of hosting,” Jo protested. “Guests don’t have to be busboys.”

  “Never let my grandmother hear that,” Bee said. “I already have to beg her to put her breakfast cup in the sink. She loves to pretend she’s a guest. Birdy, help Flo.”

  “On it,” Birdy said, scooping up plates in a blur.

  “Leave the wineglasses,” Wren added.

  “Check ‘fill dishwasher’ off the cleaning list on the fridge, Coach!” Jo called to Flo’s retreating back.

  “Add more tasks, got it!” he called back.

  As the energy dipped, Bianca and Wren topped off their glasses with the last of the wine. Autumn filled a cardboard to-go container with leftover cheeses. Jo made a note in her phone to help her parents design to-go containers with the Surf & Saucer logo on them.

  “We’ve never had a real pet store in town,” Bianca said, stuck on the get a pet list item. “My Tito always said if one opened, I could have a bunny. But it never happened.”

  “My dad always said no mammals, no reptiles, no cages, no fur,” Jo said as she started to disassemble the lighting trees. “Which leaves me with fish or rocks.”

  “Fish often require rocks,” Wren noted.

  “Oh!” Autumn yelped with a mouthful of cheese. She threw a hand over her mouth. “Come to the carnival at school next week! You could win a goldfish at the ring toss! And then you could see the Broadway Club performance and pick the dance you want to learn!”

  “Perfect!” Jo said.

  “I’ve never been to the spring carnival,” Bianca mused.

  “Really? How did you learn not to do meth if not from one of the four antidrug booths?” Wren asked, swirling the wine in her glass.

  “Are you running a carnival booth?” Jo asked Wren, catching her eye from across the wide, round table. “Dunk the Vice Principal or one-on-one sports trivia?”

  Wren’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Afraid not. The spring carnival is strictly volunteer based and the first day of a week of not having to commute here. I will be in Portland, celebrating the end of March Madness with rye and Reedies.”

  Bee loudly slurped the last of her wine.

  “Behold the mighty beta males!” Birdy announced once the dishwasher was filled.

  “Thank you both so much,” Jo said. “Thank you all so much.”

  Autumn was present, so there was a round of hugs and handshakes before anyone started for the door. Living away from home, Jo had forgotten how often it was possible to be hugged. She felt out of practice. When she was faced with a bear hug, her arms naturally curled back, turning her into an awkward T. rex. She was grateful when Flo dapped her up. She was delighted when Wren hung back, holding the door open for everyone but staying firmly inside.

  Autumn winked at Jo before the door closed behind her.

  “Ready to tackle that last of the cleanup?” Wren asked when they were alone.

  Jo flapped a hand over the mess. “I have to unhide all the beachy shit and move the tables back. You don’t have to stay for that. If you don’t want to. You don’t live here.”

  A single blond hair fell into Wren’s eyes as she shook her head. Back in time, Teen!Jo’s heart fluttered at the very idea of Wren’s jaw on constant display. “I’ll stay a bit.”

  They stood at either end of a table, shuffling it into place. Inside her heeled booties, Jo’s feet ached and she wished she had thought to bring flats with her. She couldn’t stop thinking about Bianca’s fake Yeezies. They looked like cozy sweaters for feet.

  “So, your internet list,” Wren said.

  “The Throwback List,” Jo corrected.

  “Is it going to get you where you want to go?” Wren sat on the edge of the table, arms folded. “Is getting the high score at the arcade going to fix all of your problems?”

  “Hey, the Seattle City Orchestra thought it was pretty cool,” Jo said. “At my hiring panel, they told me the list highlighted my ‘youthful exuberance.’ No one ever thought of me as youthful before I posted pictures of trying to consume a comical amount of ice cream.”

  “Do you think you’ve got the job?” Wren asked.

  “I think I’ve got a chance,” Jo said. She laced her fingers together over her stomach. The lump of her navel piercing pressed between her middle and ring fingers. “But it would almost suck to have to leave again so fast.”

  “Before you have a chance to finish your list?” Wren asked.

  “Before I get to sp
end enough time with everyone I want to.” She bit her lip and took a step toward Wren. “We’ve only been alone for, like, ten minutes in ten years.”

  She left the overstatement between them. Wren only liked hyperbole when it was flirtatious; otherwise she had to pounce on the correction.

  “And only ten seconds tonight,” Wren said, a smile lighting up her eyes. Snaking her arms around Jo’s waist, she drew the two of them close, hips locking together. “You throw a good party, Johanna. Crowded, though.”

  The tips of their noses touched. Date sugar from Wren’s lips warmed to melting against hers.

  “Then maybe you should take me home,” Jo murmured.

  Wren skimmed her hands down the sides of Jo’s waist, pushing the silk roughly over her skin as she dropped a husky whisper in Jo’s ear. “Maybe I should take you in the back and then take you home.”

  Jo kissed her, a hard and emphatic yes.

  COMPLETED ITEMS

  TP Bianca’s house

  Perform onstage

  Get belly button pierced

  Redo the yearbook prank

  Eat the giant sundae at Frosty’s

  Host a dinner party

  TO BE COMPLETED

  Surf the Point

  Have a glitter fight

  Get stoned

  Try everything on the menu at Days

  Do a keg stand

  Play hide-and-seek in public

  Break something with a sledgehammer

  Climb the giant anchor on the boardwalk (and survive)

  Get a high score at the boardwalk arcade

  Pose like a pinup girl

  Get a pet

  Learn an entire dance routine

  Eat breakfast at midnight

  Have a bonfire

  Dig up the time capsule

  JO: I don’t own heels high enough for the pinup shoot. Does anyone else have tall shoes?

  BIANCA: Tons!

  JO: Thank goodness! Can you bring red or black heels to the shoot?

  AUTUMN: Bee, tell her what size you wear.

  BIANCA: 6?

  AUTUMN: Jo, what size shoe are you?

  JO: 9.5

  BIANCA: I’ll ask my artists if they have tall shoes.

  Birdy was walking on sunshine. Having refunded their honeymoon reservations, he had finalized the deal for Dr. Banns’s office and was drowning in furniture catalogs and paint samples.

  At six in the morning, Bianca’s alarm had been closely followed by Birdy shoving his cell phone under her nose, showing her blindingly white paint.

  “What do you want to hear this morning, abuelita?” he asked as Lita and Bee made it into the living room. “I want something dance-able, something upbeat. AC/DC? Creedence? Ooh, lemme play you ‘Mambo Number Five.’ Have you heard ‘Mambo Number Five,’ Rosa?”

  “Someone is feeling cheeky this morning,” Lita said, watching as Birdy high-stepped around her rollator with the TV remote in his hand. She looked at Bianca. “Did you do this to him?”

  “No!” Bianca said, scandalized. She set the rollator’s parking brake. “This is the joy of choosing the right shade of eggshell paint.”

  Lita remained confused but blew it off. “Mano, you are too young for my name.”

  “Lo siento, señora,” Birdy said, dramatically hangdog.

  “Play your mambo, ridiculous eggshell boy.” Lita affectionately patted his arm before scowling at Bee. “I do not want a smoothie this morning.”

  “Too bad,” Bee said, getting up from the couch and starting toward the kitchen. “Smoothies are what I have the ingredients for.”

  “I want pancakes.” Lita raised her voice to Bee’s back.

  “I don’t have pancakes, Lita,” Bee called back in a singsong.

  “Then find me someone who does.” Lita caught the melody easily then dropped it. “You are not the only person in the world.”

  “Never said I was,” Bee said under her breath, covering the backtalk with the slam of a cabinet door as she took down the sugar shaker for her coffee. It had to be stored above Lita height or she would pour it into her smoothies until they started to crust over.

  “She is not plotting against you, honeybee,” Birdy said, coming around the corner from the dining room. “She just wants to live her life.”

  Bee rested her back against the counter. “She can’t live that life, Birdy.”

  “Why?” he asked. Reaching over her head, he pulled down her favorite mug, a Cedar Point souvenir bought to commemorate her first trip to Ohio. It clinked against the coffeepot. “Because she’s disabled now?”

  “What? No, of course not. That’s not what I—”

  “But,” he said, voice firm even as he poured creamer into the coffee and twirled it with a teaspoon, “it is what you implied. It’s true that she can’t live the life she used to live. She can’t go up to her apartment. She can’t work twelve-hour days at the shop. But she could have friends. Or maybe she can’t. We haven’t tried. You get to try having friends. Shouldn’t she get to try something, too?”

  He handed her the coffee. The first sip helped soothe her resentment. The cup was perfectly tailored to her tastes.

  She exhaled into the coconut-scented steam. “I don’t want to burden other people with her schedule.”

  “You mean you don’t trust people to do it,” Birdy said, quickly adding, “and that’s okay! You’re the sole arbiter of that schedule. But you could let us try.”

  Bianca didn’t know who this imaginary “us” was. Her mother certainly didn’t want to help more than she already had to, and fiancé-Tony’s time was an uncrossed boundary. But it was early and Birdy was eager for conversation, so Bianca played along with the hypothetical.

  “What if they screw it up? What if she skips her nap and then can’t sleep for three days? Or if she forgets a pill and her feet swell up and get stuck in her shoes. Like that time you put her in boots.”

  Bianca often had nightmares about the rose-embroidered cowboy boots Lita had purchased the year line-dance fever hit Sandy Point. What was left of them—a shameful pile of scissor-shredded leather—lived in a box in the top of Lita’s closet. Higher out of reach than the sugar shaker. Even Bianca would need a step stool to face the boot remains. Not that she ever wanted to see them again. She just wasn’t allowed to throw them away.

  Lita would know.

  “How about this?” Birdy asked. He rubbed his hands together, a gambler scenting a bet. “Write down everything that could go wrong. All of it. Make a Lita bible. The Care and Keeping of Rosa Boria.”

  Bee took a long drink of coffee to make sure he was done talking, a trick learned from being friends with Autumn. “Who would read that?”

  “The other people who love her.”

  “And when would I write it?”

  “Now. Let me take her to Surfside for breakfast.”

  She set the mug down. “Just the two of you?”

  “If all else fails, I can carry her across the street to Dr. Wiley.”

  “Dr. Wiley is a pediatrician.”

  “You’re the one who said she was an overgrown toddler.”

  She shook her head. “I think she said that about me.”

  “I think I said it about me that time I trimmed my bush too close.”

  “Birdy!”

  He playfully pinched her hip. “Go. Take the morning off. You’re hanging out with Jo before lunch?”

  “She’s coming by the shop to do her photo shoot. I’m just doing her makeup.”

  A promise born out of too much Malbec was a promise nonetheless. During the dinner party, Bianca would have promised anything to put an end to Wren Vos’s hometown bashing. It was just like high school—Wren turning her nose up at anything that could be considered townie, assuming the whole world was better than Sandy Point. It was so much more irritating now that she had a fancy job title given to her by the very town she snubbed.

  Birdy caught her mouth in a surprise kiss. “Have fun. Take dirty pictures.”
<
br />   “Pinups are barely dirty. Besides, I’m not the subject.”

  “But you sure could be….” He stroked up her forearm and waggled his eyebrows before turning on his heel, back to the living room. “Lita! Let’s get your dancing shoes on, girl. I’m taking you for pancakes! We’ll listen to ‘Mambo Number Five’ on the way!”

  Bee flipped through her smartwatch, forwarding alarms to Birdy’s phone before silencing them for the morning. She touched the kissed patch of her lips and smiled.

  Birdy had finally managed to contaminate her with some of his hopeful happiness.

  “I can’t get over the size of this room,” Jo said, staring up at the lights recessed into the high ceiling as she finished setting up the lighting equipment Bianca recognized from the dinner party: gigantic white umbrellas and reflective tarps. “Is that a kitchen back there?”

  “A kitchenette. Just a sink and a dishwasher. Very Tito priorities. He never wanted to wash a dish after the navy. Said he was too old for KP duty.” Bee closed the door that looked out over the shop. “I checked in Dede’s station and behind the counter, but I don’t see the shoes she said she was going to drop by for you. Do you want me to text her?”

  Tapping the screen of her watch, Bee checked the time. Bonnie had an appointment this morning, and Bee was praying that she would beat the client to the shop. It was too awkward to try to enforce her tardiness policy on her own mother.

  Jo shook her head. “No, no. Don’t worry about it. They were more for confidence than anything else.” She positioned her ever-present camera stand in front of the longest, blankest wall. Where Lita’s framed Santana posters used to hang over the awful floral couch. “Bianca, you could rent this out!”

  “The only entrance is inside the store. No one but family could live in here. I should clean it out and put one of the artists up here, but no one wants to leave their view downstairs.” She pointed toward the four-panel room divider that covered the window, giving privacy to the empty room. “It faces Main Street, not the ocean.”

  Jo raised her eyebrows significantly. “Then you should hire someone who doesn’t care about the ocean but who would love to have crown molding.”