The Throwback List

by Lily Anderson

  “And there being no Filipino community for you here?”

  “Not here in Sandy Point, maybe, but there’s the Filipino American Association in Portland. It’s like a community center. I volunteer there over summer break, help out with the Fourth of July barbecue and the annual fund-raiser feast. I met my ex there.”

  “Melody the interior designer was Filipina?” Jo wondered why Autumn hadn’t mentioned that. Did she not realize how much deeper Flo’s hurt would be losing not just a fiancée but a connection to his culture?

  Flo bobbed his head, staring into the fire. “Second generation. Her mom taught me how to make lumpia and pancit bihon, let me practice my Tagalog outside of Rosetta Stone.”

  “So you can finally sing along with all of those Pinoy novelty songs you used to make us listen to?”

  He snorted and shook his head. “Diaspora will make you starve for crumbs. Turns out the lyrics to ‘Basketbol’ by Viva Hot Babes aren’t much deeper than you’d assume.”

  Around the keg, the ice was turning to slush, wetting a ring into the broken grass. Jo tried to remember who Florencio had packed into the Kelly house back in the day. There had never been a single best friend the way that Jo and Autumn had each other, but Flo had made up for that in quantity. Dudes from the wrestling team, girls from honors classes, anyone who lived up Main Street and into old town.

  “Where did all your bros end up?” she asked idly. “You used to be king of the jocks.”

  “No one under five-eight has ever been king of the jocks, Jo.”

  “Not everything is about your height, Florencio.”

  Properly shamefaced, he sipped from his cup. “My bros are mostly elsewhere. Joe Roscoe is in Washington. Puckett moved to Coos Bay, has kids. Jon Chung works for the Creamery.”

  “And you would never associate with a filthy cheesemaker?”

  “Remember how you’re unemployed and I work two jobs, seven days a week?” he asked. Jo’s skin went cold as she remembered Gia’s voice. She huddled deeper into the hoodie. “When I’m not working, I have to prioritize my people. I keep an eye on my mom now that she’s alone. I feed Autumn because she usually blows all of her money on premade salads instead of making them herself and then can’t figure out why she can’t afford dinner.”

  “And it’s your job to fix all of that.”

  He frowned at her. “It’s someone’s job, and no one else is doing it.”

  “All that nobility is going to burn out someday; then what will you have?”

  “Happy loved ones, I hope.”

  She rolled her eyes and was surprised to see the moon overhead. “You’re impossible.”

  “I’m very possible.”

  Jo held eye contact with him as she took a drink of cold beer. “You talk too fast to be sincere, you know that? It really ruins the effect.”

  Flo’s Adirondack chair groaned as he posted an elbow on the arm, the subtle shift in weight bringing his canary-eating grin close enough to ruffle her. “You’re giving me line readings now? You want to tell me how to talk to you, Johanna Freeman?”

  “Ew, get my full name out of your mouth, Coach. We’re nickname people.”

  What would it be like to kiss Florencio?

  She had wondered before, obviously. Flo was the kind of good-looking that she’d run her hands over, scan into her memory, and relive often. A tactile attraction that, sure, included supposition about the crush of his lips on hers.

  Can he still pin someone in under ten seconds?

  Jo hadn’t wrestled Flo since they were both scrappy skinned-kneed kids on the boardwalk. But since then, they had never been closer than a dap. They didn’t even hug hello.

  She got to her feet. “Come on.”

  Flo looked up at her, curiously. “Where are we going?”

  “To climb the anchor.”

  “Now?” Florencio padded behind her, slowing down only to set his beer on the mailbox as they passed by. “Why?”

  “Because,” Jo said, marching determinedly away from his house, “I am in the mood to do something stupid.”

  Elsewhere in the world, restaurants were still open and bars were thronged and music was playing. In Sandy Point, where everything shuttered by eleven, the night was quiet except for the ocean. The boardwalk was pitch-black all the way from Frosty’s to the Salty Dog. Even the streetlamps were off to deter visitors from walking the beach at night.

  “So this was possibly a question to have before I started climbing,” Jo said, hugging the top of the anchor and peering at the cement below. “But how did you climb down when you did this?”

  “I used rope,” Florencio called up to her. “I could walk back and get some from my bug-out bag?”

  “Don’t you dare dive into your personal rope collection for me, Coach,” Jo huffed. She adjusted her weight, hoping to swing one leg down the way she’d come up. Instead, her butt fell into nothingness. “Ow. Fuck.”

  “‘She’s beauty and she’s grace,’” Florencio sang, taking this inopportune moment to remind Jo that he was Autumn Kelly’s brother.

  “Be helpful!” Jo grunted, struggling to pull herself up with her forearms. “Or at least encouraging!”

  “Okay,” Flo said. “I encourage you to climb down now.”

  “I’d love to, but, um, surprise! I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I mean I have been trying to come down this entire time, Florencio. And now I’m pretty sure I’m stuck.”

  “Really?”

  “If I weren’t, would I have handed you my camera and then curled myself up into a painful crunch up here?”

  “Oh. Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you really don’t want me to try to get rope?”

  “So you can lasso me down?” Jo said, feeling shrieky. “Get me a ladder, Coach! We’re adults!”

  “She says, from atop a piece of public art. I don’t have a ladder, Jo.”

  “But you have a house!”

  “An empty house! You’ve seen it!”

  “Fuck! Flo! Help me get down!”

  “Hold on! Goddamn it, I have an idea.” He pulled out his phone, swearing at it the entire time and kicking sand off the sidewalk.

  Ten minutes later Main Street lit up with burning red emergency lights and wailing sirens. The Sandy Point fire engine rumbled to a stop at the exact corner of Boardwalk and Main. The Chief leaped down off the truck.

  “Dad,” Flo said with a nod.

  “Son,” the Chief said. He squinted up the anchor. “Is that little Jo Freeman? You know, we get this call a couple times a year, but you must be the oldest person I’ve had to fetch up there.”

  Jo waved. “Heya, Chief Chuck! I’m honored that you rode the truck for me. This seems frankly beneath you. Isn’t this intern work?”

  The Chief smiled up at her. “Can’t think of a call I would have rather received. Be up there in a jiff.”

  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

  Pose like a pinup girl

  Get a pet

  Learn an entire dance routine

  Get stoned

  Eat breakfast at midnight

  Have a glitter fight

  Try everything on the menu at Days

  Break something with a sledgehammer

  Do a keg stand

  Get a high score at the boardwalk arcade

  Climb the giant anchor on the boardwalk (and survive)

  TO BE COMPLETED

  Surf the Point

  Play hide-and-seek in public

  Have a bonfire

  Dig up the time capsule

  FLORENCIO: Chief had to rescue a kitten out of a tree

  FLORENCIO: Wait sorry no my bad

  It’s a Stanford grad stuck on a statue

&n
bsp; BIANCA: OMG, Jo, are you okay?!

  JO: I’m fine. Don’t climb under the influence, kids.

  AUTUMN: That should be my spring carnival booth next year!

  BIRDY: Why aren’t we congratulating Jo? Fuck yeah, Jo! You climbed the anchor and a fire ladder!

  Choosing where to play public hide-and-seek was surprisingly difficult. Autumn’s first three ideas were rejected automatically. The park, for being too obvious and too full of people they knew with kids. Bianca didn’t want to do anything unprofessional on the boardwalk. And Jo was sure Jen G would call the cops if they sneaked around Fred Meyer too much.

  They settled on the last free community space, one of the only buildings in town that didn’t want to sell them souvenirs: the Sandy Point Public Library.

  The brick crown jewel of old town, Sandy Point’s library was one of the few Carnegie libraries opened in Oregon. Autumn, Bee, and Jo drove in separately and parked in a row. Jo’s white Mini. Bianca’s red hatchback. Autumn’s green Saturn, which only stalled once on the drive over. Autumn imagined them as a gang of popular girls with unofficially official parking spots all over town, walking in tandem like the leads in a movie. Bianca’s camera-ready swirling French twist with clipped-in fake flower and Jo’s clattering kitten heels made them more Pink Ladies than Plastics.

  “Jo!” Autumn shouted the moment Jo climbed out of her Mini. “Tell me literally everything about getting stuck on top of the anchor right now!”

  “I can’t believe you got stuck.” Bee giggled, adjusting the Hawaiian hibiscus clipped into her swirling chignon. “That’s literally why I never tried climbing the anchor.”

  “It was cold,” Jo said, brow furrowed in thought. “And embarrassing. Yeah. That about covers the whole spectrum of the night.”

  “Did Florencio call the Chief directly?” Autumn asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jo said. “I was stuck in the air at the time. Flo just swore a lot, made a call, then boom. The Chief was there, rescuing me. It didn’t seem like a Dad favor, honestly. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable use of emergency services that my parents are going to make fun of me for literally every day until I die.”

  “Did Dad and Flo, like, talk or hug or express all the feelings they’ve been denying? Looked they ‘red or pale, or sad or merrily? What observation mad’st thou in this case of his heart’s meteors tilting in his face?’” Autumn stopped, took a deep breath, and forced herself to speak slowly—and not in Shakespeare. “Sorry. My freshmen are working through Comedy of Errors right now.”

  “No, it’s good.” Jo snorted. “Quoting Shakespeare makes you sound well-read.”

  “As opposed to quoting musicals?” Autumn asked.

  “They’re pretty equally esoteric,” Bee said. She paused, touching Autumn’s elbow. “When do you need to be back at work, sweets? I told the shop I’d be in by two.”

  “I put in for a sub because I was supposed to have an appointment with Birdy to check on my new toofers,” Autumn said. She tapped on her front teeth with her fingernail. “I just didn’t tell work that my appointment was canceled when Birdy broke his leg. The sub can deal with the juniors butchering commedia dell’arte. I need a break. I’ll go back for Broadway Club rehearsal.”

  The three girls fell into silence as they crossed the library threshold.

  The Sandy Point library considered itself lucky to be open and asked for very little. The carpets were the same hideous maroon installed around the bicentennial. The bookcases were lined up like dominoes from different packs—short mixed with tall, walnut and redwood and pine. Midweekday and post-story-time, it was unpopulated except for people sitting at the community computers.

  “Oh my God,” Jo whispered. “It’s exactly the same.”

  “You had doubts?” Bee asked.

  “Hide-and-seek huddle,” Autumn whispered as they crowded together in the first aisle of nonfiction. A DOS manual loomed over Bianca’s elaborate hairdo. “Ground rules. We’re going to play three rounds, so everyone has a chance to be It. No hiding inside of a bookcase so we don’t get kicked out—”

  “Or get maimed by falling books?” Bianca said.

  “Exactly,” Autumn said. “And no hiding outside. We have to stay in the library.”

  They agreed on a count of sixty before the hunt began. They were adults and inside, so running was definitely out. Besides, part of the game was to pretend to be looking at books the whole time. Autumn was sort of counting on one of her beloved, dyed-in-the-wool nerd besties starting to read and forgetting to hide.

  Using playground rules—oldest first—Bianca took her turn as It, letting her watch do the countdown for her as Jo and Autumn strode casually and quickly to find hiding spots. Jo bent to pretend to tie her—unlaceable—shoes behind a permanent collection of Nehalem grass and cedar baskets, a very good hiding space as it faced a blank wall.

  Autumn lay down flat on her stomach, pretending to search for something that had rolled underneath a study table. She pulled the chairs in front of her body, caging herself and hopefully blending into the musty carpet. She was starting to worry about whether or not lice could live in flooring when Bee found her.

  “I can see your shoes, Autumn. You’re It!”

  Sitting on the floor back-to-back with an armchair, Autumn stared blankly at her phone for sixty seconds. After a full minute of torturing herself with windows into more interesting lives than her own on Instagram, she murmured, “Olly olly oxen free!” which had been part of the neighborhood hide-and-seek rules on Main Street. She wondered if Jo had the same reflex.

  There was no polite way to interrogate someone about what they did and did not hold sacred about your shared past. Autumn had been shocked to find out that Jo had a lasting fondness for church dip, a stinky sour-cream blob that Autumn found delicious until the second she got the smell stuck in her nose and then it was dead to her for years. Putting it on hot dogs had been, admittedly, pretty damn genius of her brother.

  Autumn wasn’t sure what Jo thought about Florencio, if she’d noticed the dopey way he looked at her. What about being alone with him for five minutes had sent Jo running for the top of the anchor on Sunday night? The picture had gone up on Instagram before Autumn had even been home long enough to floss the onions from her teeth.

  Autumn checked behind a shelving cart full of DVDs and underneath a low table. When in sight of the circulation desk, she picked up a prop—Code Name Verity; oh no, suddenly there was a very high chance of weeping—and studiously pretended to read the first page before spotting the wooden tree in the children’s section.

  When they were little, Florencio used to go to the library for tutoring and Autumn would play in the tree, sticking her face in the cutouts meant for story-time puppets. She had put on many one-person shows in that puppet tree while the librarians told her that the tree was to be shared with everyone. As Autumn had been reminded many, many times as a child, the puppet tree could hold four children. Or one adult.

  She changed course, sauntering toward the tree as she pretended to look elsewhere. Between bookcases of picture books. Behind rainbow beanbag chairs. She got lost staring up at the wall. They still had the Little Orphan Annie Read! American Library Association poster. Her whole life she’d coveted that poster. It belonged in the Point High drama room. Or above her bed.

  She recognized Jo’s low murmur coming from inside the puppet tree. She crept closer.

  “Yes, thank you for calling me back. I’d like to make an appointment to see the furnished loft you have listed. The studio, that’s right. I’m not in town, actually. I’m moving from the coast, so I can’t be there today but would—”

  “Moving?” Autumn gasped.

  Jo was curled fetal against the interior wall of the puppet tree, her hand cupped around her phone. Eyes wide and trembling like a scream queen, she looked up at Autumn, found. “I need to call you back again. I’m so sorry.”

  The phone dropped into her lap and she scrambled to her feet, hitting
first her spine and then her face on the low ceiling of the puppet tree.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered.

  “Ma’am!” scolded a passing librarian. “Do you mind? This is the children’s section.”

  “Sorry!” Jo whispered back, holding her hands up. She winced and touched her bruised forehead.

  “Outside!” Autumn hissed. In a loud whisper she called for Bianca, who unfolded herself from behind a love seat near the computer creeps. Autumn motioned toward the front doors with two fingers, like a flight attendant.

  “What do you mean you’re moving, Jo?” Autumn asked the second she hit cold, less bookish air. She turned and walked backward down the entrance ramp. “Where are you looking at studios that aren’t on the coast, Jo?”

  “Stop saying my name like that,” Jo said, staring straight ahead at the parking lot.

  “Did you say she’s moving?” Bianca asked, bring up the rear. She held on to the flower in her hair as she jogged to catch up to Jo. “You’re moving?”

  Jo stopped at the bottom of the ramp and folded her hands together on top of her stomach. “I took the sales job with Gia’s family. In Portland. I start a week from Monday.”

  “A week!” Autumn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her eyes had barely adjusted to the daylight, leaving spots in her vision. “A week, as in one?!”

  Jo grimaced. “It’s more like a week and a half. This weekend I’m looking for a place so that I can be in on May first. I don’t want to spend rent on a place I’m not in.”

  “May first?” Autumn repeated. She was going to lose her best friend and the house on Main Street on the same day. She imagined Jo riding out of town on a dumpster full of memories.

  Bee hung back on the ramp, looking stunned. “Jo, that’s so soon.”

  “You said you didn’t want to work in sales!” Autumn protested, feeling younger and younger with every word. “At the sleepover, you said!”

  “I didn’t have a lot of choice after I didn’t get the other job!” Jo said with infuriating composure. “What was I supposed to do? I’ve already been here for over a month. I can’t just do nothing and wait for the perfect job to fall into my lap!”