The Checklist

by Addie Woolridge

  “You have to admit Gunderpants is kinda a funny nickname,” Deep said, wrinkling her nose.

  “No, I don’t have to admit it.”

  “Come on—” She elbowed Dylan’s side.

  “It wasn’t his finest hour. Don’t repeat that.”

  “Besides, I figure once Tim finds out about it, Marissa is doomed anyway, so I may as well give her a like before Charlie has to march her out the door.”

  “Tim wouldn’t really sic Charlie on her, would he?” Dylan asked, hoping for something better than she expected. Deep raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow but didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Dylan woke up with a start and glanced around her room, that familiar disoriented sensation creeping over her. Trying to get a grip on her surroundings, she stopped to listen to the sound of absolutely nothing. It felt wrong.

  Rolling over, she squinted at the clock, its little red numbers blinking 8:14 a.m. That was about the time she usually woke up when an alarm wasn’t involved. Rubbing her face, she sat up, still marveling at the silence. Her heart rate slowed to a normal pace. It was the Saturday after the world’s longest Friday.

  Gingerly setting one foot on the floor, Dylan noticed her door was cracked open. Someone had taken Milo with them. She swung her other leg onto the floor, heaved herself out of bed, and shuffled down the first flight of stairs before stopping to peek into Neale’s bedroom. It wasn’t like Neale made her bed, but as far as Dylan could tell, the sheets were in the same rumpled state as they had been in the day before, implying that Neale had crashed at a friend’s home.

  When she’d padded down the second set of stairs, Dylan found the kitchen as empty as Neale’s room. She could tell her mom had been there, because she’d left half a pot of coffee in the coffee maker. This was a Bernice hallmark. Make one massive pot of coffee and drink it throughout the day. Dylan found stale coffee gross, so she gently pressed her hand to the glass. The carafe was still warm. Safe to assume this was not yesterday’s coffee. Her mother had left the house.

  “Am I alone?” Dylan asked the coffee maker. It was too good to be true. The odds that anyone was ever alone in the Delacroix household were like the odds of winning the Powerball. Just shy of impossible, and just regular enough to make you believe it could happen.

  Daring to hope, Dylan crept toward her father’s study. If she wasn’t alone, she certainly didn’t want anyone knowing she was up, or they would take away the blessed silence. Poking her head around the door, she found a very empty and oddly tidy room. The giddy sensation of being alone kicked in almost instantaneously. Part of her wanted to run upstairs, put on a towel, get some ice cream, and watch TV, because there was absolutely no one to see her do it. Another part of her wanted to make a new pot of coffee and read a very large book. As she stood in the hallway, Dylan realized that either of these activities required her to sit on the furniture. The dust and dog hair alone were enough to put her dreams of towels and tomes on hold. Far from discouraged, she found her joy turning to unmitigated glee. This was her shot to engage in her favorite de-stressor. Cleaning and dance hits of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

  Dylan hustled back to the kitchen, dumped out Bernice’s coffee, and set on a fresh pot before catching sight of herself in the kitchen window.

  “Ew.” She cringed at the sight of her pores. Blaming Jared, she ran up to the bathroom to find a pore strip to suction to her nose. Then she skipped back down to the living room, where she flipped through the family’s dated catalog of CDs until she found what she was looking for. Janet Jackson’s self-titled masterpiece, janet. Shaking the tension out of her shoulders, Dylan dance-walked to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, then grabbed a dust rag and some Endust with the other hand. After bumping the cupboard closed with her hip, she got started in the living room, crowing along with Ms. Jackson.

  After seventy-five minutes and twenty-three seconds, Dylan had managed to successfully scrub the living room and work up a good sweat. Stopping only to tear the pore strip off and confirm that her skin was suffering under the stress of Technocore, she hit rewind on her favorite song, “If.” Dylan was about to start on the floorboards in the hallway when the doorbell rang.

  “Neale!” Dylan shouted over the music, silently cursing her sister for forgetting the door code. When she’d pushed herself off all fours, she ambled toward the door, admiring the dust and grime that had situated itself on her college sweatshirt. Yanking open the heavy door, Dylan threw a hand on her hip and glared . . . at the opposite of her sister.

  “Hi. Am I interrupting?” Mike asked, looking up from their ancient door mat. Rounding his shoulders forward, he slid his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans, adding, “Sorry. I can come back.”

  “Oh no. I thought you were Neale. You’re not interrupting.” Dylan casually repositioned herself behind the door, on the off chance that he hadn’t noticed the layer of dirt crusted onto her pink running shorts.

  In a moment of horror, she realized that the dirt wasn’t her most pressing problem. Her father had left the outside speakers on again, so the entire neighborhood had been listening to Ms. Jackson’s sexy alto for nearly two hours. She felt heat creep up her neck and flood her face, which she was pretty sure matched the Pepto-Bismol color of her shorts despite the melanin in her skin. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize that the outside speakers were on. I’ll turn it off right now. Please tell Linda and Patricia it was not intentional.”

  “I think they actually prefer Janet Jackson to choral reproductions of indigenous chants.” Mike’s face split into an easy smile. “Oddly enough, that is not why I’m here. I wanted to see if you were around to go look at a couple of museums. If you aren’t busy,” he added, gracefully nodding at the dust rag she was clutching.

  In the background, Janet filled Dylan’s panicked silence by describing exactly what she would do if she was someone’s girlfriend. Somehow, she had imagined a lot less spontaneity and messy topknots when she had offered to do this with Mike. And a lot less sex music.

  “Yes. Sure. Let me get changed,” Dylan croaked, doing her best to casually speed walk toward the stereo as Janet let everyone on the block know whose name would be called out in bed.

  Dylan smashed her index finger against the power button with so much force that it hurt. Her yellow ankle socks slid on the newly Pine-Soled floor as she dashed back to the hallway. Mike stood motionless by the wide-open door, wearing a bemused expression.

  “Sorry. You can come in,” Dylan said, motioning him into the house with one hand and trying to wipe off the dust with the other. “Wait.” Dylan threw out the hand she had been using as an emergency lint brush. Mike stopped midmovement, his hand on the door handle, like they were playing Red Light, Green Light. “Did you mean we should leave now? Or sometime later?”

  “You’re in charge. Whenever works best for you. If you need some time, I can go.” He used his thumb to gesture over his shoulder at the door.

  “Oh no. Now is fine. I just didn’t want you to be sitting here waiting when really you meant later but were too polite to say. Then I’d be holding you hostage when you had somewhere else to be.” Dylan started with her favorite circular hand gesture as if it would make her rambling more eloquent. Mike began shaking his head, the polite smile shifting to outright amusement.

  “Nope. I’m all yours.”

  He turned to shut the front door, and she noticed the criminal fit of his jeans. Not obviously tight but fitted enough to give a girl some idea of what she was working with. Not that she was looking. This was Janet’s fault.

  “Okay, then.” Dylan pulled her mind off his backside as he rotated around. Gesturing to the only truly clean room in the house, she added, “I’m gonna get changed. Make yourself at home.”

  She dashed up the stairs as fast as her brightly colored socks would carry her and ripped the dingy sweatshirt off her body. Shedding the rest of her clothes into a pile on the floor, she wondered how she’d managed to find
a wearable rainbow to clean in. Hadn’t Neale recently pointed out that she owned no color? Obviously she hadn’t looked at her workout gear.

  Silently thanking the sisters of Alpha Zeta Delta for their patented five-minute-ready routine, she grabbed a pair of jeans, a gray cashmere sweater, and the blue scarf that matched her ballet flats. Hustling into her favorite all-purpose casual outfit in two minutes, she thought, Still got it.

  Next, she made her way to the bathroom, preparing for the phase involving tinted moisturizer, mascara, and blush and mentally committing any extra time to a quick swipe of lipstick, when she got a good look at her face and stopped cold. A ring of lovely white pore-strip gunk encircled her nose, which was a stunning shade of red from where she had removed a layer of skin and blackheads before Mike had arrived.

  “Sexy, Dylan. Very sexy.”

  Throwing some water on her face, she hoped Mike thought the slime was part of the general dirt she was wearing and not her pores giving up on life. To be safe, she gave herself an extra thirty seconds to add some lipstick—better to draw attention to some other part of her face—before moving down the stairs, conscious of how anxious her steps sounded.

  Dylan hit the bottom stair and rounded the corner to find Mike settled in a chair, scowling at Kierkegaard.

  “Ready?”

  Mike jolted, the lines on his face vanishing. “That was fast.”

  “One of the many lessons I learned from my soros. The art of getting ready quickly and the finer points of Malthusian economics. Although that turned out to be less helpful.” Dylan shrugged and readjusted her scarf.

  Mike chuckled, walking into the hallway and standing behind Dylan as she opened the door. Her body and mind resumed their old war over his sudden closeness, with her body attempting to lean in and her mind asking it to stay still and act like she had some semblance of self-control.

  “I have something for you,” Mike said, reaching into his pocket and extracting a folded-up square of paper.

  “What’s this?” Dylan’s brain stuttered to change gears as she accepted the paper, forcing her to acknowledge that lust and coherence were at opposite ends of the communication spectrum. The laugh lines on Mike’s face deepened as he watched her unfold the page, the top of which read,

  A Highly Organized List of Places Dylan Asked Mike to Take Her To

  “I didn’t ask you to take me anywhere. You showed up at my house,” Dylan said, over Mike’s laugh.

  “I recall you specifically asking for a list.”

  “I did. But this title is inaccurate. It should read, ‘A List of Places Mike Recommends Dylan Research.’ The list is basically void with this title.” Dylan laughed in spite of herself.

  “I have a pen. You can change it in the car.” Mike smiled, leaning in toward her and nudging her with his shoulder so she was forced to look up at him. “Will that work? Or do you need me to retype it?”

  “You’re obviously new to listing, so I’ll accept it . . . this time.” Dylan felt herself smiling up at him, despite her most platonic intentions. Folding the paper and placing it in her back pocket, she asked, “Just confirming that the rest of this list is accurate. We are going to the Burke first, correct?”

  “Correct. I thought I’d drive, since asking for a favor, then forcing you to sit in traffic feels like bad form.”

  “Fine by me,” Dylan said as they crossed the street.

  Mike pressed the clicker on the new-model navy-blue Subaru SUV so Dylan could hop into the passenger seat. Of course he would drive this car. She smiled at her seat belt and suppressed a laugh as he ducked into the car. Glancing at her over his own seat belt, he stopped. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mike arched an eyebrow and began easing the car down the road at a careful four miles over the speed limit.

  “It’s just, you would drive this car.” Dylan laughed the sentence out before she could stop herself. “It is the most consistently Mike thing in the world. If someone had asked me in high school what car you would drive as an adult, I could have guessed this car down to the color.”

  “This car is amazing. What I’m hearing is that I’ve had consistently good taste.” Mike’s smile lingered on her for a second before he turned to face the road.

  “I was thinking less amazing and more along the lines of a super safe dad car.”

  “Well, it does have an excellent safety rating. Which I’m pretty sure makes me sound like I’m one birthday away from bringing snacks to soccer games.”

  “Worse than that. It sounds like I’m five years into juice boxes and fruit leathers.” Dylan snickered.

  “I’d have way better snacks than that.” Mike looked incredulous. “Fruit leathers? Give me some credit. I wouldn’t humiliate my kids. I’d do a good job on snack day.”

  “That is reassuring. Just because you drive a dad car doesn’t mean you are gonna be the cheap juice guy.” Dylan very much doubted that anyone would think of him as the Capri Sun dad. Sexy dad? Maybe. Crappy-snack dad? Probably not.

  “No way. That guy drives a minivan.” Mike laughed, turning into the parking lot near the museum and throwing the car into park. Reaching for the door handle, he threw a sly grin over his shoulder. “For the record, this is the most predictable thing about me. I take risks in other places,” he said, holding Dylan’s gaze for a second before smirking and sliding out of the car without another word.

  Dylan froze, hand on the door handle. She was pretty sure they weren’t talking about cars anymore, and now her mind was involuntarily going in all the directions her body had attempted to go earlier.

  “Pull it together,” she mumbled before pushing the door open and making a mental note to leave this part of the conversation out when she talked to Stacy.

  Without so much as acknowledging his ambiguous statement, Mike moved forward. “I wanted to show you this one first, because it is a great example of a traditional museum, but also because they have an exceptional education program.”

  Dylan forced her mind to shift gears as they walked toward the front of the building. She had driven past the Burke a million times and been to the museum with her father almost as many. However, she had never really stopped to look at the building until now. The Burke, technically titled the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, was a city icon. While the boxy building itself was not that exciting, the museum made every inch of the landscape interesting. Indigenous art and statues were everywhere, blending into the grounds, some covered in the bright-green moss that, if left unchecked, would reclaim every surface of the city. But at the Burke, the moss was intentional, as if to signal that the museum was a part of nature itself.

  “I always liked this place,” Dylan sighed, nostalgia tugging at her as they climbed to the front entrance.

  “I know. Every time I visit, I feel like I should’ve taken a school bus,” Mike said, pulling the door open and fishing his wallet out of his back pocket. Dylan hustled to the counter to pay before Mike got through the door. Whether or not he would admit it, she was pretty sure her job was more lucrative than being a PhD student working at a struggling nonprofit. Holding out her credit card, she opened her mouth to ask for two tickets. Mike cut her off, gently placing his hand on top of her outstretched hand and smiling at the teenager behind the counter. “Hi. I work at the Crescent and the UW. I have my ID.”

  Dylan deliberately didn’t notice his hand. The way it warmed her own, cold from the gray outside. She didn’t notice the size of it or the way his hand felt, not heavy but present.

  Instead, she chose to focus on the teen, who shook his hair out of his face and smiled the distinctly northwestern smile of someone who is friendly but in no way wants to be friends. “Welcome to the Burke.” He paused to look at the ID. “Let me get you a couple of passes.” The teen stopped to hit three quick keystrokes before holding out two stickers. Mike lifted his hand from hers to accept the tickets.

  “Thank you,” he said, handing one sticker to Dylan, who suddenly
felt the emptiness of the hand that still held her credit card. Half smiling, Mike added, “Most museums in the area have an agreement. We waive entrance for each other.”

  “I should have guessed.” Dylan’s laugh was breathy as she returned her credit card to its assigned spot and peeled the sticker from its back. “You were saying this is a good example of how museums can include children.” She cleared her throat and looked up at Mike, his own sticker firmly affixed to the front of his black jacket.

  “Right,” Mike said, looking up and collecting his bearings. “We want to go this way.” He began navigating through the museum’s lobby, past the mounted skulls belonging to the long-dead reptiles that had once called the area home. Mike moved through the space casually, allowing her time to take in the dinosaur skeletons and recreations of prehistoric landscapes as they made their way deeper into the room. “So as background, what you’ll notice is most museums dedicate a space for children and then a much larger space to house the actual collection,” he said, angling them toward a corner of the museum that was, in fact, specifically dedicated to children. “The educators basically create a program around the collections’ setup.”

  “Is that bad?” Dylan asked, tearing her attention away from a massive creature etched in stone and anchoring it to Mike’s cheekbones. She had to give his genetic combination credit. Most people wouldn’t be interesting enough to physically compete with a fossilized stegosaurus.

  Mike hummed low in his throat for a moment. “It isn’t so much good or bad as different.”

  “How so?” Dylan avoided pointing out how diplomatic his answer was.

  “The programs are well designed, but space limitations often force museums to use a lot of ‘find and observe’ techniques. Less of the touch, feel, smell, and do that most children learn with.”

  “Is that why children put everything in their mouths? To learn? Here I thought it was a death wish.”

  Mike laughed, the sound rolling across the room. “Exactly. Although with toddlers you never know.” He began pointing out features of the museum, dodging the occasional overexcited tiny human as they made their way around the brightly colored room. Dylan couldn’t help but be drawn in by his passion as he described the theories behind the books and worksheets dotting the child-size tables. It struck her that Nicolas didn’t talk about his work like this. Precision, drive, and competition were all words she would use for the way he approached work. But passion? Dylan wasn’t sure about that one. Wandering around the room with Mike, she hoped she talked about her job the way he did. It was easy to make fun of consultants, but she loved fixing companies and helping people enjoy where they spent the majority of their waking hours. If she sounded like Nicolas, that was something she wanted to change.