The List

by Melanie Jacobson

  “Right,” he said bitterly. “The List.”

  “How did you—” I stopped myself. “Ryder. Of course.” I took a few steps toward the stairs and turned again. “If anyone were to have a shot at changing my mind, it definitely wouldn’t be someone who built half of our friendship on a lie. Don’t call me, Matt. I’m done. And tell Ryder I don’t want to talk to him, either.” Then I climbed the steps toward my waiting Jeep, feeling my heart break just a little more when he didn’t call after me.

  Chapter 26

  I ignored the chirp of my phone and pulled my textbook closer, trying to focus on the tiny print that swam like punch-drunk tadpoles all over the page. Leave it to the biggest book to have the smallest text. I fingered the slick page of my copy of Political Theory and Art: The Rise and Fall of Communist Rule Traced Through Print Media. At some point, my Art and Political Theory class had sounded like a good idea. As much as it perturbed me to hear people say the same thing about other art genres, I had to admit that one week of this class had firmly established that if you’ve seen one Communist propaganda poster, you’ve seen them all. After six weeks, I was heartily sick of the grim and urgent imagery shouted in bloodred and black Cyrillic letters.

  When my cell chirped again I eyeballed it, half-tempted to answer. I considered my options: another cozy hour with political propaganda or, knowing it was either my mom or my sisters calling me on a Saturday night, an hour discussing my nonexistent social life with one of them. I chose the textbook.

  I willed the squiggles to take on intelligible shapes, determined to complete the assigned reading before my seminar on Monday, but my cell phone trumpeted the arrival of a text. Flipping it open, I saw that it was from Dave. Call me immediately. Big news. Dave was a much easier choice over my textbook. I called him right back, glad to have a break that didn’t involve any nagging from my mom.

  “Hey,” he barked when he answered.

  “Hey, yourself,” I replied. “What’s the big emergency?”

  “No emergency,” he said. “I just had something to tell you.”

  Even though Dave and I had spoken only twice since I’d left Huntington Beach two days early for my return trip to school, my regular phone conversations with Celia were enough to figure out his news.

  “Can it wait?” I teased him. “I have to wash my hair and do my nails and stuff.”

  “For all those dates you don’t go on?”

  “Hey!”

  He snorted. “Celia spills your business to me too, you know.”

  “I did not know,” I grumbled. Note to self: tell Celia the family gossip channel was one-way. I was set to receive, not broadcast.

  “So, I guess I’m engaged.”

  “You guess?” I asked at the same time he yelped.

  “I’m engaged! I’m engaged! Don’t hit me again!” he said to someone on his end of the line.

  “Is Laurel with you?” I asked, doing some of my own guessing.

  “Yeah. I think I said it wrong when I told you. I’m going to try it again.” He cleared his throat. “I’m engaged. Yeehaw! Hold on,” he said. He came back on a moment later. “Laurel wants me to tell you that you’re the first person we told besides our immediate family. She says to tell you thank you for introducing us.”

  “Tell her she’s very welcome. And Dave?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s awesome. Congratulations—I’m really happy for you. When are you getting married?”

  “Over Laurel’s spring break,” he said. “I think it’s the last weekend in March or something like that. You can come, right?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “You’re getting married in the Newport temple, right?”

  “Uh, Los Angeles, actually. They’re set up better for serving the deaf. Anyway, both of our parents were sealed there, so it works out kind of cool. You have to come, Ash. You’re the whole reason we’re even getting married.”

  “Hardly,” I said. “You’re getting married because you’re both great people who deserve each other. But yes,” I promised. “I’ll find a way to be there even if I’m just in and out in one day.”

  “Cool,” he said. “We have to call some more people. Love you, cuz.”

  “You too,” I said and put down my phone.

  I sat back in my chair and smiled, happy for them. They suited each other perfectly. This called for a celebration. I headed to the kitchen to forage for chocolate. The house was quiet, the living room dark as I passed through. Not so unusual for a Saturday night in a house of single girls. Even quiet Emmy went on more dates than I did. It wasn’t hard to have more dates than none.

  I busted out my emergency stash of Dove chocolate from behind a jar of wheat germ I had bought in an ill-advised attempt at a long-forgotten recipe. The jar provided perfect camouflage, though. Even my most PMS-afflicted roommates never checked behind the wheat germ for chocolate. I grabbed the whole bag and then wandered to the couch to enjoy my treat, flipping on a lamp for some light and fumbling in the folds of the slipcover for the remote.

  Victorious, I flopped down and stretched between the sofa arms, enjoying the rare luxury of having the couch and TV all to myself. I cruised through the channels, unwrapping a second piece of chocolate and settling on one of my mom’s favorite programs, Antiques Roadshow. I found the drama of watching people get their grandmother’s ugly ceramic hen appraised only to discover it was worth enough to fund Junior’s next semester at college strangely addictive.

  When the program broke to do some local-color piece on the history of wooden duck decoys, I muted the sound. Smiling, I opened another chocolate and raised it in silent salute to my cousin and Laurel. I wasn’t surprised to hear they were marrying, although it was kind of quick. Still, if anyone could make it work, Laurel could. It made me laugh to think that her initial shyness hid such a determined woman. A girl after my own heart. I couldn’t blame Dave for falling for her fast. Besides, she was almost done with her degree in deaf education, and if they had kids soon, when Dave was studying late at the college library or working a part-time job to hold up his end of things, Laurel might really like having a little baby to keep her company.

  I glanced around at my unnaturally quiet house. Maybe Laurel was on to something.

  I grabbed the remote again, annoyed at my wandering thoughts. I found myself in the neighborhood of longing and regret too often lately. I flipped through channels, searching for a new distraction. Since I’d spent every Saturday since school started doing much the same thing, I knew I probably wouldn’t find anything to watch, but there was nothing else to do. For the first several weeks of the semester, my roommates had invited me to do all kinds of things, but I guess since I never accepted, they’d given up. Now, here I was, halfway through October, with no one to share in my little celebration.

  I put the fourth piece of chocolate down. I didn’t want it anymore. KBYU was airing an old football game and I left the station on, scowling. I hated this feeling. This year was supposed to be about total immersion in my coursework. I was supposed to be so hard-core that nothing existed except for school and work. But my classes weren’t as hard as I had expected now that I understood my professors’ requirements, and the papers I graded for my TA job were pretty mindless.

  I watched the quarterback for the other team pull back and launch a doozy of a pass, but just when it looked bad for the Cougars, one of their linemen intercepted it and started running it back the other way. At least that guy knew which way to go. I couldn’t say the same for myself.

  I had never felt so much like I was spinning my wheels. No matter how much I studied or how many papers I graded, there was an emptiness that gnawed at me in a semester that should have felt full to bursting. I didn’t even know who to call for advice or perspective. Every female in my life would come up with the same answer to the problem.

  Matt Gibson.

  Nearly two months had gone by and he’d taken me at my word; I hadn’t heard from him, and that’s what I want
ed. And yet, there were a couple of unexplained incidents that made me wonder . . . Once, my ringing doorbell had rustled me out of bed to find a pimply teenager standing on the front porch. He wore a tee shirt from a local burger joint and held a soda cup and a greasy brown paper bag.

  “This is for Ashley Barrett,” he said.

  When I explained that I hadn’t ordered anything, he shrugged. “I got a twenty dollar tip to drop this to you after the end of my shift,” he said, and shoved the food at me before climbing back into his beat-up Toyota.

  Two weeks ago, after an early October cold snap, I found a small box on my porch. A sky blue cable-knit cap and matching knit scarf sat inside. My mother and sisters all denied any knowledge of it. Convincingly. In fact, my mother had suggested that maybe it was Matt’s doing, and even though I gave the most withering scoff I could muster, she was adamant. I didn’t argue because I’d learned very quickly to deflect conversations about him.

  Unfortunately, Aunt Trudy had tattled about Matt to my mom, who then passed it on to my sisters, and I couldn’t have a conversation with any of them without them singing his praises. It didn’t matter that they had never met him. Apparently, Trudy had been exceptionally convincing in painting him as The Perfect Guy, with Celia backing her up in a hallelujah chorus.

  I scowled again. I had expected Celia to take my side when I got home from meeting “Ryder” and gritted out the story of his betrayal through clenched teeth, all the while stripping my clothes from closet hangers and dresser drawers, desperate to pack and leave Matt far behind me. Instead of sympathizing, Celia had defended Matt.

  “You’re hardheaded,” she said. “I don’t really see how you left him a choice. I think he should get credit for working so hard to get to know you.”

  She thought he should get credit? My mother was worse, deeming it romantic. And the crazy family grapevine had gone into full effect with Louisa telling Celia about Matt’s comings and goings, who then passed the information on to my mom, who then beat me over the head with it.

  That’s how I knew he’d arrived in Utah about two weeks after me and that the new Board Shack was opening in the Riverwoods shopping center near the mouth of Provo Canyon. I had no reason to go there and if it weren’t for my mother’s persistent updates, I’d be in blissful ignorance. Instead . . .

  Instead I dealt with a plague of intrusive thoughts, whispers of ideas that crept in when I was falling asleep or when my roommates abandoned me to my studies on a Saturday night and the house was too quiet. Ideas that nudged me to drive by and see the shop, to see if maybe I could catch a glimpse of him when I did. I glanced at the time on the cable box. 7:20. Did he work this late on a Saturday? Or was he out playing?

  I dropped my head back against the sofa in disgust. As much as I resisted those little rabbit trails my brain wanted to follow, I ended up thinking about Matt several times a day. Where that used to cause a giddy flutter, now I felt hollow. If I passed the Jamba Juice in the student center and Matt’s preferred drink jumped easily to mind, then I squished the memory and the pang that came with it. When I walked past the Tanner building and I remembered his joke that BYU’s business school was nice if you couldn’t get into Pepperdine, I changed directions and took a long-cut to meet my study group. When a Jack Johnson song came on the radio and transported me back to Huntington Beach and one of our sunset surfs, I stabbed the button viciously to change the station. There would be no more Jack Johnson in my car. Ever. And that made me mad at Matt again.

  It was exhausting to miss him so much.

  I pointed the remote at the TV and stabbed the volume control until it was loud, verging on uncomfortable. I wasn’t keeping busy enough, was all. I needed more to do.

  Maybe it was time to revisit The List. The last time I had done anything on the same planet as fun was when I was working on The List. I would not let Matt suck the fun out of one more thing for me. It was time to shake him off for good.

  I hopped up and raced to my room, anxious to find my scriptures. I shuffled around piles of clothes trying to remember where I’d slung my tote after my Old Testament class on Wednesday morning. After nearly two minutes of fruitless searching in my tiny room, I realized it didn’t matter. I had forgotten for a moment that The List had been missing since the early summer when Megan bumped my desk and sent all my papers flying.

  I sat on my bed and thought for a minute, then remembered I had rewritten it on my laptop. I found it in the living room and pulled The List up. I began working through it to cross off more stuff. On the first pass, I hit everything I had completed prior to Huntington Beach, grinning at some of the memories. Number eighteen, take a cruise, had been a comedy of errors. Juliana and Grady had paid my way on their cut-rate Mexican Riviera cruise in exchange for me watching their kids in the evening. Bad shrimp from the buffet had laid me out for the first three days, which meant that they trundled the baby crib into my room, tucked two-year-old Trent and Tyler under my arms on the bed, and made their merry way to the theater every night for the show while I groaned for three hours and my nephews patted my head sympathetically until we fell asleep.

  I was reliving the thrills and spills of number eleven, my black-diamond trail snowboarding adventure, when a roar from the TV snagged my attention. The rerun game was over and BYU students were flooding the field, swamping the football players and carrying the offensive line toward the end zone in a human tidal wave of joy. I watched the happy, cheering crowd as credits scrolled across the bottom of the page.

  I flipped to a music video channel and left it on a commercial there instead. Tuning out the flashing yellow letters and shouts to get my next living room set from the largest dealer West of the Mississippi, I returned to The List to cross off my newest items and decide on my next adventure. Number three, sing karaoke, was done. Pitifully attempted in the ward activity and completed as a bid to rescue Matt in a room full of strangers, it was nonetheless finito. Number four, read the standard works, was close. I signed up to audit the second half of an Old Testament course so I could finish what I started in Sister Powers’s class. I would be done by December, when the semester ended.

  Number eight, learn to make sushi. Done, with the help of Mr. Nobu and another ward activity. I crossed that one off too. Number ten, the triathlon, I’d finished with Matt and the Fountain Valley Ward. I might have been a hair shy of losing my carb-loaded breakfast on the church lawn after the 5K run, but I did it. Numbers thirteen, seventeen, and nineteen: learn to surf, have a summer fling, and skydive were also check, check, and check. Thanks to Matt.

  I looked back over The List, my mind racing. I had started the summer with eleven items left to finish and now I only had four, including finishing the Old Testament. Of the seven items I had completed since May, Matt had been directly involved in all of them. Feeling stunned, I double checked the math. Besides finishing the standard works, I had only “get a master’s degree,” “learn to play the guitar,” and “be an extra in a movie” still outstanding. Even more dizzying were two separate conversations I could remember having with Matt where he had casually suggested activities or connections that would make the latter two of those things possible.

  I didn’t believe in these kinds of coincidences.

  How had I missed the relationship between all these items getting done and Matt somehow being involved? It was deliberate on his part, I was sure. But how did he know? How did he know what was on my list?

  I scooped up my cell phone and dialed Celia. She answered, giggling as she said hello.

  “It’s Ash.”

  “I know. Did my brother call you?”

  “Yeah, great news. Hey, did you tell Matt Gibson about The List?”

  “Wait, what?”

  “The List, Celia. Did you tell Matt about it this summer?” I tried not to sound impatient but I felt half crazy.

  “No. Of course not. Why?”

  “Because he knows about it.”

  “He does? How do you know? Are you guys t
alking again?” she asked, sounding excited about the possibility.

  “No! I know because there’s all these—” I stopped and took a deep breath. “Never mind. You’re sure you didn’t tell him?”

  “I said I didn’t. But Ashley, what about Ryder? You told him about The List.”

  “Yeah, I did tell Ryder stuff, but only that there was a list, and a few of the things on it. There’s stuff that Matt knew about that Ryder never did. I don’t understand.”

  “Well, I don’t have an answer for you.”

  I stared unseeing at the television screen, looking past another flashing advertisement as if the answer to this mystery lay buried behind it in the cathode ray tubes of my roommate’s hand-me-down set. “I think only Matt is going to know the answer,” Celia ventured tentatively. She’d learned to tread any ground related to him very carefully.

  “Forget it. I don’t even know how to get in touch with him,” I said. “I deleted every piece of contact information I have for him.”

  “Maybe you could contact his Ryder profile,” she suggested.

  I could tell she was waiting for me to snap at her, but I just sighed. “I would, except that in a moment of total lameness, I looked it up a month ago, and he’s deleted his account.”

  “Okay, so that should make you feel good, right?”

  “It would have been good if he did it before he ever contacted me through it.”

  “I’m not going there with you again,” Celia said. “I can get his number from Louisa if you want to ask him about it.”

  “No,” I said. “I think I’ve got it figured out.”

  On the screen in front of me, a whiplash-quick photo montage of extreme snowboarding shots had built to some kind of digital effect where the picture exploded. It reassembled itself into an ad for the Board Shack, complete with a phone number and address and a caption blaring the grand opening the following Saturday.