It’s a lot of things all at once. Sweet, salty… sticky? But it’s not bad. I’m surprised to find I actually really like it.
Blake stares at me expectantly, a concerned crease forming between her eyebrows, like she’s actually nervous for once.
“It’s really good!” I say, and it wipes the crease away as her whole face lights up. “I think my mom would’ve even liked it, if she could’ve gotten past the seaweed. It’s definitely the best Spam has ever tasted.”
She laughs at that, and we keep digging in, until the container of Spam musubi is all gone and it’s time for the apple tarts, crispy and sweet and delicious.
Afterward, we scour the grass around our picnic blanket while I try to find a four-leaf clover, the countdown clock for list completion now sitting at less than ten days.
My mom had been so lucky, she probably found it in an afternoon.
Meanwhile, I’ve been staring at the ground everywhere I go for the past two weeks, and still nothing.
“So,” Blake asks from behind me. “How was talking to Matt? It, uh, didn’t look like it went too well.”
“You can say that again,” I say, letting out a long sigh. I lean forward, plucking a clover from the grass, dismayed to see it only has three leaves. Just like the last five I’ve picked.
I try to think of a way to talk to her about all of this, without giving too much away.
“I just want to make things better. Kiera says I’m going to ruin our senior year if I don’t, and I know she’s right. I’ll ruin it for my other friends, too. And… I don’t know. I really feel like I can now. Like the list is leading me to it. A way to make things feel right between us, you know? I just have to keep going.”
“Is that why you kissed that other guy?” she asks. “Because things didn’t feel right between you and Matt?”
Is that why I—wait. What?
I whip around to face her, my heart going into triple time in my chest. “You know?”
“Yeah,” she says with a shrug. “Since like the first day of work. Cassie Evans told me by lunchtime.”
She’d known all along. When we’d gone to the bookstore, and unpacked at her house, and sat atop the cliff at Huckabee State Park. Even now, standing here.
I search her face, but there’s no sign of judgment. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t think of me any differently.
Which is maybe why she’s the first person I tell the truth to. “Yeah. It is,” I say.
I’ve always given another excuse for our breakups, cloaked it in clinginess or needing to focus on schoolwork, or Jake’s flask. Never the real reason.
I shrug. “But a lot of things haven’t felt right the past three years. I haven’t felt right. Not until the list showed up.” I look up at her, smiling. “Not until you showed up in Huckabee and made me jump off cliffs and stuff.”
She smiles back at me, and I notice she’s clutching not one, not two, but three four-leaf clovers.
“Blake,” I say, pointing down at her hands. “You do know if you pick all of them, there’ll be none left for me to find.”
“Good point,” she says, opening her hands, a small shower of green falling from her palms.
We look around for a few more minutes before I accept defeat. I lie back on the checkered picnic blanket, pulling the list out of my pocket and unfolding it, using a pink pen I brought from Nina’s to check off “3. Go on a picnic” and “4. Try a new food.”
No revelations about Mom, or invaluable life lessons here. But at least it was fun.
“So, do you think that’s the solution?” Blake asks. “Changing yourself?”
“Well, not exactly changing myself,” I clarify. “More like becoming myself, you know?”
“Just… make sure it’s for you,” Blake says as she plucks a few blades of grass and chucks them into the wind, the both of us watching them float away. “I was in a relationship before and it felt like I changed so much of who I was to fit what I thought she wanted. Like I cared more about what she thought of me than what I thought of me.”
“She.” My skin prickles at the word. She. “You’re…”
Blake whips her head around to look at me. “Yeah, uh… gay. I’m gay. Is that…?”
“Cool! Totally cool, of course,” I say as I smooth out the blanket underneath us. I had wondered. When Paul had told her he was gay at Nina’s, when Jake had flirted with her at Snyder’s Orchard. “But you’re right. That’s not what I want to do.”
We sit in silence for a few moments, watching the clouds drift by overhead.
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” Blake asks.
I let out a long sigh, rolling over onto my side to face her. “We’ve got a few back-to-back showings going on at my house, even though we haven’t even found our new house yet. So… absolutely nothing. Why?”
She gives me a mischievous grin, holding up a red lifeguard lanyard filled with keys. “I’m closing tomorrow.”
I look down at the list, my eyes landing on
8. Skinny-dip in Huckabee Pool after hours.
I groan and cover my face with the corner of the checkered blanket. “This list is going to kill me.”
16
Front gate in 5.
I peer down at the text from Blake, then look up to watch the last few sets of headlights pull out of the Huckabee Pool parking lot, driving off down the road. When I hear the creak of her truck door and see her climbing back out of the driver’s seat, I creep out of the bushes by the bike rack and make a beeline for the front gate.
“You ready?” she asks as she pulls the lanyard keys out of her pocket,
