I feel a surprise wave of excitement at the thought, the effects of jumping off a cliff and skinny-dipping, alongside Blake’s calm and assured confidence, muting the risks and the fear, leaving only the thrill of the adventure.
“And to prepare, my grandma made enough breakfast burritos to feed everyone in Huckabee,” Blake says as we pull off down the road. She tosses me a foil-wrapped log, hitting me square in the chest. “Never too late for a breakfast burrito.”
My stomach growls as I carefully unwrap it, the smell of pico de gallo and cheese radiating off the lumpy tortilla brick.
I take a bite, and holy shit is it good. Even after the trek to my house, it’s still warm and cheesy and delicious.
“This is incredible,” I say, and Blake nods in agreement.
“She makes them almost every morning, and I still haven’t gotten sick of them.”
I devour it as we drive through the winding Huckabee roads, slowing to pull into an old gas station just before the highway entrance.
“My mom and I used to get scratch-offs here,” I say. It startles me how naturally it comes out. That I’m actually wanting to talk about her, about moments beyond just the list. I lean out the open car window to toss the crumpled aluminum foil into the trash can while Blake tries to get the ancient pump to accept her credit card.
“I once won big on the Bingo Boogie card. I think I was in fifth grade.”
“Oh yeah?” Blake asks, distracted as the card is declined yet again. Finally, she gives up and leans back against the truck, frustrated.
I poke her shoulder, nodding toward the store. “You’re gonna have to go in and pay. These gas pumps are older than dirt.”
“No surprise there,” Blake mutters as she heads inside, her flip-flops clacking noisily as she walks.
I watch her go, wondering if this move has been harder for her than she lets on. Gas station pumps that hardly work. Bad phone service practically everywhere. A town so different from where she came from.
It can’t be easy.
I pull out my phone while I wait, posting an Instagram story of the surfboards and writing “Blake is trying to kill me” just underneath it. My first of the summer.
I can’t help but wonder if Matt will see it. Will he purposefully avoid watching it? I know Olivia will.
I glance up to see Blake pushing through the exit, a white plastic bag around her wrist. She fills up the truck and hops back into the driver’s seat.
“What’d you get?” I ask.
She pulls out some Lay’s chips, a package of Skittles, sour gummy worms, and a Hershey’s chocolate bar. “Aaand,” she says, reaching into the back pocket of her jean shorts to whip out two brightly colored scratch-off lottery tickets.
Bingo Boogie. I’d recognize that orange and pink anywhere.
It feels bittersweet to see it after all this time, the hand holding it out to me someone other than my mom.
“Pick one,” she says. I reach out, hesitating over the right one before moving slowly over to the left, something about this card calling out to me. “You feeling lucky, Emily Clark?” she asks, stopping me in my tracks.
Lucky. I realize now that’s what’s drawing me to the card. It looks lucky.
I think about the past few weeks. The list. Blake. Matt. All of it.
When I think about it… I feel luckier than I have in three years.
I grab the card on the left and pull the quarter with a nick on it out of my pocket.
“Maybe a little.”
18
The wind tugs at my hair, whipping wildly around my face as we drive. Blake glances over at me and my Cousin Itt impression, then pulls a hair tie off her wrist and holds it out to me with her free hand. I reach out, noticing just how tan her arm is compared to mine, a thin white line wrapping around her wrist where the hair tie sat. I wonder just how many days she’s spent outside in her life, the sun absorbing into her skin, filling her hair with its rays. We don’t get that kind of sun in Huckabee.
I smile gratefully before pulling my brown hair into a messy bun, my fingertips struggling to find and tame all the strays.
I look past her at Pennsylvania whizzing by, a sea of trees and farmland, Huckabee getting farther and farther away. It feels… good. Better than I could have expected, and with each mile that passes, the weight of the move and the town and everything that happened feels lighter and lighter.
I take a deep breath in, the warm air filling my lungs.
Soon the sun-filled summer will give way to a blistering winter, the trees surrounding us stripped of all their leaves, naked branches sitting against snow-filled skies. I try to picture Blake in the middle of it all, but I can’t see it. Her tan shoulders covered up in a forest-green jacket, a knit hat pulled down over her sun-streaked hair. I try changing the jacket color in my mind, exchanging the knit hat for a thick wool scarf, but the image is still hazy.
She seems like she only exists in the summer. Only made to swim in the waters of the ocean, the smell of sunshine and salt clinging to her clothes.
She catches me staring at her, but it doesn’t feel awkward. “What?”
I shake my head, turning my attention to the road in front of us. “Nothing.” I think asking her what she smells like in winter would definitely cross into awkward territory.
I reach out to turn the music up, St. Vincent pouring out of the speakers. We’ve been taking turns picking songs, one after the other. I’ve liked all of Blake’s suggestions. “Radio” by Sylvan Esso, “Bury a Friend” by Billie Eilish, “Ribs” by Lorde.
I throw in a couple of tracks by St. Vincent: “Fear the Future” and “Cruel.”
“We should go to one of her concerts if she tours nearby,” I say, and Blake nods
