Free to just be… myself. To think about who that actually is.
What was my mom feeling that made her put this on the list?
Did she feel boxed in too? The straight-A student who had bombed the SATs, searching for something more? Something outside of Huckabee?
But then… I think of my mom as I knew her and how she never really did get out of Huckabee. How she said Huckabee had everything. Was that really true, though? What made her change her mind?
Because, being here, I can’t help but think she was wrong. I can’t help but wonder what my life could be like if I left.
I look up to see seagulls flying overhead, free and happy as they coast through the air.
“Just like your bracelet,” I say, and Blake cranes her neck to look up at them, nodding in agreement.
“Here,” she says. I look down to see the bracelet in her open palm, seagulls identical to the ones that just flew by stamped carefully onto it.
I reach out and she takes my hand, her fingers carefully moving to wrap the bracelet around my wrist. “Your mom gave it to my dad when they were in high school, and my dad gave it to me when we were moving to Huckabee. He said she got it on a beach trip they went on. I’ve honestly been trying to find a time to give it to you, and, well… this feels pretty perfect,” she says, snapping it on. “It’s made its way home now.”
It’s like my question is answered. I look down at the bracelet and realize… she did feel like this. She knew.
She found that feeling in Huckabee. With Dad and me.
Tears spring into my eyes and I move to wipe them away, but Blake gets there first, her hand finding my cheek, her thumb gently catching them as they fall.
My heart begins to race as I look at her the same way I did last night at the pool, the setting sun painting all her features in a golden light, from her honey-colored eyes to her full lips.
Only this time, I’ve pulled all my walls down, making room for a realization to swim into my stomach that I’ve been avoiding since even before my mom got sick.
Blake looks straight at me, her gaze so steady, it nearly pulls the truth right out of me.
19
The summer my mom was diagnosed was the year I did my one-week stint at Misty Oasis.
There was a girl in my bunk. Dominique Flores.
I remember how cool I thought she was. How nice her black hair looked in a ponytail. How my cheeks turned bright red every time she talked to me.
I remember the bus ride home from camp, the tiny pang of something that I now recognize as heartbreak over maybe never seeing her again (or, definitely never seeing her again, because I was sure as hell NOT going back to Misty Oasis, no matter how much Kiera begged).
I wanted nothing more than to get off that bus and talk to my mom about it. To tell her while we were unpacking that night, or to sit on the floor of her closet the next morning as she was getting ready, the confusing mess of these unexpected feelings from this past week spilling from my lips.
But the second I saw my mom when I got off the bus, I knew something was wrong. In the car ride home, she didn’t talk about the bingo fundraiser happening the next day, and she kept rolling the lucky quarter around and around in her hands.
That’s when I noticed it.
The Band-Aid where an IV had been. The dark circles under her eyes. Months of headaches and dizziness and nausea finally investigated… and added up to stage IV cancer.
We got so swept up in doctor’s appointments, and surgeries, and my mom getting sicker and sicker, withering away before my eyes, that I just ignored it. I pushed it down. Our closet time in the morning turned into her perched on the edge of the bed while I brought her a change of sweatpants or an oversize T-shirt. Our bingo fundraiser Fridays turned into late nights at the hospital, machines beeping noisily all around us while I ran to the vending machine to get her a snack she would be too nauseous to eat. Her brown hair, identical to mine, was cut short and then, in the blink of an eye, gone completely.
Soon the feeling was nothing more than a tiny blip on my radar, something so small and insignificant compared to everything else going on. And then Matt began showing up to keep me company in the hospital, bringing my mom flowers, and holding my hand in waiting rooms, my mom whispering to finally give him a chance. Looking so certain about this one thing. This boy I’d been partners in crime with all through middle school, who had an unyielding crush on me, was there when I’d needed someone more than anything.
So, I finally did.
But the blip never went away. After my mom died, it just became impossible to face.
The sobering thought of Matt and my mom brings me crashing back to reality, to the course set for me all those years ago. Which is probably why I pull away from Blake so hard that the entire surfboard tips and I go splashing into the water.
I get caught in the surf and washing-machine my way to the shore, head over heels, surfboard flying from my grip as my nose fills with enough salt water to make my brain hurt. Just when I think I’ve regained my footing, another wave takes me out, launching me out of the water like a Fourth of July firework. I lie on the sand, gasping for air while Blake rescues the board, then comes over to see how I’m doing.
Nice to know
