“You good?” she asks, trying not to laugh at my dramatically shipwrecked self.
I grimace and sit up, sand plastered to my back, seaweed stuck to the side of my head. “Blake, I swear… if you laugh, I will…”
My voice trails off as she ducks her head, her shoulders silently shaking with laughter. I peel the seaweed off my face, not in the mood to joke just yet, and grab the surfboard, heading back up the beach to the truck.
“Em! Come on. I’m sorry,” she calls, chasing after me.
I don’t say anything as we drop off the surfboards and grab our stuff to get changed.
When I’m locked tightly in the bathroom changing stall, I turn around, leaning my head against the back of the door.
Come on, Em.
I’m not going to ruin my night of freedom over a capsized surfboard. And some… pretty enormous butterflies.
When I duck outside, Blake is standing there holding two oversize cones of pink cotton candy, the white cone invisible underneath all the poof. She holds one out to me, a sheepish grin on her face.
“Sorry I laughed at you.”
I take it, nudging her lightly. “It’s okay.”
We walk along the worn wood of the boardwalk, dodging in and out of people, the air filled with voices and laughter, the sweet, sugary cotton-candy cloud melting on my tongue. A bell rings noisily next to us, announcing a victory in the water-gun-race game, the reward an oversize bear, roughly the same size as Blake’s dog, Winston.
Blake pauses, her eyes following the bear through the crowd. “Do you want to—”
The money is already out of my wallet and in the vendor’s hands, her sentence left unfinished. I slide onto one of the open wobbly stools, ready to go.
Blake sits down next to me, two kids and an old man taking up the remaining three spots.
The vendor goes over the rules while I close one of my eyes and line up my water gun.
Shoot water at target. Raise platform with creepy bear on it. Win prize.
Easy.
“Ready to lose, Clark?” Blake whispers as the vendor starts counting down from three.
“You wish.” I smack her water gun out of alignment and start firing my own at the sound of the bell, hitting the target instantly, my red bear soaring through the air to narrowly beat the grandpa two seats over.
“Damn,” Blake says as the alarm bell rings noisily over our heads. I look over to see her yellow bear hardly moved an inch. “I took my contacts out to go in the ocean and I literally can’t see anything. My eyes were too dry to put them back in.”
“Excuses, excuses,” I say as I’m rewarded with one enormous bear, a bumblebee-yellow bow tied neatly around its neck.
I turn around to see Blake digging around in her backpack. She pulls out a glasses case, grimacing as she flicks it open and puts on a familiar pair of glasses, bigger than the state of Texas and nearly identical to the pair all those years ago.
She. Looks. Adorable.
She groans. “They’re awful, aren’t they?”
“Definitely not.” I shake my head. “They’re really cute, actually.” I feel my cheeks turn bright red at the words.
But not redder than Blake’s.
Her eyebrows rise, incredulous, her eyes slightly magnified by the thick lenses. “Wait. Really?”
“Yeah,” I say with a nod. “Very Christmas 2011.”
Once her glasses are on, it’s game over for me. Literally.
She wins ring toss, balloon darts, and Skee-Ball, our hands lightly brushing together as we walk from stand to stand, tiny stuffed animal heads sticking out of Blake’s backpack. Every time her fingers graze the back of my hand, it’s like a shock of electricity, warm and tingly in a way that’s new and unfamiliar.
As we head back to the truck, we stop at a snack stand filled with brightly colored signs shouting, FUNNEL CAKE! BEST ON THE BOARDWALK! and, FRESHLY SQUEEZED LEMONADE! even though I can see the tub of lemonade mix still sitting on the back counter. We get the two-for-five-dollars hot dog special, complete with two plastic cups filled to the brim with not-so-fresh lemonade, and drive the two blocks to her aunt’s house, eating the hot dogs along the way.
When we get there, a female Johnny Carter in a white button-down and flip-flops throws open the door to the small white bungalow, directing us to drive around to the backyard. I’ve only seen her in pictures or heard stories about her from Mrs. Carter. She moved out of Huckabee right after high school and only comes back when she absolutely has to.
“Aunt Lisa!” Blake says, her door screeching open. She hops out to give the woman a hug.
“Nine o’clock,” Aunt Lisa says, checking her watch. “You kept me up past my bedtime! You know daybreak is the best time to surf around here.”
She smiles at me, one arm still slung over Blake’s shoulder. “You must be Emily! God, you look just like your mom.”
Should’ve known it was coming. But it doesn’t sting as much as it used to, Blake’s words from that day we found the box becoming my reality this summer, keeping her memory alive.
A warm feeling comes with it, radiating across my chest.
I smile politely. “Thanks for letting us stay—”
“In my backyard?” She snorts, throwing her hands up.
We’re planning on camping out in the back of Blake’s pickup truck in an effort to get “6. Sleep under the stars” checked off the list too.
“Oh, come on, Aunt Lisa. You’re telling me you didn’t do worse when you were our age?” Blake says, the two sharing an identical mischievous look, eyebrows raised, smirks plastered on their faces.
“You got me there, Blake,” she says as we head up the back steps and through a screen door to a covered back porch, decorated with blue-and-white-striped outdoor furniture, a white ceiling fan chugging away above us. I pull out my phone and shoot my dad a quick text to let him know we’re here.
“So, how’s Huckabee treating you?” Aunt Lisa says as we plunk
