He holds it out to me, and I see it’s covered in my mom’s handwriting, his very own list, filled with advice and reminders. All of them about me.
*What to do if she gets sick: Get the chicken noodle soup from Hank’s, black tea (tbsp of honey, 2 sugars), ask Nina for her biscuit recipe. You can figure it out.
*What to do if she gets her heart broken: Ice cream, Joe. Ice cream is always the answer.
And at the very bottom, a little note.
*What to do if she comes to you with something I didn’t mention: Tell her you love her. No matter what. And that I love her too. Always.
My tears begin to fall on the paper, fat and heavy, my dad reaching out to grab it before wrapping his arm around me. “Hey! I still need that.” He laughs, pulling me close as I dissolve into a blubbering mess as I think about stepping off the Misty Oasis bus and seeing her there, swallowing the words I never got to say to her.
I think about the clothes and all the donated items, things I thought were pieces of her. Things I thought were what made Julie Miller, Julie Miller.
But it’s us. Me. My dad. Nina. The people who would always tell me stories about her. The things she did and the places she went and the lives she touched. It’s talking about her instead of hiding in a literal closet, shutting out the world. It’s learning new things about her and finding ways to honor her without living exactly the life she wanted me to live three whole years ago.
If I can learn new things about her after she’s gone, maybe she wouldn’t be disappointed there were things she never knew about her daughter.
Which is why I pull away, knowing it’s time to tell Dad.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the list that I’ve taken with me everywhere for the past month and a half. I don’t need a pile of clothes, or a closet, or a whole house to feel close to her, when I can have moments like this.
Moments like I had all summer.
Carefully, I unfold it and hold it out to my dad.
“I spent the summer doing the list I showed you,” I say.
“ ‘Julie Miller’s Senior Year Summer,’ ” he reads, a smirk appearing on his face. “That explains the sunflower tattoo.”
The what? How—
My mouth drops open. “You knew about that?”
“Em, you’re terrible at hiding things,” he says with a laugh. “That, and you have a habit of rolling up your sleeves.”
I look down to see my forearm skin on full display, the cardigan sleeves pushed up to my elbows. I laugh, sniffing as I wipe my tears away with the back of my hand. “No more, though,” he says, in full Dad mode, a stern look plastered on his face. “You get another one, and we’re gonna have problems.”
I think of that glittering silver needle and swear my life on it.
“You going to tell me about it?” he asks as he hands the list back to me.
I let out a long sigh, everything blurring together in my head, a montage of feelings and emotions, of Blake’s eyes and sparkling water and the summer sun.
He opened up to me tonight, so… I open up to him. I tell him about the book, and cliff jumping, and the beach, all the times I felt my mom right there beside me, guiding my footsteps. How much this list has changed me. How much it has made me the person I was too afraid to be again.
He listens. Really listens. Smiling and laughing and nodding as I recount my whirlwind summer to him, everything leading up to item number twelve.
“So, I kissed him. And…”
I look at the list in my hand, the lucky list that was my mom’s.
But now I need to make it mine.
Because there’s something I have to do if I’m going to really be the person that this list helped me to see I am. I have to tell him the truth about Matt and Blake and… me.
My heart skips into double time. Maybe even triple time.
“And it was all wrong. Just like it’s always been,” I admit. “It’s… not like what you and Mom had. It just isn’t, even though I know she wanted that for me.”
“But with Blake…,” I start to say, stopping to collect myself. “But with Blake, things have always felt right.”
I look down at the leather bracelet on my wrist, those seagulls flying free.
“I thought that I could change who I was. That I could fix what was wrong with me and Matt, and that things could finally fit into place like they did for you and Mom. But I couldn’t do it. I can’t change who I am, Dad. I can’t change the fact that I…” I take a long, deep breath, all the air disappearing from the room. “That I’m gay.”
Holy shit. I—I said it. Even though I told Kiera and Nina and Matt, this is the first time I let myself say the word. My ears start to ring as I wait for him to say something. Anything. I can’t even look at him.
Am I going to throw up?
Am I going to—
I hear him rifling around in the box, worried he’s just going to pack it up and leave. Glancing over, I see him pull out a Polaroid picture. He holds it out to me, and there, in all their faded glory, are my mom, Johnny Carter, and my dad, arms slung over one another’s shoulders, goofy grins on all their faces.
I read the handwritten caption, in my mom’s neat cursive: Julie, J. C., and Joe.
Wait a second—I grab the photo from him, looking between it and the
