The Throwback List Read online

  “It is good to see you,” Wren said, stepping forward and catching Jo’s one hand with two. Somehow, the warmth of both Wren’s hands on her felt more intimate than a hug.

  Her palms started to sweat.

  The back pocket of Jo’s pants buzzed. Prying her eyes away from Wren—and her brown leather brogue-trim boots—Jo checked the text.

  AUTUMN: SURPRISE! It’s a mid-prank prank!

  Wren turned her approving face to Eden. “Thanks for the heads-up, Eden.”

  “You’re welcome, Ms. Vos,” Eden said without taking her eyes off her older sister. Jo almost expected her to start making kissy faces at them, like she did when she was eight.

  “Ms. Vos?” Jo cleared her throat, willing herself to look less stunned. “You work here?”

  Wren’s eyes sparkled. “Whose office do you think you’re in?”

  Jo looked around: the leadership library, the Abby Wambach memoir, the color-coordinated stack of Post-its. She hopped out of the desk chair, her face and neck flushed.

  “Eden.” She gave a panicked giggle. Oh no. If she started nervous laughing, she would never be able to stop. “You didn’t tell me Wren was your vice principal.”

  “I didn’t recognize her at first! It’s not like they introduce principals by their first name,” Eden protested. “I remembered Rapunzel hair. And the skateboard.” She passed Jo the Nikon. “Don’t you dare get rid of the pictures. I’m going to go out to the softball concession stand. Miss Kelly said I could have a Coke for helping double-cross you.” She waved behind her. “Bye, Ms. Vos.”

  Wren inclined her head. “Bye, Eden.”

  Since Jo had moved back, it seemed like everywhere she turned, people were appearing in their next evolution. Autumn and her new teeth. Bianca and her flawless makeup. Her parents and their wrinkles. Eden not being in elementary school.

  But Jo was blindsided by new, twenty-seven-year-old Wren. It was almost impossible to reconcile the short-haired, semi-suited woman in front of her with the sixteen-year-old skate punk Jo had fallen in love with.

  The daughter of surfers, Teen!Wren rebelled by being firmly terrestrial. She wore Vans instead of Birks and rode a longboard with slick ease. She dressed in her brothers’ hand-me-downs and beat all of their soccer records in one season.

  Jo had fallen in love with her on sight. For months, during honor society meetings, Jo would lose hours just trying to glimpse the title of the books in Wren’s pocket.

  One day, a book fell out. Orlando by Virginia Woolf. Jo replaced it with Passing by Nella Larsen, which she happened to be reading. Wren said nothing for two days, then returned the book to Jo in the cafeteria and spoke to her directly for the first time. “So. What else are you reading?”

  Jo traded her Maya Angelou for Sylvia Plath, Amy Tan for Steinbeck, and, regrettably, Ayn Rand for more Ayn Rand. Their own private—and admittedly pretentious—book club. When Wren had shown up with a book too large for her cargo pocket—Fingersmith by Sarah Waters—she traded it to Jo for a kiss before longboarding away.

  They had gone from quiet acquaintances to girlfriends without pausing to learn each other’s last name. Wren didn’t risk losing things she wanted. Slowing down was for the weak.

  You have to stop staring, Jo reminded herself. It’s making you look thirsty as fuck.

  She sat down on the edge of the desk, hands folded between her knees. “I can’t believe you work here. You hate it here!”

  Wren nodded, her hands tucked in her pockets. “True. I did my time as the token lesbian of Sandy Point. But I’m the youngest vice principal in the state. Not that it’s a competition.” A dimple appeared in her right cheek. “And, unless you want to fail, you can’t be principal without being a VP. So. Here I am.”

  Jo smiled dazedly. “Here you are.”

  “I don’t live here, of course,” Wren said. “I commute from Forest Grove. This is around the time I’m normally packing up to leave, but Autumn proposed sticking around to see you. All I had to do was put my sensitive documents away. Didn’t you find the office oddly neat? I thought it gave the whole thing away.”

  “I’m not an accomplished vandal,” Jo admitted.

  Wren sat down beside her. Jo caught of a whiff of juniper and beeswax and thyme—a scent as perfectly androgynous as Wren herself.

  “This is the part where you pull a bottle of scotch out of your desk drawer,” Jo prompted.

  “Johanna,” Wren said in the same tone she would have said Oh, you. “I’m an administrator, not Don Draper.”

  “Your shoes say otherwise.”

  “Thank you for noticing.” Wren tapped the side of her foot against Jo’s. Jo’s pulse tripled. “So. How was Stanford?”

  Wren had been the only other person in Sandy Point who had ever shared Jo’s obsession with getting out. The battle plan in the map journal was based on Wren’s template: honors classes, extra credit, community service, anything that could sway college admissions offices or scholarship boards.

  They broke up when Wren left for college, the year age difference insurmountable. The few emails Jo got from Wren’s college account were braggy and dismissive and had the overall vibe of You had to be there but! you never will be. In hindsight Jo was sure that was how she sounded writing from her dorm, too.

  “Stanford was good,” she told Wren. “The internship program pretty much changed my life. I ended up majoring in communications because of it.”

  “Communications?” Wren snorted. “Really?”

  Jo glanced bashfully at her shoes. “It’s more useful in public relations than an English degree. How was Reed?”

  “Glorious. The most intellectually stimulated I’ve ever been. More heroin use than you’d expect.”

  “White boys will find opioids,” Jo said.

  Wren swept her hair back. In the pink light, her pale cheekbones glowed like moonstone. “Oh, here, when Autumn told me you were coming, I put this in the top drawer as a clue.”

  “You think I’m a snoop?” Jo asked as Wren leaned over and pulled open a drawer.

  “I would have snooped,” Wren said.

  “I would have snooped if I’d known it was you,” Jo admitted.

  Wren handed Jo a grainy picture. Beneath dozens of fingerprint smudges, younger versions of Jo and Wren sat at a cafeteria table with a handwritten sign that read Join the Best of the Best: National Honor Society! Jo had braces and curly bangs. Wren had hair to her hips and an oversize Zero Skateboards hoodie. Their arms were hooked together, surely holding hands under the table. They seemed oblivious to the rest of the club gathered around and behind them—Chad Pendleton blinking, seniors whose names Jo had forgotten throwing up offensive fake gang signs, Bianca Boria with her hair in a simple French braid sitting primly in a plain white sweatshirt.

  “Look at us!” Jo cackled, kicking her heels against the desk. “We were so scrubby! Who let me leave the house like that?”

  “You’re adorable,” Wren said, reaching over to point at the photo. “Look. Your braces match your flip-flops.”

  Jo snorted. “The height of fashion.”

  “The new club found it in the library and lost their minds,” Wren explained. “Now students keep challenging me to skate. They call me Principal Betty. And let me tell you: Skate tricks are much harder than I remembered.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I never had the balance for it,” Jo said. She handed the picture back. She would have loved to add it to the Throwback List, caption it something like These baby gays would hate my current haircut. But she was sure that Wren would never agree to it. Bianca Boria-Birdy probably wouldn’t love it either.

  “You aren’t working right now,” Wren said. It wasn’t a question. Jo wondered if Autumn had filled her in or if Wren just still knew her well enough to assume.

  “My company was acquired, but I wasn’t part of the deal,” Jo said. Quick like a Band-Aid this time. It helped. “I’m at my parents’ house until I find a new job.”

  Wren considered this
with a purse of her lips. “Back in California? It must be a pain to schedule job interviews from here. Unless you particularly love long drives?”

  “I’m not looking to stay here. Obviously—” Jo said.

  “Obviously,” Wren agreed.

  “—but I don’t have anywhere in particular in mind. I’m applying mostly in Portland right now.”

  “How’s your LinkedIn profile?” Wren asked.

  “I’ve been tweaking it,” Jo lied, guiltily flashing back to sitting on her bed at two in the morning deep into a mindless scroll of new bullet journal layouts. “I worked for one company for a long time, so it’s hard to make all of my different promotions stand out.”

  Wren clapped her hands on her thighs. The sound made Jo’s mouth snap shut. “I’m sure you’ve got it handled. But if you want another pair of eyes on it, let me know. We could grab dinner or drinks. Isn’t it bizarre that we’ve never had a drink together? We mastered so many other milestones.”

  Jo’s tongue stuck to the inside of her cheek. “You could slum it with me and the townies at Days sometime.”

  Wren’s forehead creased. “I actually prefer my alcohol unblended, if you can believe it.” She leaned over, grabbing a pen and paper from the drawer. She jotted something and handed it to Jo, her fingers warm and soft. “Here. I still have yours.”

  Looking down, Jo found Wren’s phone number on an ice-blue Post-it. Under it, an address in a different zip code.

  Wren smiled at her. “Why don’t you visit me in civilization? We have coffee shops and bars that don’t serve ice cream.”

  And, just like the old days, Jo would have followed her anywhere.

  COMPLETED ITEMS

  TP Bianca’s house

  Perform onstage

  Get belly button pierced

  Redo the yearbook prank

  TO BE COMPLETED

  Surf the Point

  Host a dinner party

  Have a glitter fight

  Try everything on the menu at Days

  Do a keg stand

  Play hide-and-seek in public

  Break something with a sledgehammer

  Climb the giant anchor on the boardwalk (and survive)

  Get a high score at the boardwalk arcade

  Eat the giant sundae at Frosty’s

  Pose like a pinup girl

  Get a pet

  Learn an entire dance routine

  Eat breakfast at midnight

  Get stoned

  Have a bonfire

  Dig up the time capsule

  AUTUMN: Event reminder! This Sunday we will be taking on one of Sandy Point’s most infamous challenges: Frosty’s Sunday Sundae Surprise ! If we finish the whole thing in less than an hour, it’s free!

  BIANCA: And if we don’t finish it?

  AUTUMN: It’s $50.

  BIANCA: AUTUMN BREEZE KELLY

  AUTUMN: We just won’t fail! Winning is cheap!

  “You and Wren went out?!” Autumn’s shout carried all the way out to sea through the misty morning air.

  Jo hid inside the collar of her coat as they continued up the boardwalk. “Not immediately! I had my sister with me, remember? Last night, I drove out to Forest Grove so we could go to her neighborhood bar. We caught up. Looked at my résumé. She made fun of me for having my Instagram followers on it. Then I drove home.”

  In the window of the Surf & Saucer Tearoom, Jo’s mom waved.

  “Ugh, mortifying,” Jo said. She hurried away from her parents’ shop, her footfalls hollow on the planks.

  Autumn waved back to Deb enthusiastically over her shoulder before she caught up with Jo. She had always liked Phil and Deb Freeman. Their marriage was part of why she hadn’t felt bone-deep shocked by her own parents’ divorce. The Kellys may have been married for longer than the Freemans, but they could never have run a business together. After family vacations, they’d retreat to opposite ends of town—Mom to the craft store next to Fred Meyer, Dad fishing in the cove. They were much better friends now that they saw each other sparingly.

  Past the tourist center; the arcade; and Airborne, the wind- chime- and-kite store, at the farthest end of the boardwalk, where the wooden planks met the concrete of Main Street, there were the ice cream parlor and the anchor statue.

  Staring up at the anchor’s sharp angle, Jo adjusted the strap of her bag, making the camera tripod inside waggle against her shoulder. “How the fuck do people get up there without falling?”

  “Balance,” Autumn said, and her brain helpfully added a chime from Sunday in the Park with George, setting off a low-level earworm. She tipped her head back to look up at the anchor towering over the “blue, purple, yellow, red water.” Including the cement stand it was built into, it was easily eight feet tall. “I used koala arms. I did a sort of hug-scoot-hug-scoot thing. But I was twelve and at peak monkey-bar strength, if you remember. Now.” She gave a suggestive shimmy. “Tell me exactly how I pranked you into what the kids call ‘backsliding.’”

  Jo picked an invisible piece of lint from her wool sleeve. “We didn’t have sex. I didn’t even see her apartment. And there’s no way the kids use slang from How I Met Your Mother.”

  Autumn shook Jo’s arm. “Oh my God, remember when we cared about How I Met Your Mother?”

  “It’s how I learned TV could betray me,” Jo said. She wrapped her silky straight hair around her neck like a scarf. “Should we wait out here?”

  “Too cold.” Autumn shivered. “Let’s go inside and order ice cream.”

  Leaving the statue behind, they went into Frosty’s Franks & Treats.

  Intended for sunnier weather and outdoor seating, Frosty’s was the smallest restaurant on the boardwalk. Generally people went in for a scoop and a hot dog to eat as they walked down the boardwalk or up the beach. Inside there were only two tables and a large corner booth held for special occasions.

  Taking down the Sunday Sundae Surprise counted as a special occasion at Frosty’s. Especially in March.

  “Anything for Phil and Deb’s girl!” crowed the woman behind the counter, whom Autumn had only ever known as Mrs. Frosty, leading to a small period of her childhood when she and Flo believed that the owner of the ice cream shop was a cannibalistic snowman.

  As Jo and Autumn slid into the corner booth, the door swept in a rush of nose-wrinklingly cold air. The Birdys walked in with Florencio. Birdy wore plaid shorts. Bee and Flo both wore hats, although Flo’s wool beanie wasn’t as high fashion as Bee’s red beret and glossy black bumper bangs.

  Bee overdressed when she was anxious. Today, her lipstick matched her hat, coat, and gloves, but not her shoes. Social anxiety of about seven out of ten, if Autumn had to guess. Fairly normal for Bee away from home, especially with Lita left behind.

  “We did ride over together,” Flo said as the three of them approached the booth. “But not in the order you’d expect.”

  “Hey, is it weird that my wife and Coach Kelly need so much alone time?” Birdy joked, scratching his head. Bee smacked him in the chest.

  “Birdy, this is Jo Freeman,” Bee said in a tone of voice that Autumn recognized as her friend’s Mean Mommy tone. It meant Best behavior in front of new people, please. Autumn got Mean Mommy’d whenever she and Bee drank together and they started disagreeing about what constituted an inside voice. Those disagreements got shouty when clear liquor was involved—as they learned the hard way while crashing Birdy’s bachelor party. The smell of vodka still made Autumn feel like she and Bee were going to rumble.

  “Nice to meet you,” Birdy said, reaching over the napkin dispenser to shake Jo’s hand before pulling a chair up to the end of the table. “Dr. Bobby Birdy. Call me Birdy.”

  “Ms. Johanna Freeman.” Jo smiled. “Call me Jo.”

  “Did you guys already order?” Flo asked, taking the seat next to Jo. He craned his neck to see the chalkboard menus above the counter. “I’m kind of feeling a hot dog.”

  “We ordered a family-size sundae, Coach,” Jo said. “It
comes with every flavor of ice cream.”

  “That’s still zero dogs. The sign says treats and franks, Freeman!” Flo said.

  “I wish they had coffee,” Bee said with a shiver as she tugged off her gloves and stuck them in her pocket. “This is the earliest I have ever consumed ice cream.”

  “Ice cream brunch sounded whimsical at the time!” Autumn protested. “You all agreed to it!”

  “It sounded whimsical at the time,” Birdy mused, knocking his knuckles against the table.

  “Sounds like a Lifetime movie,” Jo said. “It Sounded Whimsical at the Time: The Autumn Kelly Story.”

  “Lindsay Lohan can play Autumn,” Flo said.

  “Rude! You know I’m an Ellie Kemper type.” Autumn tossed her auburn hair over one shoulder. “A casting director once called me Kimmy Schmidt Goes to Yoga. It was…not a compliment.”

  “You were too good for Hollywood, sweets,” Bee assured her.

  Florencio turned his attention to Jo, beside him. “Alfie Jay wanted to know if you’d take pictures for the Days menu.”

  “The karaoke guy wants pictures of the food?” Jo asked.

  “He’s the owner,” Florencio explained.

  “He owns the restaurant and runs karaoke?” Jo asked.

  “And he’s our father’s wife’s ex-husband,” Florencio said.

  “And sometimes my mechanic,” Autumn said.

  “Didn’t you ride a bike here?” Jo asked.

  “The restaurant used to be Alfie Jay’s Fridays before he lost his TGI-lawsuit,” Flo explained to Jo, diverting attention from Autumn’s continually dead Saturn. “He liked the pictures you tagged on Instagram. I told him you were planning to try everything, and he said he’d pay you to shoot the menu.”

  “I mean, I totally need the work, but I just put a bright background behind everything. It’s a basic food-blog trick,” Jo said with a shrug. “I don’t have actual food-staging experience.”

  “Then teach yourself how to do it! Use the internet! You’re already taking pictures of everything you order,” Autumn said enthusiastically. She loved seeing Jo’s feed starting to fill up with glamour shots of town. No one ever took pretty pictures of Sandy Point, unless they were aiming at the ocean. The Throwback List had already showcased the art on the walls of the Salty Dog and the seafoam-green trim of Point High against the yellow sky. Glimpses of Sandy Point that used to exist only in Autumn’s memory.