The Throwback List Read online

  “Thankfully, it’s an anthology series, so we won’t have to catch you up on anything,” her dad said.

  “Very unlike Westworld,” Eden said.

  “Oh man.” Phil crowed with laughter and clapped Jo on the shoulder, making her choke on hot cheese. “We’re gonna have to get you a timeline map to get you on board for Westworld.”

  “And a character bible,” Deb added, beaming.

  Jo stifled a groan. If she tried to make a list of things she had absolutely zero interest in, it was anything that required something that could be considered a character bible. She would have been more suited to rooting for everyone Black on competitive cooking shows. With a sectional couch.

  The Freeman living room bore the brunt of Philip and Deb’s various—loyalty wouldn’t quite let Jo think of them as failed—businesses. The bronze replica rococo clock on the mantel was a relic from Another Man’s Treasure, the consignment store they’d run when Jo was very young. As were the two blown-glass vases—whose lives, Jo was pretty sure, had started as bongs—which were being used to bookend stacks of Deb’s creased-spine romance novels. The psychedelic Hawaiian sea-turtle painting watching over Eden’s armchair was left over from their money-guzzling—and people repelling—art gallery, Freeman Fine Arts.

  Even the long lumpy couch had been moved out of the back room to make space for a prep kitchen.

  Jo barely had her mind wrapped around the idea that her parents ran a beach-themed tearoom. She was distantly aware that she was the only person in the family who’d never surfed—her parents both took up the hobby when Eden did. Jo, who had no use for the ocean or hot beverages, hadn’t been down to the boardwalk since the store’s sign changed to say Surf & Saucer.

  And anyway, history had taught her not to get too attached to what was inside the shop. Better to love the unchangeable address.

  Around her, the family talked in odd bursts about the bleak action on-screen. They threw out wild theories about the inevitable plot twist, then shushed one another when someone seemed to be getting too close. Deb covered her eyes a lot and hid behind her husband’s shoulder. Eden ate dinner with her plate an inch under her chin. Phil tried to catch glimpses of the job websites Jo was scrolling through on her phone.

  It was the third time her mother’s guess for an actor on Black Mirror was “from that Helen Mirren movie” that Jo faked a text.

  “Cool,” she said to her own reflection in the cell-phone screen. “I’m gonna go meet up with some people.”

  Her skin went cold at the lie, but she pushed through the feeling. There had to be something in Sandy Point that was open after seven. And if not, then she would go on her new nightly stroll through the Fred Meyer.

  “That’s nice, Jo,” her mom said, one eye on the TV. “Have you and Autumn had a chance to catch up at all?”

  Yes, she hated seeing me so much that she cried. Jo had to keep herself from wincing at the memory. She’d spent all day drafting messages to Autumn apologizing for showing up unannounced. Every attempt felt either too cold or too clingy. She deleted them all.

  “Some.” She got up and prepared to bus her plate, balancing the silverware poorly.

  “Tell her hey from the Freemans,” Phil said. “Don’t be a stranger, et cetera, et cetera.”

  They assumed she was leaving to see Autumn. Who else in Sandy Point did she know?

  “You’ll see her at the Senior Showcase, Dad,” Eden said.

  “That’s months away,” Phil said, grasping his heart. “We’ve got decades left until you graduate and run off to college, leaving us all alone.”

  “At least now you won’t be alone.” Eden held her empty plate up to Jo as she passed. “You’ll have Johanna.”

  That was when Jo decided to google bars in Sandy Point like a goddamn adult.

  Braving an unexpected rainstorm, Jo found herself in a familiar parking lot, at the corner of Wolcott Furniture Emporium and Wolcott Mattress Emporium. Before she got out of her Mini, she ducked her head to read the truncated sign over the door of the massive restaurant: DAYS.

  The hottest karaoke bar and best burgers in Sandy Point—according to a shocking number of positive Yelp reviews—was the reanimated corpse of an abandoned TGI Friday’s.

  All the other bars in town were beach-themed—the Coastline Tavern, Harbor Cove, and, least clever, the Sand Bar. The only internet complaint about Days Bar & Grill was that it wasn’t beachy enough. Making it ideal for Jo.

  She stepped through the front door and into a nightclub-level wall of sound—blenders whirring, cocktails elaborately shaken, a screeching MIDI file blasting from the screens hung above the platform stage. People crowded into booths and perched on tall bar chairs and leaning around the bar were singing along with the performer of the moment, a red-faced guy wailing “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.”

  It felt like opening a door into the atonal beating heart of her hometown. Jo had never expected this town to have even a pulse, much less a nightlife.

  Screens hung in every direction, flashing the lyrics to the current selection in a variety of unreadably bright colors on busy backgrounds. Along with half of the neon sign and the red vinyl booths, Days had also kept the TGI-fryer. The air was thick with old grease and the chemical hypersweetness of chocolate mudslide mix.

  Jo claimed a seat at a mostly unpopulated end of the bar, a comfortable distance from the short stage. She scoped out the room for familiar faces. In a booth in a corner, two girls were sitting on the same side, feeding each other chicken strips. Jo squinted hard to see if she could recognize either of them. The idea of there being a queer population here without her made her heart leap. She recognized a couple of guys sharing a pitcher of beer in the front row as Thatcher Vos’s soccer friends, although none of them had the same hairlines they’d had the day they all crowded into the Voses’ living room and watched Abby Wambach’s miracle score at the Women’s World Cup. It was the only time Jo had ever seen her infamously reserved ex-girlfriend Wren cry. A girl in a Days T-shirt with Barback written across her shoulder blades dropped off a slim dinner menu and a binder of drinks. Jo chose the binder, where she learned that the Days definition of “mixed drink” mostly meant blended. Sandy Point’s namesake cocktail included pineapple vodka and three kinds of ice cream and came with a genuine Sandy Point beach sand dollar, free with purchase.

  Deciding to do as the Sandy Pointers did, she ordered an orange-cream vodka milk shake.

  The bar cheered the chorus of “Call Me Maybe.” Either Sandy Point had a ton of Carly Rae Jepsen stans or the combination of liquor and ice cream made for the most encouraging karaoke audience.

  “Are they always this enthusiastic?” Jo asked the barback. “No one ever divas out and demands to sing alone?”

  “Not on singalong night,” the barback said, tucking her pen behind her ear. She examined Jo’s face—likely for signs of an impending diva tantrum. “You from out of town?”

  “Sort of. I haven’t been here since the sign had all its letters.”

  The barback’s eyelids twitched. She was tired of talking about the missing letters. “Participation is encouraged on Singalong Mondays,” she said, talking faster as the song hurtled toward another chorus. “You gotta pick a song off the most-popular list.” She pointed out the flip menu of songs next to the napkin dispenser. “Then you put your name in with Alfie over by the jukebox. If you’re in a hurry, he loves a bribe.”

  After a cursory glance at the most-popular-song list, Jo took out the journal while she waited for her drink. That morning, she had planned to share it with Autumn. She had pictured them sitting in the creaky folding chairs inside of the auditorium, like they’d done in high school at lunchtime, and looking at the list, flinting their memories together.

  Instead, Jo had literally been asked to leave campus. Like a stranger. Worse than a stranger, because a stranger wouldn’t have made Autumn cry just by existing.

  “Is that Jo Freeman?”

  Autumn’s old
er brother appeared on the other side of the bar. Jo tried not to look surprised. Florencio Kelly was bad-boy hot with good-boy dimples. The addition of two sleeves of tattoos and thirty pounds of muscle only helped.

  Florencio set Jo’s orange booze-shake on a coaster and reached across the bar. Jo’s heart fluttered as she gave him dap, a quiet nod of solidarity in an aggressively white town.

  “Flo Kelly,” she said warmly. Florencio had always been a weight on her Kinsey scale, the cutest dudebro in dudetown. “Weren’t you bussing tables here when I left?”

  His brows pulled into an ironic V. “There were jobs in between, but yeah, I’ve worked up the Days ladder.”

  He noticed the journal open in front of her and craned his neck to take a look. She clumsily swatted it into her purse, hoping her dazzling smile was distraction enough.

  “How upwardly mobile of you,” she noted. She dragged her straw in a thick circle before taking her first sip. The vodka went straight to her head, but she was too knocked down by the sugar to notice. It was the first drink she ever had that actually tasted like a hangover. “I thought you’d be fighting fires. How are Chief Chuck and Cindy?” she asked.

  “Divorced.”

  The straw fell out of Jo’s mouth. “No!”

  Flo nodded in time to the music. “Yep. It’s the Chief and Ginger now.”

  “I can’t tell if that’s a joke. Ginger like Ginger Rogers? Or Ginger like your new stepmother works at the strip club in Oceanside?”

  “Ginger like Ginger Rogers,” Flo said.

  A pang of guilt hit Jo in the chest as she remembered the ghosting accusation. If she were really up-to-date on Autumn’s life, wouldn’t she know that her parents had split?

  Glittering disco-ball lights danced against Flo’s puckish smile. “Autumn said she didn’t think she was gonna see you again.” His gaze drifted over her head. “I guess she was wrong.”

  Turning, Jo instantly spotted Autumn’s distinct shade of red hair near the door. “She must have underestimated my townie bias against tourist-trap nautical bars,” she said, wondering if sending any—or all—of the texts she’d drafted earlier would have made her less nervous at seeing the only person in town she’d consider a friend. She raised her hand to wave, but Autumn abruptly turned away, greeting the approaching barback with a huge smile that felt pointedly not for Jo.

  Jo thought of the map journal. Perform onstage was next on the list. It wouldn’t be too hard with this audience. They’d do most of the heavy lifting by virtue of being collectively louder than the speakers. And Autumn wouldn’t be able to avoid her if she was center stage with a microphone.

  Abandoning the straw, Jo gulped down her drink until her brain froze. Sharp cold melted to liquid warmth as cheap vodka luged around her veins. Eyes watering, she checked the popular-song list again and stood up, resolute.

  “You’re going up there?” Flo asked, pointing to the stage. “You don’t seem like a karaoke person.”

  “I’ve never done it. That doesn’t mean I’m not hiding a secret talent for it.”

  She wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t. Jo didn’t even sing in the shower on the chance the neighbors could hear. She reached into her purse and fished out her credit card. “Film me, will you? And have another drink waiting for me when I get back.”

  “One more Cream Dream for the lady.”

  “I won’t pay for it if you call it that.”

  Leaving Flo laughing behind her, Jo threw her bag over her shoulder and leaped down from her stool. She strode across the restaurant, biting the skin on her lips as she went. This morning, she had embarrassed Autumn at work. She would embarrass herself to make up for it. An eye for an eye. A public shaming for a public shaming. Having no current place of employment, this very crowded bar would have to do.

  Underneath a porkpie hat, Alfie at the jukebox frowned up at Jo. When she held up a folded dollar bill and asked to jump the line, he kept his hands folded over his stomach. “They won’t listen to you, you understand? You want to jump the line just to stand onstage before anybody else?”

  “I’m trying to catch someone before they leave. Number twenty-two, please,” Jo replied, pointing to the list on the table in front of him.

  “What a fucking song to have screamed at you,” Alfie muttered, snatching the dollar out of her hands and shooing her onstage with it. “Yeah, yeah, go on, moneybags.”

  Jo’s limbs felt like they’d been replaced with wet sand as she walked toward the taped X that marked center stage. The lyric screens all flipped from shrieking pink to lime green as her song choice came up on the screen. The opening chords landed at the same time as the audience made a collected grunt of reserved recognition. The intro was a thousand years long; the lyric screens all continued to broadcast the title: “Mamma Mia.”

  While the canned track plink-plonked the manic blinker sound of a digital marimba, Jo cleared her throat into the microphone and talked fast. “I want to dedicate this song to my friend Autumn Kelly. I shouldn’t have dropped by on you earlier. I hope this makes up for—’I was cheated by you!’”

  Thin voice pushed to the limit, Jo sang and disco-danced to ABBA like she was in the Kelly family’s living room instead of the gutted husk of a chain restaurant. Mamma Mia! had been Autumn’s favorite musical throughout most of elementary school. She had watched it on a loop, and for at least two years, it was the only CD in the Kelly minivan stereo.

  Jo knew every single word by heart.

  The crowd made up for anything Jo lacked as a performer. They held notes too long and improvised half harmonies. When Jo quickly ran out of disco moves, she got helpful hints—like macarena and running man and one screamed “Freebird!”—from the former soccer players closest to the stage. When she busted out her running man, she finally heard the familiar whipcrack laugh that could only belong to her ride-or-die bestie.

  “‘I should not have let you go!’” Jo warbled the last note reaching out toward the audience. Squinting past the lyric screens and the flop sweat in her eyebrows, Jo could make out Autumn reaching back to her from the bar next to her brother. The song finally ended, and she staggered past a bewildered Alfie Jay.

  “I got a video of it for you, Jo,” Florencio assured her, waggling his phone. “But it feels more like blackmail.”

  “Johanna Jordan Freeman! Singing and dancing in public?” Autumn gasped, giving her a second round of applause. “What brought that on?”

  Florencio pointed out the two booze shakes sitting in front of the stool Jo was dropping her purse on. “About half of a cocktail I’m no longer allowed to mention. I take it back, Jo. You are definitely a karaoke person. At least by Sandy Point standards.”

  “Wow. Literally the meanest compliment I have ever received,” Jo said. Then, like a badly wrapped gift, she said to Autumn, “ABBA always makes me think of you. It’s your entrance music.”

  Jo realized how long it must have been since she had seen her old friend smile because Autumn had honest-to-God new teeth. Bigger, whiter, straighter teeth like a local news weatherperson, and no gaps between them.

  Jo tried not to look shocked. The gap in Autumn’s teeth had been as foundational a part of her face as her freckles or her rusty-orange eyebrows. But the gap was gone, replaced by bright-white Chiclets.

  “Did I ever tell you that I finally got to do Mamma Mia! at OSU?” Autumn asked. “It was freaking incredible. I was a total self-actualized Christine Baranski queen in high-waist, ruffled bell-bottoms.” She gave a bounce of remembering and turned on a dime. “Flo, put in an order of mozzarella sticks for me, please? I am starving. My oven broke.”

  Her brother frowned at her. “You don’t have an oven.”

  “No, I had a microwave that was my oven and now I have nothing. Except the promise of heavily discounted moz-sticks.”

  “I only discount the ones we drop on the floor first,” Flo said.

  “Whatever you have to do. I’m starving!” Autumn called after him before turning back
to Jo with an ever-so-slightly more reserved smile.

  Jo wasn’t ready to go back to being strangers.

  “Ice cream and liquor?” she offered. She slid the full orange milk shake in front of Autumn. “A very boozy apology for showing up unannounced today? I haven’t been good at keeping in contact. With anyone, not just you. But I’m still sorry for being an accidental ghost.”

  “I accept your sorry-shake.” Autumn took a sip of the drink, then recoiled at the flavor. “Woo! That is vodka-forward. Is this what fueled both karaoke and TP-ing in twenty-four hours?”

  “You forgot trespassing on school grounds,” Jo added with a nervous chuckle.

  “Why do you think I’m so hungry?” Autumn asked. “I had to abandon my lunch when Pat Markey told me you were taking pictures of children.”

  Jo shook her head. “I shouldn’t have let Eden convince me it was okay to drop by. Just because she sounds like an adult doesn’t mean she knows anything.”

  “I understand that you thought you were helping. In the future, please consult other adults. In general, you should tell people what’s going on with you,” Autumn said. “For instance, why are you here? Don’t you kind of hate it here? You know, in Oregon. Not Days.”

  Jo picked at her cuticles, focusing on them rather than Autumn’s expectant face. “I got laid off and had to move home,” she said. Would it ever get any easier to say? Every time felt like she was taking out a Sharpie and scrawling I Fucked Up on her own forehead. “I got back yesterday. And the first thing I found in my room was the list of everything we wanted to do before we dug up the time capsule.”

  “Our time capsule!” Autumn blinked in genuine surprise. “That’s where I left the replica Annie locket Santa got me! Ten paces from the back porch?”

  “Five paces from the fence,” Jo finished. “Behind the doghouse.”

  “Aww, I haven’t thought about that in so long.” Autumn sank down on her elbow, giving her milk shake a contemplative swirl. “What were we supposed to do before we dug it up? I mean, wasn’t it just literally anything Florencio and his friends did, we wanted to do, too?”