The List (4 page)

She sighed, like she was really getting fed up with my elusiveness. “What do you mean, ‘I guess'?”

My heart pounded and the temperature shot up twenty degrees.
Here we go
. “I don't have a lot of experience with stuff like that.”

Cami exhaled and I finally tore my eyes away from the now disintegrating towel. She shook her head and tapped her toe. “Okay, confession time. You keep saying your dad was overprotective and all that, but I assumed that just meant you had an early curfew. Now I'm getting the impression that wasn't it. Exactly how strict was he?”

I took a deep breath and squeezed the paper towel tighter. A few drops fell from the damp paper before I finally relaxed my hand and tossed it in the garbage. Cami never took her eyes off me. Even though the expression on her face made me want to run and hide, I knew I needed to be honest. After all, I was counting on her to help me get through all these new experiences. There was no way I could do it on my own, and Cami seemed like the perfect amount of wild for me. Not so much that she'd get me arrested, but enough that she'd help me get a little drunk and maybe go skinny-dipping.

“I wasn't allowed to do anything,” I mumbled. I focused on her chin instead of her eyes.

Cami huffed. “Look at me.” I looked up and she narrowed her eyes on my face. “What do you mean?”

“I wasn't allowed to go anywhere without my brothers.”

“Okay . . .” Cami pursed her lips for a few seconds before saying, “So you've never dated?” I shook my head. “Never gone to the prom or to a party?” I shook my head again. “What did you do in high school?”

I shrugged and shifted from foot to foot. “I played volleyball and went out with my brothers and their friends.”

“Didn't any of their friends ever flirt with you or ask you out?”

“I was one of the guys. Plus, my brothers never would have let it happen. It was ingrained in them from a young age that they needed to look out for me.”

“Why?” Cami whispered. “Why was your dad so protective?”

That was the one thing I couldn't talk about. None of us talked about
why
I had to be protected. “He just was.”

Cami exhaled again and ran her hand through her hair. “I wish I'd known this before we went out.” She tapped her toe on the floor, then shook her head. “We need to go home.”

My mouth dropped open and I shook my head desperately. I thought she would help me! I didn't think she'd be on my dad's side or I never would have told her. “I don't want to go home!”

She waved her hand in the air, then grabbed my arm. “Relax. I just think we need to discuss this in a more private place. I'm not going to keep you trapped in a bubble. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.”

I relaxed and allowed her to lead me through the bar even though I wasn't ready to go home. She was going to help me. Somehow, I'd known the second I set eyes on Cami that I could count on her.

I
t was almost one by the time Cami and I were both showered and dressed in our PJs. Ryan and Chris had been nice enough to walk us back to the dorm, even though to them it was still early. It probably had something to do with the beer they spilled all over me.

Cami pulled her desk chair out and took a seat. She motioned for me to do the same. “Sit down and let's figure this out.”

I smiled because she suddenly seemed so mature. Nothing like the silly girl I'd met earlier who complained about not having enough room for her clothes.

She drummed her fingers on her knee and pressed her lips together. “I want to get this out there because it's nothing I ever want to go through again, understand?” Her words made the smile melt off my face and my pulse kick up a notch. “You can't go crazy, okay?”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed and absentmindedly played with her wet hair. “I had a friend in high school, my best friend. Her parents were so strict. They were really religious and kind of took it overboard. She wasn't allowed to go to parties and she had an early curfew. She couldn't see R rated movies or date or go to the prom or do really any of the stuff the rest of us did. They didn't even let her wear makeup. It wasn't a big deal until the end of our sophomore year. That's when she met a boy she liked and started to get really mad. Then she just went crazy. She was sneaking out and drinking, rebelling. She used me as a cover a lot, and I was too stupid to know I shouldn't let it happen.”

Cami paused and looked down at her hands. She sniffed a little. She didn't look at me when she started talking again. “At the beginning of our junior year we went to this party. She was drunk and so was the guy she was dating, but I let them get in a car anyway.”

My heart pounded and I leaned forward. Of course, I knew what was coming, but I was still on the edge of my seat. My insides twisted into tight knots that made me want to throw up the two glasses of beer I'd had at the bar.

“They were in an accident. He was killed on impact.” Cami stopped talking and stared at her hands.

“What about your friend?” I whispered.

“She's still in the hospital. Brain dead, but hooked up to machines. Her parents refuse to pull the plug.”

All the air left my lungs. “I'm so sorry, Cami.” I was perfectly aware of how insignificant those words were, but there was nothing else I could say.

Cami took a deep breath and shook her head before looking up at me. “That's why I wanted to leave the bar. I totally get you wanting to go out there and experience new things, but you need to be careful about it. Okay?”

“I don't want to go crazy, Cami. I just want to experience the normal things teenagers experience.
While
I'm still a teenager. I'll be nineteen next month, and I haven't done anything! I have one year.”

Cami nodded as a slow smile spread across her face. “Kind of like a bucket list for your teen years.”

I grinned and my wet hair bounced around when I nodded emphatically. “Exactly!”

Cami jumped to her feet and started pacing the room. “That I can help with! But we should start a list right now. Write it all down, so we can mark it off as we go.”

My insides jumped and fired to life, and I got to my feet too. “That's a great idea.”

Cami grabbed a notebook and flipped it open, then grabbed a pink Sharpie. At the top of the paper she scribbled
Annie's Bucket List
. “Okay, what's first?”

I chewed on my bottom lip and ran my hand through my damp hair. “Let's start small. Buy makeup.”

Cami nodded and jotted it down, then said, “And some new clothes and shoes. Girly stuff.”

She wrote down,
buy a dress and heels
and I inwardly cringed. Wearing heels seemed a bit unrealistic, but I was determined to do this. Even if I fell out of my shoes and broke my arm in the process.

“Get highlights,” I said.

Cami giggled while she wrote. “With your hair, I'd get lowlights.”

I nodded even though I had no idea what she was talking about. She'd know better than me.

Cami looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Get your ears pierced?”

“And something else too! Like my nose or my belly button!” I was getting really excited. Bouncing around like Cami. I'd always been intrigued by the way most girls these days glinted under the lights. It was rare, especially in California, to see girls in their teens without multiple piercings. I wanted to be one of those girls.

Cami wrote it down before looking back at me. “A tattoo?”

I hadn't even considered that one. Something inside me jumped, but with the painful way it twisted I wasn't sure if it was fear or excitement. “I don't know . . .”

“We'll put that one on the shelf for now. What else? Just fire them off and I'll write as fast as I can.”

I took a deep breath and went for it. She was willing to help, so I shouldn't be scared about revealing how little I'd done. “Go on a date, go to a formal, go skinny-dipping, get drunk, have a first kiss, stay up all night, take a road trip with a group of friends.” I took a deep breath and peered at her out of the corner of my eye, but she hadn't even blinked and she was still scribbling away. “Have sex. . . .”

Cami didn't pause, and she didn't look at me. Which I was grateful for. I couldn't see my reflection, but my face had to be bright red.

“What else?” Cami said when she'd written down the last one.

I tapped my toe on the floor and shook my head. “I don't know. What else have you done?”

Cami pressed her lips together. “We could do something like get a guy's number in a bar, or get a fake ID?”

I nodded excitedly. “Yes! And I want a guy to buy me a drink. Not a drunk one either, a sober one who doesn't have beer goggles.”

Cami giggled and nodded while she wrote. “Good idea.”

What else? I knew there had to be other things I was missing. Things that most teens tried. “What about smoking a cigarette?”

Cami's face scrunched up, but she wrote it down anyway.

It was number seventeen, and twenty seemed like the perfect number to me. “Just three more, then we'll be done.”

“You could always put tattoo on there. I'll even get one too.”

My stomach tightened, but I nodded anyway. “Okay. But we still need two more.”

“How about break someone's heart,” she said with a giggle. “Or better yet, get your heart broken? That's a pretty normal teenage experience.”

I laughed because it seemed like the dumbest thing ever. Asking to get my heart broken. Who would want that? Me, that's who! Having my heart trampled on would just prove I was actually living for a change, and it seemed like the perfect way to round off my list.

“Write them both down.”

Cami smiled and wrote it down, then proudly held the list up for me to see.

Just looking at it made my heart beat faster. This was really going to happen for me.
Something
was going to happen for me. I was so grateful to Cami for her willingness to help that I almost hugged her.

Cami pursed her lips and examined the list. “Tomorrow's Sunday; we can easily knock a few of these off the list if we borrow Ryan's car. We can head to the outlets in North Charleston, get you some clothes and your ears pierced.” She nodded and her eyes went over the neatly printed words before looking up at me. “You have money?”

I licked my lips nervously and nodded. My dad wasn't going to like it, but it was my money. “I have a trust fund that was set up for me when my mom died.”

Cami hesitated and I braced myself for questions about my mom and how much money I had and what had happened. My gut clenched with anticipation. Remarkably, she didn't ask.

“Okay. So, we'll get Ryan's car and go take care of this stuff.” She pointed to numbers one, three, and four, then rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “We'll have to ask around. Try to find a good place to get your hair done. Until then we can easily crash a party and get you drunk. And skinny-dipping! Yes! That will be an easy one.”

I laughed and shook my head. “We don't have to do it all in one weekend, Cami. We have a year.”

“But so many of these will be so easy!”

“But we can spread it out.”

She sighed and shut the notebook, then tossed it on the desk. “We should get some sleep. That way we'll be nice and rested to shop our asses off tomorrow!” She grinned from ear to ear, and I couldn't help smiling in return.

Before I climbed into bed, I pulled my cell phone out from under my pillow. I'd missed a few calls from my dad and one from each of my brothers. I didn't want to cut them out completely: that would kill them. Plus, it wouldn't be fair to my dad after everything he'd been through. But I couldn't keep letting him run my life. Moving away was a big step and had resulted in dozens of fights, but ultimately I'd won. And I had no intention of going back.

After turning the ringer off on my phone, I tucked it away. I'd deal with calling them all later. It was too late now anyway. Plus, I had no idea what I was going to say once I had them on the phone.

I flipped off the lights and climbed into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin. My stomach buzzed with excitement and I felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve. There was no way I was going to be able to get a good night's sleep.

“Thanks for doing this, Cami,” I said to the dark room.

Her mattress crunched and she said, “No problem. It will be fun.”

I chewed on my lip—a nervous habit that I needed to get rid of. “Can we just keep the list between the two of us, though? It's kind of pathetic and I don't want anyone else to know.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” she said, mid-yawn.

Her mattress crinkled again and I could imagine her rolling over onto her side. I did the same and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to calm my pounding heart so I could drift off to sleep. It was hours before I finally managed it, and the smile was still pasted on my lips when I did.