“I’m coming, I’m coming!” I called, dusting my hands off on my jeans and scurrying to the door. I hurried to open it and grinned when I saw Amber standing before me.
“About time!” I laughed. “I’ve been doing this for an hour!”
“Oh, be quiet!” she said, hugging me quickly and walking in as I shut the heavy door behind her. She dropped her bag and strolled into my apartment, comfortable in it as though it were her own. She flopped down on the couch in front of the boxes I’d been organizing and peeked inside. “So what’s all this? Stuff you’re taking with you when you move or stuff you’re leaving behind?”
I sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of her. “Neither. It’s this old box I found in my closet. I had no idea it was even in there.” I shook my head and chuckled. “I guess it’s stuff I brought with me from my parents’ house. It’s from back when I was in high school.” I started riffling through the box, pulling out a few things.
Amber leant down and reached in, pulling out a large rectangular item. “What’s this?” She flipped it over and a huge grin spread across her warm face. “Oh my gosh, is this one of your high school yearbooks? What year is this?” She counted silently on her fingers, looking off to the side. “This is when you were sixteen!”
I lunged forward and snatched it out of her hands. “No! We are not looking at my yearbook pictures, no way! I’ve been trying to forget how fucking awful they were for the last ten years!”
She grinned mischievously and reached towards me, grabbing the corner of the thick book. “Please? I’m sure it’s not nearly as bad as you think!”
I shook my head vigorously at her. “You have no idea how bad every single one of my pictures was.” I tugged back on the book but she pulled at the same time and it slipped out of my grasp, the combined force of our tugging sending it flying over the back of the sofa. It landed with a loud thud on the hardwood floors and I scrambled over to grab it before Amber could steal it from me again.
“Hey, what’s this?” she asked, her voice full of curiosity.
“What are you talking about?” I shoved my yearbook into the bookshelf behind me and returned to the sofa, sitting next to her.
“This,” she replied, holding up an ancient looking scrap of paper. I gingerly took it from her hand, looking closely at the worn folds and yellowing edges. It looked so old and dusty that I feared by unfolding it, it might dissolve into thin air before me.
“Unfold it!” Amber exclaimed impatiently, trying to grab it from me.
I leaned away from her, ensuring the paper was out of her reach. “Hey, it’s my paper, and I’ll unfold it when I want to!” I carefully separated the edges from each other and unfolded it bit by bit. On the inside of the paper were fading lines of penciled cursive script and messy doodles all around the edges. At the very top on all caps was written “The List: to be completed before marriage or any other form of monotonous living.” My face lit up as I scanned the page. “Oh my god,” I said in a whisper, shaking my head as a smile spread across my lips.
“What? What is it?” Amber leaned over my shoulder and gazed at the long-forgotten page. “You wrote this?”
I chuckled. “Yep, when I was sixteen years old. God, I can’t believe it’s been ten years already. Feels like yesterday.” I leaned back and pulled my legs up onto the couch, reading over the first few items I’d written down: See Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower, Eat fish and chips in London, Get at least one tattoo, Sleep under the stars, Fall in love with a boy whose language you can’t even speak. It went on and on, filled with the lofty dreams I’d had as an awkward, restless teenager anxious to get away from my tedious life. I sighed happily, running my fingers lightly over the page. “I’ve actually done all of these things, Amber. Without even remembering I’d made this list, I did it all.”
She read over my shoulder, smiling here or there at a few of the things I’d written, maybe recalling a few that we’d done together. “Was this like your bucket list or something?”
I chuckled. “Well…not quite. It was all the things I wanted to do before I got married.”
Amber raised her eyebrow and looked at me with a look that said you are actually insane. “Before you got married? Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I never really liked the idea of marriage. It seemed like a trap that boring old people fell into when they weren't exciting enough to be on their own.”
“You are so weird,” Amber laughed, shaking her head. “It’s funny that you found it just as you’re about to move in with your fiancé, don’t you think?”
I chuckled to myself, flipping the list over in my hands to fold it back up. “Yeah, that is a bit ironic…” My voice trailed off as my eyes caught sight of a line of script across the top of the page. I bit my lip and furrowed my brow, reading the item labeled #26.
“There’s something I have to do.”
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn