Page 10 of The Summer List

Priya still has her arms crossed. “You better be ready to face Ma’s wrath if you get anything besides a nose piercing.”

“There are other things I can get pierced that Ma will never see.”

Priya’s eye literally twitches as she processes what those options might be, but she lets Shal write the ninth item down on the list.

“One more to go,” Shal says. “This is the grand finale we all have to agree on. Got anything to start us off?”

She turns an expectant look on us.

“Uh…have the best summer ever?” I joke.

Shal glares while Priya laughs with me.

“You two are idiots,” Shal informs us.

“Well, what’s even left?” I retort. “We’ve covered public nudity, drugs, and tattoos. What other wild and free summer girl activities are there? Breaking and entering? Grand theft auto?”

Priya and I keep laughing, but Shal ignores us and picks up her pen again.

“Hey, wait!” Priya protests when she notices Shal is writing something. “We’re supposed to pick this one together.”

The pen goes still.

“I can cross it out if you want. I just…didn’t want to say it out loud,” Shal says in a quiet and very un-Shal-like voice, her chin tilted down and her hair falling forward to hide most of her face. “Just promise you won’t laugh when you read it, okay?”

Priya and I exchange a look before we promise not to laugh and then peer over her shoulders as she peels her hand away from the paper.

“Fall in love,” Priya murmurs.

Those three words are spelt out on the page in the same bold and steady handwriting as the rest of the list, but something about them looks softer, even timid.

“I said don’t laugh,” Shal says with a huff, even though Priya and I haven’t made a sound.

I can name at least half a dozen people from school who fell in love with Shal in the past year alone, and even though she’s gone on a couple dates with some of them, she always brushes them aside sooner than later. She always says she’s got bigger things on the horizon than crushes and boys.

“It’s not even that important,” she adds, her voice brisk. “I just want to know if it’s all bullshit or not. I mean, who even knows what falling in love means, anyway?”

She bends over the paper again and scrawls the words ‘whatever that means’ at the end of the last sentence.

Priya and I share a look.

“I like it,” Priya says.

I nod. “Me too.”

Shal holds the paper up where we can all see it, and we take a moment to read over whatever the hell we’ve just committed ourselves to:

SUMMER BUCKET LIST

1. Skinny dip in the mansion’s pool.

2. Have a summer fling.

3. Smoke a joint.

4. Perform at an open mic.

5. Make a new friend.

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