Page 31 of Boots, Bucket Lists & Bad Ideas
I look at Natalie. “Where did you get this?”
“The garbage.”
“You took it out?” I still remember the night I tossed it in the trash can by the football field.
Natalie nods. “This was your life back then, and I thought maybe one day, you’d want to look back through it. All the memories can’t be bad.”
She has no idea.
My head is reeling. My sister had been so young. Too young to think that one day I would want this.
“But I didn’t read it. Never,” she promises. “And I thought now was a good time to give it back.”
“Thirty things to do by thirty.” Josie reads the outside. “You have a week to complete it.”
“I can’t complete this.”
“Why not?”
I press my lips together as I run my fingers along the spine and to the lock on the flap. She’d never understand, and I would never tell her—I’d never tell any of them.
“What did you bring to break the lock?” Hannah is tidying up the table, stacking plates and cutlery like she’s in her own kitchen.
“I didn’t.” Natalie folds the gift bag. “I figured she knows the combination.”
“After ten plus years, you think she remembers?” Hope slaps Hannah’s hand when it comes for her half plate of nachos. “I’m not finished.”
“I remember the code.”
I spin the numbers on the lock: nine, one, seven.
The three numbers that meant everything and now mean nothing.
I slowly open the book. My short, chipped nails hover over a thick page covered in a frenzy of half-formed sketches and cryptic symbols: a slanted, towering roof, skull-patterned rain boots hanging off the edge, a broken umbrella, jagged and twisted.
Lightning streaks.
Dark smudges spill, like rain, but too thick to be.
A footprint, disappearing into nothing.
The page pulses heavily and dangerously just like I remember.
“It looks dark.” Hannah leans her chin on my shoulder. “I didn’t realize our eldest sister had this spiraling dark side underneath the organized perfectionist.”
Only one person knows.
“Does this mean something?” she asks.
A smile steals my lips. “You can’t tell?” I tilt my head to find her horrified look.
“No.”
I laugh.
“Let me see.” Josie reaches over Celi, her hand snapping open and shut, demanding I hand it to her.
I flash it at her and then spin it toward the rest of the table. I’m not quite ready to hand over this unfiltered side of myself.
