Page 35

The heist starts when Blair leaves for sunrise yoga. I wish I could say that we creep out from the shadows the moment her taillights turn off our street, a SWAT team wielding paint sprayers like weapons, but it happens in waves.

Everett and his parents are first.

It was Everett’s idea, after all, and Hank’s construction company.

We were wrapped up on his couch talking well after a movie’s credits rolled when he suggested it.

He knew I’d object, so he told me his dad already cleared his schedule for it.

At dinner, Hank did the rest of the convincing, bribery via crab cakes. My only job was to pick a color and get Blair out of the house before the sky blushed.

The Bishop family climb out of the company truck.

Liezel lays out tarps on the grass.

Everett hooks up power tools and Hank starts sanding the dead blue paint from the siding.

I pluck unnamed weeds from the edge of the house and trim the hedges sprouted at the windows.

Haven and Holden come next with donuts.

Mason arrives with popsicles after he overslept his alarm.

Jorge rolls in with takeout boxes of hushpuppies and chicken tenders from last night’s rush.

Between snacking and water breaks inside, we take to electric sanders, painter’s tape, and paint sprayers. In the oppressive summer heat, we coat the house in fresh paint, all of us singing along to dad rock. Haven and I picked out the color yesterday, both of us swayed by kitschy names until the perfect shade presented itself.

Sweat holds me like a promise. Hair spills from my messy bun. My thighs stick together.

I stop during the rush to change into a tank top and stay inside to clean the inside of the house. Since Everett and I did most of the heavy lifting earlier this summer, this mostly entails surface mess: dusty bookshelves, cluttered counters, piles of laundry. I throw away years-old unread magazines and expired food in the pantry, put away the new groceries piled on the counter. Jorge helps me fold blankets and stage the house into a home. I sweep the hard floors into a pile of stubborn sand and dirt, and Jorge follows with a mop. The smell of bleach and the coconut candle lit on the kitchen island make it smell like my first day here eight summers ago.

How the universe has spun since then.

The hardest thing about today is the matter on the front porch. I stand there chewing on my thumb nail, staring at the one-year-old roses, daisies, lilies, and carnations rotten in their pots. We can’t keep walking past dead flowers, but I can’t bring myself to throw them out. It feels too much like forgetting.

“Let me do it,” Everett says, reaching for a flowerpot.

“No.” I grab his arm, still staring at them. “I have to do it.”

We stand there for a bit. He watches me stare at the pot, tears forming in my eyes. I blink and let them fall, then bite my lower lip to keep from crying too much. Everett’s still quiet, slinking his arm around me, pulling me into him. Even when he wipes the tears from my chin and rocks me in place, I still can’t stop staring. I’m stuck in a trance whisking me back to the day I found out, to the day of the funeral when we loaded the flowers in the car, to the days of staring at them through the window—bright and alive—when I felt anything but.

I need to do it.

I breathe in and out, wipe final tears from my eyes, and grab a pot of carnations. This is for Blair, this is for Hadley, this is for me, I repeat on the way to the trash can.

I drop the whole thing in upside down, then let Everett do the rest.

Jimmy Buffett and Bruce Springsteen sing of summers past. Liezel finishes cutting the paint around the eave of the house, which makes the spraying easy. Hair spills from my bun but my hands are too busy with the sprayer to care. I blow it out of my face but it comes right back. I didn’t think painting would be such a full body workout, but my muscles light up in protest. I don’t object. I just let myself get mesmerized by the steady progress.

This is for Blair, this is for Hadley, this is for me.

After a water hose battle in the backyard, we settle down with fluffernutters. This time, the sticky sandwich takes me back to fishing with Haven and Holden. Old memories died with the flowers. New memories sit across from me on the shady front porch.

I stick my peanut butter and marshmallow tongue out at them. They do it back. Everything about it is perfect.

Twelve hours of dirt, dried paint, and sweat have passed until there’s only one blue strip left.

Hank stops his spraying to grant me the honors. My arms shake, both from the finality of the moment and because they aren’t used to this. I finish the job in the spotlight of my friends’ gaze.

Behind me, the yard erupts in applause. If my cheeks weren’t already blazing hot, this moment would do the trick. I wipe sweat off my forehead with the only clean patch of my arm, crack a smile at all of them, and give them a bow fitting of a karaoke stage.

I step back and admire our hard work.

What once was a choked-out, lifeless blue is now alive with the snap of bubblegum pink. Pink cotton candy crystals dissolving on a warm tongue. A strawberry ice cream cone melted in the August heat.

Coral Daydreams—Hadley’s favorite color put into words by a paint company.

“It looks amazing.” I can’t contain myself. I wrap my arms around Hank, who made this all possible. “Thank you.”

“Thank you.” He squeezes his hand on my shoulder, gives me a shake.

I haven’t the slightest clue what he could be thanking me for, but I don’t object.

The jagged edges of the driveway press into my warm skin. The six of us are tattered from the day, covered in an explosion of pink paint, but we can’t go celebrate at Sunset Scoop just yet—the best part is yet to come.

My legs fall asleep from Everett’s head on my thigh, but I don’t care. I brush my hands through his hair, pulling dried paint from individual strands. “Thank you guys. You have no idea how much this means.”

“It really was no problem,” Holden says.

Haven nudges me. “And you don’t know how much you mean to us.”

“Yeah, you’re the only tourist I can stand,” Mason says.

I stick my middle finger up with a smile that means anything but.

Blair’s car pulls up to the driveway. Through the windshield, I see her mouth gape open. She looks between us and the house like she can’t believe the world she left blue this morning became coral by evening.

I wake up my sleepy legs, running to the driver’s side of the car now parked in front of six teenagers and a fresh start.

“Welcome home,” I say.

A coral house. Railing as white as a full moon. A house wiped clean from a tragedy and given a second chance.

“This is our house?” Her voice runs rampant. Her hand cups over her mouth. Her eyebrows crease in pleasant disbelief.

“This is our house!” I take her hands and pull her into me, my arms wrapped so tightly around her like I’m trying to squeeze out every last bit of pain. We stand behind an open car door, putting each other back together like we found the last puzzle piece fallen between two cushions.

She pulls back after what feels as long as the tide coming in and going back out.

“I can’t believe this.” She wipes tears from her cheeks, the first happy tears to grace her face in over a year. “How did this happen?”

“Everett’s parents. And us.” I point to everyone sitting cross-legged on the concrete. “We’ve been working since you left this morning.”

They all smile and wave back at Blair. Haven jumps up first and hugs her. The rest follow, giving the last bit of their love to a woman who lost her own.

Blair cracks a smile, then looks between all my friends. “Thank you guys so much, for everything. Hadley would have loved this.”

The words are full, whole, dancing with the evening breeze.

Hadley’s name hits for the first time without sparking remorse, instead filling me with a sense of bittersweet acceptance. I’ll feel it every time I see something coral, every time I look to my horoscope for a sense of pseudo direction, every time I find myself too afraid to do something she would have dove head first into. I’ll feel it every time I see a shooting star and think it’s her in the sky, granting me the life she wants me to live out for her.

I know I will never stop thinking about her.

I know I never want to.

I exhale for the first time in what feels like years, staring in the face of rollercoaster tracks on their way up.