Page 1 of The Getaway List
Chapter One
If you think about it, getting rejected from all ten colleges I applied to is quite the feat. I did that whole thing where I picked three “shoo-in” schools, three maybes, and three reaches—even threw in a cheeky application to NYU, just in case a rich distant relative died and left me a zillion dollars for tuition—and got back a slew of “Thank you, but” emails and very thin envelopes addressed to one Riley Larson. Sure, our poor mailman hasn’t looked me in the eye since April, but you know what? Statistically speaking, it makes me kind of a big deal.
My mom is not especially pleased that I turned the rejection letters into a paper-mache collage and stuck it on my graduation cap, but I’ve been a mostly model kid as of late. Not to mention I just conceded my entire summer to helping her at the coffee shop. I’m entitled to a little teenage rebellion. Plus after four long years of sleep deprivation, GPA-related tears, and enduring the humiliation of having a literal earthworm as a school mascot (don’t ask), the students of Falls Creek High deserve some comic relief. I’m only doing my part.
I slide past my classmates toward my seat with the rest of the L last names, sandwiched between an already tipsy Elle Lake (in-state school) and a very grim Chet Lawrence (Harvard, the nerd). The school has apparently placed tiny packs of gummy worms on our seats. A little on the nose, but after I unwrap mine I raise a bright green worm and say, “To getting the hell out of here.”
A good number of classmates join me in this nonsense toast, though for me it comes with a slight bitter taste even a lime-flavored gummy worm can’t wash down. Most of them are getting out of here. Far as I know, I’m going to be stuck in Falls Creek until I Falls Croak.
Before I can indulge in another pity party I scan the crowd of parents behind us for my mom, who in true mom fashion somehow got here before I did. She’ll be somewhere in the front row and because of that I’ve already texted her a list of kids a mile wide who have asked her to record them walking across the stage. She’s happy to do it. Nobody loves a mission more than my mom does. Hell, she’ll probably just do the whole five-hundred-kid graduating class “just in case.”
Before I can find my mom my phone hums to life in my lap with a message from, of all people, Tom.
They’re livestreaming this. Don’t fuck up.
My face blooms with an immediate warmth, a smile tugging at my lips. Tom is my all-time best but also worst friend—best because we would literally die for each other, and worst because in the last year he’s texted with the frequency of a prehistoric rock.
Does the blue of this graduation gown make my existential terror pop?
Tom’s reply is instant: Not as well as a standard black might have, but well enough.
I know there’s no way Tom can actually see me, considering the camera is trained on the stage, but it feels like he’s in this stuffy gym with us just the same. Hell, he would be, if it weren’t for his mom, Vanessa, abruptly moving him up to Manhattan the summer after freshman year of high school in a bold attempt to ruin both of our lives. (All right, it was for her enormously cool job as a scriptwriter and director—her debut indie film became a cult-classic, Oscar-nominated hit—but the other point still stands.)
What happened to the entirety of NYC that you’re bored enough to be watching this? Thought you’d have a whole gang of Columbia nerds to hang out with by now, I text back.
The principal shoots me a pointed look from the stage. I aim my cheekiest grin at him but don’t bother trying to hide my phone. What is he going to do, suspend me again in the last five minutes of my high school career? Been there, permanent recorded that.
So plot twist I think I’m taking a gap year? Anyway NYC’s hottest club is virtual graduations in Virginia. Keep up with the times
I blink at my phone screen and let out an audible “Huh.” Last I checked Tom was all gung ho on the whole Ivy League scene. Hence the mug I got him off Etsy with the Columbia logo on one side and the words “nerd juice” on the other.
Excuse you sir?? What are you doing with a gap year??? And then to soften the assault of my many punctuation marks, I add, If you’re joining the circus and didn’t invite me I’m about to make you dearly regret it.
Tom doesn’t answer immediately, but this is to be expected. Lately anytime I ask Tom a personal question it takes him three to 314 times as long to answer. I settle in with my gummy worms and allow myself the indulgence of completely and utterly dissociating through all five graduation speeches by reading the latest fantasy novel I’ve got downloaded on my phone, only to get bodily yanked by Elle when it’s finally our row’s turn to cross.
A lot of things occur to me as I take the steps up to that stage. Largely unhelpful things—like for instance, I still have no idea how to write out a check even though the lady at the bank recklessly gave me a whole box of them when I opened my account on my eighteenth birthday last month. Or that I have never successfully cooked anything that didn’t have microwave instructions. Or that I have no idea what I’m planning to do with my life, or what I’m doing beyond this summer, or even a solid enough sense of my own hobbies and interests not to immediately fail even BuzzFeed’s most ironclad “Build A Pancake Breakfast And We’ll Tell You Your Future Career” quiz.
All too soon Elle is walking ahead of me, beaming her best “I definitely did not sneak sips from my mom’s boxed wine” smile as she crosses the stage. I feel the outline of my phone in my pocket take a deep breath, buoyed by a sudden calm. Tom’s here. Or as here as Tom can possibly get. It doesn’t matter how much time passes—I always feel like the bravest version of myself when I’ve got him near.
The lights are so bright when I cross the rickety stage that I can barely find the camera livestreaming the event but manage to clock it just in time. I take my diploma from our principal—who could maybe do a better job of not looking so happy to see me go—and when he extends his hand for me to shake I look right at the camera and make a quick series of gestures with one of my hands that ends with me making a trumpet with my fingers against my nose.
The student section erupts in laughter. I blow a kiss for good measure, immediately catching sight of my mom with a palm to her forehead but the camera still diligently held up in the air with the other hand.
Tom’s already texted before I get back to my row. Congratulations, you absolutely ridiculous person. Alongside it are a jumble of hand-gesture emojis that approximate the handshake I just did a short one-sided version of onstage, the silly one we made up in fifth grade.
The smile on my face aches a little, thinking of how far we are from those little ragtag, rowdy kids now.
Now please explain to me what you did to that unsuspecting graduation cap, he adds.
I ease back into my seat, taking the cap off and settling it into my lap to look at all the rejection letters, glossy with glitter glue. Tom knows about the rejections, of course. I text him at least once a week with updates and questions about what he’s up to, even if half the time it’s a bit like talking to a wall. I know he’ll get a kick out of my little art project, but before I can take a picture of it I flip the cap over to look at the inside, feeling like I’m flipping over some tender underside of my heart.
There’s another piece of paper taped precariously underneath. This one is handwritten, and something only Tom would recognize—“the Getaway List,” we dubbed it after Tom moved away. It’s made up of adventures we never went on—an interactive writing class in Manhattan we wanted to take the summer after freshman year before my mom got promoted and needed me to help take over shifts when they were short-staffed at the coffee shop. A camping trip we tried to orchestrate with some friends sophomore year that fell through. A part-time job I wanted to get last summer at the same bike-messenger service where Tom works in the city so we could relive the glory days of spinning our wheels all over this town, but my mom had me indefinitely grounded for the infamous suspension.
The idea was that when we met up again we could do everything on the list to make up for lost time. The problem is we just kept losing more of it. The list started as a denial that we were apart, but over time just became an acceptance that there was nothing we could do to change it. An acceptance that’s led me to this absurd moment now, when it’s hitting me with a fresh ache that I haven’t seen the person who knows me best of anyone in the whole world in almost three years.
It feels like a risk reminding Tom, because neither of us has mentioned it in months. I’m worried it would almost feel like admitting defeat. Only as I’m sending Tom a photo of it and feel an uncharacteristic shiver of nerves do I understand the truth—part of me is still hopeful we could do some of it, and another louder part of me is scared that we’re so far removed from the kids who started that list that Tom wouldn’t even want to anymore.
Tom doesn’t reply right away, but I do get a text from my mom that says Can’t wait to show this to your grandparents, along with a photo of me grinning like a jackal onstage with my thumb jammed against my nose. I snicker and tuck my phone away for the rest of it, trying to put the anxiety out of my mind.
