The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

black bralette, visible through the hole in her tank top, “I love you” painted neatly across her rib cage.
“I like your tattoo,” I say, wondering what it would be like to reach out and touch it. To trace the
words. “I didn’t know you had one.”
Blake glances down at the writing on her side, smiling. “It’s my mom’s handwriting. She wrote me a
letter the day before she went into labor.” Her face is thoughtful as she carefully props the pillow up
behind her. “It’s like she knew, you know? It’s like she knew she wouldn’t make it.”
“Maybe she did. Maybe, on some level, she knew.” For the first time in a long time, I think about my
mom on the day she died. “e week before my mom died, she was in so much pain.” ey tried
everything. Morphine. Fentanyl patches. None of it worked. “en, on the last day, she was…
completely peaceful. ere was almost this calm that settled around the room. Like she knew it was
coming.”
We’re both silent for a minute, the only sound the hum of the radio, the crashing of the waves as
they roll steadily onto the sand, falling over one another.
“What did it say? Her letter?” I ask.
Blake takes her glasses o and leans her head back. “A lot of stu. at she loved me. at she
wanted me to live a full and happy life. at I was her favorite person in the world and she hadn’t even
really met me yet.” A smile pulls at her lips. “But also stu that means something new to me now, you
know? She had a line in there like, ‘Take it from me, Blake, even the most unexpected places and people
can turn into the greatest adventures.’ And then I moved to Huckabee, and met you, and it became real
in a whole new way. I feel like every time I read it, I get something else out of it.”
I can’t deny the fact that I literally stop breathing for a second at her words.
“I definitely get that,” I say when my air finally returns, and Blake shifts to look at me.
“What’s it like?” she asks. “Doing the list?”
“Well, it’s kind of like what you said that day at my house. It’s made me feel closer to her.” I think
for a minute, about how much has changed since the day I found the list. How much I have changed,
the list and my mom guiding me forward in new and unexpected ways. at moment of clarity I had at
the beach about getting out of Huckabee. e free fall of the cli jump. Even this moment now,
talking about her. “It’s more than that, though. Doing this list has made me feel more like myself again.
More like I did before…”
My voice trails off and I shrug, shaking my head. “I don’t know. It’s made me feel like I don’t have to
worry about losing everything all the time, or getting hurt, or having everything come crumbling down
around me. Like I can take a risk and everything won’t be the worst-case scenario just because it once
was. Like I’m… I don’t know.”
“Lucky?” Blake asks, and the word feels electric.
It’s the word my mom would use.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding, the word feeling right for the first time in a long time, not a burden or a lie
anymore. A feeling I thought had completely run out. A feeling I thought I would never get back.
“Lucky.”
“at makes it more than a bucket list, then. It’s a lucky list,” Blake says, and I can’t help but like the
sound of it.
“God, that’s so my mom,” I say. “She was lucky right up until she got cancer, let me tell you that.”