The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

11
I usually don’t work on Sundays, but when I heard Nina needed apples from Snyder’s Orchard for the
first batch of apple tarts this season, I jumped at the opportunity to check another item o the list.
Especially one that doesn’t involve jumping off a cliff.
Although… this one isn’t exactly going to be easy.
“I never knew why we didn’t come apple picking when I was a kid, but I guess now I know,” I tell
Blake as we each grab an empty brown basket before strolling through the grass to the orchard, the
afternoon sun beating down on us. “Take it in, Blake. We’re about to get banned.”
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that Mom had done this.
But it’s there on the list. A check mark sitting right next to it.
Was she as nervous as I am right now? I think about the envelope of certificates, the life she had led
before her invincible summer.
She must have been.
“Banned? Over an apple? I mean, there are thousands of them here!”
I can’t help but smile as she stops to stare in awe at the rows and rows of apple trees, her brown eyes
wide as she takes it all in. Each pair of rows is a dierent variety, a wooden placard broadcasting the
dierent kinds. She’d never been apple picking before and was beyond excited when I texted her to see
if she wanted to tag along.
I feel bad this will be her first—and last—apple-picking experience here at Snyder’s Orchard. Going
every other weekend in the summers and fall had ruined it a bit for me, but I still remember how fun
that first time with Kiera and Paul had been.
“It’s not just any apple, Blake,” I say as I lead her over to the Honeycrisp section. Nina likes to use
them for her tarts because they have just the right crunchy texture and sweetness. “It’s an apple from
the first tree they planted here at Snyder’s Orchard. Half the people employed at this place just stand
next to it all day, making sure no one picks an apple from it.”
“They just stand there? Sounds like I picked the wrong summer job,” she says, the two of us laughing
as we head deep into the orchard, the trees folding in around us, more and more apples clinging to the
branches the farther back we get. Families with kids usually peter out by the halfway point.
The closer we get to the tree, the more my heart hammers in my chest.