“Bucket,” Collins said, turning to my brother, “how well-versed are you in the Beatles?”

“I’m looking through you,” Frank said, shaking his head, and Collins pointed to my brother.

“With a little help from my friends,” he said, defensively. “Since when is that not allowed?”

“Anyway,” Dawn said, turning toward me. “I want to set you up with someone.” This was surprising enough that I just blinked at her, and saw Frank turn his head sharply to look at Dawn.

“I’m so tired,” Collins was saying as he flipped through the menu. “Maybe I’ll get some coffee.”

“I don’t . . . ,” I started. I was about to tell Dawn that I wasn’t interested, even though I really couldn’t have said why. It wasn’t like I still wasn’t over Gideon, or anything like that. “Um, who is it?”

Collins was snapping his fingers at Frank, who said, sounding distracted, “Right. Um . . .” A moment later, he seemed to realize what he’d done. “Wait,” he said quickly. “Help. You can’t do that. . . .”

“I just totally won!” Collins yelled, pumping his fist in the air. “There is not, to the best of my knowledge, a Beatles song called ‘Right Um.’ ” He drummed his hands on the table excitedly, then leaned back against the booth, like he was settling in. “Bucket, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a place called Liverpool . . .”

I looked at Frank. “Sorry you lost,” I said, even though I couldn’t be happier this game had ended.

Frank just shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll do it again at some point,” he said. “Every few years, we seem to need to try and prove who’s a bigger fan. But listen,” he said, suddenly looking serious, the way he did when we were strategizing about my list. “I have the perfect solution for number thirteen.”

Thirteen was “Sleep under the stars,” and I looked across the table at my brother, who seemed absorbed in learning about how Paul and John met. While I appreciated Frank’s initiative, I’d had an idea for this brewing ever since I’d talked to my mother on the porch. “I’ve got that one taken care of.”

“You do?” he asked, sounding surprised. “Oh. Okay. What is it? And when?”

I just looked at him, suddenly knowing the exact right way to answer this. “It won’t be long,” I said, and was rewarded when Frank smiled, suddenly, like I’d just surprised him.

That night, I tiptoed into my brother’s room, trying not to make any noise, but finding it difficult when I kept impaling my feet on the toys that seemed to cover his floor more evenly than his carpet. “Beckett,” I whispered when I got close to his bed. “Hey. Beck. Ow.” I tried to take a step closer, and felt something small and plastic lodge itself in my foot.

“Em?” Beckett sat up in bed, blinking at me in the faint glow of his nightlight, which he always swore he didn’t need. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to shake what turned out to be a Lego from my foot as I limped over to him.

“Then why are you here?” he asked, sitting up farther.

“I had an idea,” I said, crouching by the side of his bed, trying not to put my feet any new places. “Want to go camping?”

Beckett sat all the way up, pushing his curls out of his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, let’s sleep outside. I have the whole thing set up. Mom and Dad won’t care.”

Beckett just looked at me for a long moment, like he was weighing whether I was being serious, or maybe if this was just a very realistic dream. “But how?” he finally asked, which was how I knew he was getting on board. “We don’t have any camping stuff. Dad and I were supposed to get it together.”

“I think I’ve figured it out,” I said, crossing my fingers in the dark that I had. “Meet you in the backyard in ten.”

Ten minutes later, almost exactly, Beckett stepped outside in his pajamas, still looking dubious. “Ta-da,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t think it was stupid, or turn around and head back in. I had set up a mini campsite, in the very center of the yard. Since we didn’t have a tent, I’d just laid out two sleeping bags and pillows head to head.

“Really?” Beckett asked, taking a small step forward, beginning to smile.

“Put this on first,” I said, tossing the bottle of bug spray at him. It was the one thing I was worried about—since we would be sleeping out in the open, I had a feeling that unless we took precautionary measures, we were going to get eaten alive by mosquitos.

Beckett sprayed himself until he was coughing, then ran over to the sleeping bags, tossing the spray in my direction. I doused myself in it, then crawled into my own sleeping bag.

I settled back into my pillow and looked up. I was glad that these sleeping bags were the crazy insulated you-can-take-them-on-mountains kind, because despite the fact the evening was still warm, it felt cooler at ground level, and a little damp. I looked straight up and just took in the stars shining above us, with nothing blocking their view, and suddenly regretted all the nights I’d slept with anything between me and the sky.

“This is cool,” Beckett said, and I turned my head to see him looking up, his arms folded behind his head. Neither of us knew any constellations, so we found our own, groupings of stars like Crooked Necktie and Angry Penguin, and made up the corresponding stories that went with them. Beckett’s voice had started to slow down halfway through the origin of Basket of Fries. I had a feeling he was about to fall asleep, and I knew I wasn’t going to be far behind him. I closed my eyes only to open them once more, and make sure it was all still there—the riot of stars above me, this whole other world existing just out of reach.

“Can we do this again?” Beckett asked.

“Sure,” I said, as I let my eyes stay closed this time. “We’ll do it next month.”

“Okay,” Beckett said. After a stretch of silence in which I was sure he had fallen asleep, he asked, “What about Sloane?”

I opened my eyes and pushed myself up on one elbow to get a better look at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . we won’t do this when she comes back, right?” My brother’s voice was small. “You’ll probably be too busy.”

It was my first instinct to deny this, to assure him that nothing would change. But a second later, I knew that I wouldn’t be here, now, with my brother, if Sloane was still in town. I would either be hanging out with her or waiting to hang out with her. “It won’t matter,” I finally said. I could hear the certainty in my voice, and just hoped Beckett could too. “You and me. Next month. I promise.”

“Awesome,” Beckett said around a yawn. “Night.”

A moment later, I heard his breathing get longer and more even—it was a running joke in our family how quickly Beckett could fall asleep, and apparently being outside wasn’t impeding that.

I rolled onto my back and looked up at the stars. Beckett’s words were reverberating in my head, but for some reason, I didn’t want to think about what would happen when Sloane came back, how things might change. Instead, I looked over at my brother, already fast asleep, before letting my own eyes drift closed, feeling like maybe I’d been able to set something right.

8

PENELOPE

Just because I knew what Sloane had intended with some of the items on the list didn’t necessarily mean that I wanted to do them. The next day I’d stood at my dresser, my neck itching from where the mosquitos had gotten me, staring down at number five. I knew what she meant by “Penelope,” and I also knew what she wanted me to do. Even though I knew it hadn’t moved, I reached into my top drawer and pulled it out, staring down at it, my picture and the unfamiliar name, realizing that this was probably the one I needed to do next.

* * *

MAY

Two months earlier

“Okay!” Sloane said as she got into my car, slamming the door behind her and turning to smile at me. “Are you ready?”

“I guess,” I said with a laugh. “I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to be ready for.”

Sloane had arranged for us to hang out on this Friday night a whole week in advance, which was unusual, but I was grateful for it. She was always with Sam, and while usually one night a weekend it would be me and Sloane and Sam and Gideon, it wasn’t enough, especially since her attention was focused on her boyfriend when we were all together. There was also the fact that she was different around him. It was nothing I’d been able to put my finger on for the first few times we’d hung out together. But I’d come to realize I didn’t like the way Sam treated her, and I hated the way Sloane acted around him.

I had really tried for the first month. Sloane obviously liked him, and saw something really special in him, so I’d done my best to do the same. But the more time I spent with him, the harder it got. To start with, he didn’t like me. He was alternately possessive and dismissive of Sloane—something I really didn’t like to see—but from the beginning, he had seen me as some sort of threat. He always seemed to be trying to stir up trouble in subtle, hard-to-define ways. He would look at me a little too long when I came into a room, or stand a little too close to me and just smile blandly as he did it, as though daring me to call him on it, or say something about it. He corrected me whenever he got the chance. And on the occasions when Sloane—or Gideon—would say something about it, he would just shoot me a big smile and say, “I’m just messing around. Emily can take a joke, right?”

“It’s just his sense of humor,” Sloane would say the few times I’d tried to broach the subject with her. “He’s actually really shy, and that’s how he compensates.”