Vacation Checklist

The Playlist

Created June 3rd, 2:47 AM

Eighty-three songs for a nine-hour drive to Maine. I spent three hours curating it, arranging the track list like chapters in a book. "Here Comes the Sun" for when we'd cross the state line. "The Night We Met" for when Avery would inevitably get sentimental about senior year. The playlist is still on my phone, unplayed. Sometimes I consider deleting it, but I never do.

The Disposable Camera

CVS receipt dated June 5th

Avery's idea. "We need something more authentic than our phones," she'd said, twirling her dorm key around her finger. "Something we can't immediately delete if we look terrible."

I imagined the photos we'd take: the four of us jumping off the dock, me and Logan cooking breakfast (probably burning it), sunset over the lake, Avery teaching us her grandmother's card game on the porch. Twenty-seven exposures of the perfect summer.

The camera sits in my desk drawer, still in its plastic packaging.

The Friendship Bracelet Kit

Amazon order #114-7582639-4820252

Red, blue, green, and yellow embroidery floss. Enough to make matching bracelets for all of us, the kind we used to make at summer camp when we were twelve. Logan would've pretended to hate his but worn it anyway. I know because he still has the one I made him in eighth grade, faded and fraying around his wrist in all his Facebook photos.

The kit arrived three days after Avery texted that her dad was in the hospital. Three days after "the lake house summer" became "maybe next year" became silence.

The Sunscreen

SPF 50, zinc oxide, reef-safe

I'd researched this for weeks. The lake was pristine, and Avery's mom had made us promise to buy reef-safe brands only. I spent forty-seven dollars on three bottles, enough for a week of swimming, hiking, and lying on the dock reading books we'd borrowed from the library.

The sunscreen expired in August. I threw it away in September.

The Letters

Handwritten, never sent

Four letters on my childhood stationery with the unicorns I was embarrassed about but somehow felt right for this. One for each of them, meant to be given on our last night. I was going to tell them what our friendship had meant, how grateful I was for these people who'd known me since middle school braces and understood why I cried during Up.

Logan's letter mentioned the time he drove four hours to bring me soup when I had mono freshman year. Avery's talked about how she always knew exactly what to say when my anxiety got bad. Connor's thanked him for being the kind of friend who remembered everyone's coffee order and never made fun of my terrible taste in rom-coms.

They're still in my drawer, sealed in envelopes that will never be opened. Sometimes I wonder if I should mail them now, but it feels too late. The moment has passed.

The Swimsuit

Target clearance, bought too small because I was planning to "get in shape" before the trip

Navy blue with tiny white anchors. I'd planned to wear it for our traditional first-day lake jump, when we'd all sprint off the dock together screaming about the cold water. I had this whole vision of us emerging from the lake laughing, hair plastered to our heads, looking like the kind of friends who end up in college brochures.

I wore it twice that summer: once while I sat in my yard sunburning and listening to the neighbor kids play on the trampoline, and once to the public pool where I sat on the edge dangling my feet and wondering what my friends were doing.

The Matches

Stolen from my parents' emergency kit

For the fire pit behind the lake house, where we'd planned to have deep conversations and burn the notebooks from our worst college classes. Avery was going to bring her organic chemistry textbook. Connor had saved his calculus notes specifically for this purpose. We were going to toast marshmallows and our survival of senior year.

I used one match in August to light a candle during a power outage, then felt guilty for weeks afterward.

The Phone Charger

Extra-long cord

Because Avery's grandmother's lake house only had outlets in inconvenient places, and we'd need to stay connected to document everything. I'd imagined us fighting over the one good spot, our phones charging in the corners while we played cards on the floor.

The charger never left my bedroom. All summer, I kept my phone at 100% battery, as if staying fully charged would somehow keep them close.

The Hope

Packed last, unpacked first

I packed it carefully between layers of t-shirts and tank tops, wrapped in the certainty that this would be the summer we'd remember forever. The summer that would bond us before we scattered to different cities for jobs and graduate school and real life.

When I unpacked it in September, folding away clothes that still smelled like fabric softener instead of lake water and sunscreen, I found it had transformed into something else entirely. Not hope for the summer that was, but a quiet acceptance of the friendships that change and the plans that fall apart and the ache of what almost was.

I keep it now in a different place, not packed away for someday, but present in the everyday moments. In the group chat that occasionally springs to life with a meme or a "thinking of you." In Logan's wedding invitation that arrived in October. In Avery's mom's recovery updates. In Connor's new job announcement.

It's a smaller hope now, more realistic. Hope for coffee dates instead of epic adventures. Hope for individual relationships instead of group dynamics. Hope for who we're becoming instead of who we used to be.

The lake house summer never happened, but somehow, something else did.