Chapter 20
When I got home from the hospital, I didn’t even take off my shoes.
I went straight upstairs, locked myself in my room, and sat on the edge of my bed like if I got comfortable or paused for too long, I might lose my nerve.
The house was quiet—Mom and Dad were at work, Drew was probably with Maisie, Stella was God knows where—and the silence pressed in on me from all sides.
Unable to stand it, I opened my laptop and pulled up my favorite Heartbreakers playlist, the one I always listened to when I needed to feel braver than I actually was.
The opening chords filled the room, familiar and grounding, like muscle memory.
I let it play and sat there until the fear stopped feeling louder than my resolve.
You can do this, I told myself.
So I did.
Rescheduling my driver’s test for the following week was easy. A few clicks, a confirmation email, and I was done. No judgment or consequences. Just a new date staring back at me from the screen.
Then came the hard part.
Heart racing, I forced myself to log in to my patient portal.
My hands shook as I scrolled, the tremor growing worse the closer I got to the scheduling tab.
I stared at the screen for a long moment, cursor hovering uselessly while every worst-case scenario paraded through my head, but then I thought of Trixy.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I made an appointment to get my screening.
The whole process took less than two minutes, but by the time I hit confirm, my shoulders were up around my ears and my pulse was pounding. I pushed my laptop aside, collapsed backward against my mattress, and let out a shaky breath.
It was done.
And somehow… Everything felt lighter. Not easy exactly, but manageable.
I pulled the wooden time capsule out from my closet and set it on my bed. Even though I hadn’t technically finished my bucket list, it felt wrong to not acknowledge how far I’d come. Carefully, deliberately, I started to fill it.
The backstage pass from the Heartbreakers concert Oliver put together went in first. Then the Ping-Pong ball I’d swiped from Drew’s frat party, followed by an empty box of Tic Tacs that still smelled faintly sweet.
I added my boarding pass from Florida, the Gator Central key chain, and the picture of me and JJ holding a baby alligator as we squinted in the sun.
After digging through my purse for the Polaroid from the Mrs. Sprinkles challenge, I opened my T-shirt drawer and found the one I received at the Frozen Dip.
Both went into the chest. Last came Brandon and Casey’s wedding program and the pickle trophy JJ stole from the jousting tournament.
I hesitated over the glass alligator he’d given me for my birthday, turning it over in my hands. In the end, I set it back on my bedside table. Some things weren’t meant to be buried.
Once I was finished, I closed the lid, tucked the box under my arm, and went to find Stella.
I was still frustrated with her, but what she’d said about hurting JJ to protect myself had stuck with me.
Because as much as I hated admitting it, she wasn’t wrong.
I had been afraid. Afraid to hope, afraid to plan, afraid to live too loudly and tempt the universe into taking something else away from me.
In a way, we were both right.
Stella thought I was squandering my future, and it had taken a car accident and my conversation with Trixy at the hospital for me to finally see myself the way she did.
There was truth in her words, especially before I began tackling my bucket list, but I didn’t believe that the past eight months had been a waste.
I’d needed that time. To grieve who I used to be, to sit in the wreckage, to heal and figure out who I was becoming.
I wasn’t there yet. And I certainly hadn’t done things the way Stella wanted, or on her timeline.
But I also wasn’t that girl from January anymore, the one who spent entire days parked in front of the TV because it felt safer than trying.
Stella’s door was open when I reached her room. She was kneeling on the floor, packing a suitcase, too focused to notice my arrival.
“Knock, knock,” I said, rapping my knuckles against the wood.
Her expression fell when she looked up at me. “Hey,” she said quietly, her voice a far cry from the anger I expected.
“I know you’re probably busy getting ready to leave tomorrow,” I said, shifting the box in my arms, “but I could really use your help with something.”
“Oh. Um, I don’t think—”
I cut her off before she could finish saying no. “Please? It’s important.”
She studied me for a second, then sighed. “Okay, fine. What is it?”
“Follow me.”
Not waiting for an answer, I backed out of the room headed for the garage.
After grabbing two shovels, I led Stella into the backyard, stopping beneath the tree next to our old swing set.
Drew and some of his football friends had broken the slide ages ago, but the swings were all intact, their chains clinking faintly in the breeze.
I set the wooden chest down and handed her a shovel.
“Help me?” I asked. “The hole only needs to be big enough for the chest.”
Stella eyed the box suspiciously. “This won’t make me an accessory to a crime, will it?”
“As if I’d be stupid enough to bury evidence in our backyard.”
My answer earned an eye roll, but Stella tied her hair back and started digging. With both of us working, it only took a couple minutes.
“Okay,” she said, tossing her shovel aside. “Explanation. Now.”
I pulled my bucket list from my back pocket and handed it over to her before sitting down in the grass. “Remember back in January when you nagged me to clean out my room?”
With a nod, she copied me, then unfolded the worn piece of paper.
“I found that,” I said, nodding toward the chest, “when I went through my closet. The list was inside. It was a therapy exercise from the sick kids support group Mom made me join.”
“Okay…”
“This chest was my attempt at number twelve. I filled it with a bunch of stuff back then, but… I never buried it because my cancer came back.”
Stella’s eyes softened. “Can I see?”
“Sure,” I said, nudging the box over to her. “I just added some new things.”
The hinges creaked as she opened the lid. “Why?”
“Because I’m not fifteen anymore,” I said. “And when I thought about what I’d put inside now, I couldn’t come up with a single thing. That freaked me out, so I decided to finish my list. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past eight months, and I collected some mementos along the way.”
Her eyes widened as she pulled out the baby alligator picture. “This is why you went down to Florida!”
“Yeah.”
The excitement in her expression dimmed. “JJ knew about this?”
The “not me?” went unsaid, but I heard it anyway and answered as gently as possible. “He helped me with a lot of my list.”
She swallowed and set the picture back. “Then why do you need my help? This doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Because I want us to bury the time capsule together.”
She frowned. “But…why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It just feels right.” When Stella didn’t respond, I reached for her hand. “Things haven’t been great between us, and I don’t know how to fix whatever is wrong, but this is me trying. I miss my best friend.”
Her fingers tightened around mine. “I miss you too,” she whispered.
The conversation faded into silence. Neither of us spoke as we listened to the hum of the neighborhood around us: someone starting up their lawn mower; Mr. Sutton’s English mastiff, Popcorn, barking at passersby; a chorus of shrieks and laughter from the trampoline two houses down.
After a moment, Stella and I both started talking at once.
“I owe you an apology,” I blurted right as she said, “I’ve been such a bitch.”
We met each other’s gaze, and then, for the first time in months, laughter bubbled up. It was unexpected and bright, something we both desperately needed.
“You go first,” I said, feeling lighter than I had all day.
She nodded, still smiling. “Okay. Please don’t be mad, but Oliver filled me in on the conversation you guys had in Miami.”
Ugh, what a Benedict Arnold. “I should have known he’d tell you.”
“Probably,” she admitted, “but I’m glad he did.
Not going to lie, it was hard to hear. And I don’t think I would’ve listened to anyone other than him.
” She paused to wet her lips. “I’m sorry, Cara.
I didn’t realize how much I’d turned your health into your whole identity.
When you got better, all I wanted was to be normal again, and when you didn’t move forward the way I expected, I panicked.
That’s why I kept pushing the whole college thing. ”
“Well, you weren’t wrong,” I began awkwardly. “I wasn’t living my life to the fullest. You tried to get me to see that, but I didn’t want to hear it. I shouldn’t have been so harsh on you.”
Saying it didn’t fix everything, but it loosened something tight in my chest.
Stella let out a small breath. “Do you remember what we used to do when we were mad at each other as kids?”
The memory instantly made me snicker. “We’d line up all our dolls and—”
“Stage a full-blown war,” she finished.
“We broke so many Barbies.”
“It was violent,” she said thoughtfully. “But effective.”
I leaned back on my hands and looked up at the sky. “Healthier than this year, honestly.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Probably.”
My attention drifted back to the chest waiting for us in the grass. I nudged it with my foot, then elbowed Stella’s side. “Come on. Help me with this.”
“Okay,” she said, getting up beside me. “Since I’m already an accessory, I suppose.”
Together, we lowered the chest into the hole and covered it with dirt, two sisters burying the past not to forget it, but to mark where we were brave enough to start again.
* * *
The waiting room smelled like antiseptic and coffee.