“Yes,” I said definitively, looking away from the guy and his necklace. “They’re great.”

She grinned. “I think so too. Hate them for me?”

“Sure,” I said easily as I walked a few steps away from her, making my way up toward the register, pretending to be interested in a truly hideous pair of earrings that seemed to be made out of some kind of tinsel. In my peripheral vision, I saw Sloane pick up another pair of sunglasses—black ones—and look at them for a moment before also taking them to the register, where the middle-aged guy behind it was reading a comic book.

“How much for the aviators?” Sloane asked as I edged closer, looking up as if I’d just noticed what she’d picked up.

“Twenty-five,” the guy said, not even looking up from his comic.

“Ugh,” I said, shaking my head. “So not worth it. Look, they’re all dented.”

Sloane gave me a tiny smile before putting her game face back on. I knew she’d been surprised, when we’d first started this bargaining technique, that I’d been able to roll with it. But when you grew up in the theater, you learned to handle impromptu improv. “Oh, you’re right,” she said, looking at them closely.

“They’re not that dented,” the guy said, putting his comic—Super Friends—down. “Those are vintage.”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t pay more than fifteen for them,” I said, and saw, a moment too late, Sloane widen her eyes at me. “I mean ten!” I said quickly. “Not more than ten.”

“Yeah,” she said, setting them down in front of the guy, along with the square-framed black ones I’d seen her pick up. “Also, we just got here. We should look around.”

“Yes, we should,” I said, trying to make it look like I was heading toward the exit without actually leaving.

“Wait!” the guy said quickly. “I can let you have them for fifteen. Final offer.”

“Both of these for twenty,” Sloane said, looking him right in the eye.

“Twenty-one,” the guy bargained lamely, but Sloane just smiled and dug in her pocket for her cash.

A minute later, we were heading out of the stall, Sloane wearing her new aviators. “Nicely done,” she said.

“Sorry for going too high,” I said, as I stepped around a guy carrying an enormous kitten portrait. “I should have started at ten.”

She shrugged. “If you start too low, you sometimes lose the whole thing,” she said. “Here.” She handed me the black sunglasses, and I saw now that they were vintage RayBans. “For you.”

“Really?” I slipped them on and, with no mirror around, turned to Sloane for her opinion.

She look a step back, hands on hips, her face serious, like she was studying me critically, then broke into a smile. “You look great,” she said, digging in her bag. She emerged with one of her ever-present disposable cameras, and snapped a picture of me before I could hold my hand up in front of my face or stop her. Despite having a smartphone, Sloane always carried a disposable camera with her—sometimes two. She had panoramic ones, black-and-white ones, waterproof ones. Last week, we’d taken our first beach swim of the summer, and Sloane had snapped pictures of us underwater, emerging triumphant and holding the camera over her head. “Can your phone do this?” she’d asked, dragging the camera over the surface of the water. “Can it?”

“They look okay?” I asked, though of course I believed her.

She nodded. “They’re very you.” She dropped her camera back in her bag and started wandering through the stalls. I followed as she led us into a vintage clothing stall and headed back to look at the boots. I ducked to see my reflection in the mirror, then checked to make sure her letter was secure in my bag.

“Hey,” I said, coming to join her in the back, where she was sitting on the ground, already surrounded by options, untying her sandals. I held up the list. “Why did you mail this to me? Why not give it to me in person?” I looked down at the envelope in my hands, at the stamp and postmark and all the work that had gone into it. “And why mail anything at all? Why not just tell me?”

Sloane looked up at me and smiled, a flash of her bright, slightly crooked teeth. “But where’s the fun in that?”

1. Kiss a stranger.

2. Go skinny-dipping.

3. Steal something.

4. Break something.

5. Penelope.

6. Ride a dern horse, ya cowpoke.

7. 55 S. Ave. Ask for Mona.

8. The backless dress. And somewhere to wear it.

9. Dance until dawn.

10. Share some secrets in the dark.

11. Hug a Jamie.

12. Apple picking at night.

13. Sleep under the stars.

I sat on my bed, gripping this new list in my hands so tightly, I could see the tips of my fingers turning white.

I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it was something. It was from Sloane. Sloane had sent me a list.

As soon as I’d taken it out of the envelope, I’d just stared at it, my brain not yet turning the symbols into words, into things I could parse. In that moment, it had been enough to know that she had sent me something, that she wasn’t just going to disappear and leave me with nothing but questions and memories. There was more to it than that, and it made me feel like the fog I’d been walking around in for the past two weeks had cleared to let in some sunlight.

Like the others she’d sent—one appearing every time I went away, even if it was just for a few days—there was no explanation. Like the others, it was a list of outlandish things, all outside my comfort zone, all things I would never normally do. The lists had become something of a running joke with us, and before every trip I’d wonder what she was going to come up with. The last one, when I’d gone to New Haven with my mom for a long weekend, had included things like stealing the bulldog mascot, named Handsome Dan, and making out with a Whiffenpoof (I later found out Anderson had gone to Yale, so she’d been able to include lots of specifics). Over the years, I’d managed to check off the occasional item on a trip, and always told her about it, but she always wanted to know why I hadn’t done more, why I hadn’t checked off every single one.

I looked down at the list again, and saw that something about this one was different. There were some truly scary things here—like skinny-dipping and having to deal with my lifelong fear of horses, the very thought of which was making my palms sweat—but some of them didn’t seem so bad. A few of them were almost doable.