An older woman, determined to check out the selection of tarnished cufflinks, jostled me out of the way, and I stepped aside. This flea market was similar to many that I’d been to, always with Sloane. We were technically here looking for boots for her, but as soon as we’d paid our two dollars apiece and entered the middle school parking lot that had been converted, for the weekend, into a land of potential treasure, she had made a beeline to this stall, which seemed to be mostly sunglasses and jewelry. Since I’d picked up the letter, I’d been waiting for the right moment to ask her, when I’d have her full attention, and the drive had been the wrong time—there was music to sing along to and things to discuss and directions to follow.
Sloane smiled at me, even as she put on the terrible green sunglasses, hiding her eyes, and I wondered for a moment if she was embarrassed, which I’d almost never seen. “You weren’t supposed to get that until tomorrow,” she said as she bent down to look at her reflection in the tiny standing mirror. “I was hoping it would be there right before you guys left for the airport. The mail here is too efficient.”
“But what is it?” I asked, flipping through the pages. Emily Goes to Scotland!was written across the top.
1. Try haggis.
2. Call at least three people “lassie.”
3. Say, at least once, “You can take my life, but you’ll never take my freedom!”
(Say this out loud and in public.)
The list continued on, over to the next page, filled with things—like fly-fishing and asking people if they knew where I could find J.K. Rowling—that I did not intend to do, and not just because I would only be gone five days. One of my parents’ plays was going into rehearsals for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and they had decided it would be the perfect opportunity to take a family trip. I suddenly noticed that at the very bottom of the list, in tiny letters, she’d written, When you finish this list, find me and tell me all about it.I looked up at Sloane, who had set the green pair down and was now turning over a pair of rounded cat-eye frames.
“It’s stuff for you to do in Scotland!” she said. She frowned at the sunglasses and held up the frames to me, and I knew she was asking my opinion. I shook my head, and she nodded and set them down. “I wanted to make sure you got the most of your experience.”
“Well, I’m not sure how many of these I’ll actually do,” I said as I carefully folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope. “But this is awesome of you. Thanks so much.”
She gave me a tiny wink, then continued to look through the sunglasses, clearly searching for something specific. She had spent most of the spring channeling Audrey Hepburn—lots of winged black eyeliner and stripes, skinny black pants and aflats—but was currently transitioning into what she was calling “seventies California,” and referencing people like Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg, who I’d never heard of, and Penny Lane in Almost Famous,who I had. Today, she was wearing a flowing vintage maxi dress and sandals that tied around her ankles, her wavy dark-blond hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back. Before I’d met Sloane, I didn’t know that it was possible to dress the way she did, that anyone not heading to a photo shoot dressed with that much style. My own wardrobe had improved immeasurably since we’d become friends, mostly stuff she’d picked for me, but some things I’d found myself and felt brave enough to wear when I was with her, knowing that she would appreciate it.
She picked up a pair of gold-rimmed aviators, only slightly bent, and slipped them on, turning to me for my opinion. I nodded and then noticed a guy, who looked a few years younger than us, staring at Sloane. He was absently holding a macramé necklace, and I was pretty sure that he had no idea that he’d picked it up and would have been mortified to realize it. But that was my best friend, the kind of girl your eyes went to in a crowd. While she was beautiful—wavy hair, bright blue eyes, perfect skin dotted with freckles—this didn’t fully explain it. It was like she knew a secret, a good one, and if you got close enough, maybe she’d tell you, too.
“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?”