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ONE
TATUM
There’s nothing quite like the high of a new notebook haul. Brand spanking new notebooks come out on top to get my heart racing like nothing else, herbal or not.
The plastic crinkles as I rip it off the additions to my collection, then a wide smile overtakes my face. Okay, maybe a slightly manic one, butnotebooks—blank, fresh, awaiting all my thoughts, dreams, lists, and plans. My heartbeat spikes, dancing around like a puppy about to get its favorite tasty treat. Oh, yup. That’s the high kicking in.
Instant serotonin boost.
I lay my bounty on my white quilted bedspread, lovingly tracing the colorful spirals coordinated to the bright citrus fruit patterns on the covers of the 3-pack. A content sigh leaves me.
“Perfection.”
Possibility.
My favorite feeling in the world.
Opening the cover to the one with orange slices, a giddy thrill runs through me at the sight of the blank page. I keep notebooks, art journals, and planners for everything in my life. The structured organization has helped me visualize and achieve every goal I’ve set for myself. It’s how I maintained a 4.0 GPA through high school while participating in three different clubs and graduated with honors last month. With college on the horizon at the end of the summer, I have no intention of quitting a good thing when it’s working for me.
My attention shifts to the inspiration wall above my bed, the mod peach-pink circle painted on the wall covered in my hopes and dreams. It has saved fortune cookies with encouraging and motivational messages, Polaroids of my accomplishments mixed with memories I love with friends and family, clippings I’ve kept from postcards that gave me a boost, and my favorite quotes from books I’ve read.
The corner of my mouth lifts when I survey how far I’ve come from a girl who used to panic at the amount of tasks on my to-do list, frozen into indecision by how much I wanted to do. A therapist I used to see every other week handed me a notebook to journal in one day as a way to dump my thoughts and it justclicked. I never looked back.
Deep laughter and the rhythmic beat of a basketball dribbling against the pavement drifts through my open window, followed by the swish of the net when the ball is dunked. My brother Jackson and his best friend Cooper are shooting hoops in the driveway between our two houses.
The breeze makes my curtains billow as I slip off the bed to peek out the window, inhaling the salty sea air. Everything smells like the ocean and sunshine during summertime in South Bay, California. The quaint coastal town is known for three things: surfing, summer tourism, and South Bay College where I’m starting my freshman year in a couple of months.
Is it possible to be nervous-excited-anxious-impatient all at once? Because that’s how I feel every day crossing off the days on my sea turtle-themed calendar.
Cooper Vale snags my focus once more. Jackson passes him the ball. With a crooked grin and a languidness to his limbs that oozes sex appeal, he sinks another shot. My brother whoops and gives Cooper a high-five.
I wet my lips as I drink in the impressive muscles Cooper has on display. Shirtless and rocking cut off cotton joggers, he’s god-like perfection with tan skin from hours spent surfing with Jackson. He takes off his baseball cap and ruffles his messy brown hair, laughing at whatever my brother says that I miss because I’m too busy trying to control my heart from swooning like a regency maiden at the dimple that pops out when he smiles.
The second his gaze darts up to my window, I smother a squeak and collapse to my knees. Either he has damn good intuition or I was thinking too loud. Okay, this is super mature. I’m eighteen and hiding from my brother’s best friend, the guy who has been my neighbor since I was four.
“Get it together, Danvers.” I mumble the words in the way Cooper always teases me when I get stuck in a ramble, imitating his cocky surfer boy drawl.
Crawling on my hands and knees—yes, I haven’t fully recovered from the urge to hide, even if he can’t see me spying on him anymore—I make it back to my bed, reaching for the basket of my most important journals I keep beneath the bed so Jackson won’t poke through them like a nosy jerk.
I grab the one that’s a simple black moleskin with silver bold lettering that proclaimsFUCK YES YOU GLORIOUS BITCHon the cover and flip it open to a floral-patterned page I’ve looked at so many times, the spine is permanently creased to automatically get there without help.
This list is my most prized one—my ultimate life plan. Not my summer plans or my college packing list for my freshman year at South Bay, but my career path and my most private desires.
All of my meticulous preparations have come together. Check marks fill every box except the one goal that has evaded me, the goal I need to achieve before the summer is over. I’m all set for my first semester at college, a day I’ve been imagining for so long that’s finally almost here.
Dream field of study? Check. Five year plan? Check, check. Brand new notebooks? Checkity-check.
But there is one thing I don’t want to bring to campus with my—my V-card.
The box left unticked glares at me in hot pink gel pen on floral-patterned notebook paper.Have sex. Seems simple enough, right?
Wrong.
Every other goal or dream I’ve ever put on my list was a cakewalk compared to this one. But I achieve everything I set my mind to, so I will check off that box one way or another. And damn it, I will do it before I enter South Bay College as a freshman.
My V-card isn’t on my college packing list. It’s not that I’m in some big rush or need to make it special with the right person. I don’t buy into either camp of the pressures presented by the social construct. What I hate is feeling unprepared and like something is just outside of my grasp. The FOMO is real and it irritates me.
Releasing a terse sigh, I get up and stride to my mirror. Freckles stand out across the bridge of my nose and my light brown braided pigtails are streaked with blonde from the California sunshine. I squint at my blue-eyed reflection. Short and dainty, with enough bank in my backside to fill out my bleach splattered shorts, I’m not exactly the picture of a pinup people lust after.
