The Getaway List

by Emma Lord

Genres: YA Romance

Synopsis

Inescapably romantic and brimming with New York Times bestselling author Emma Lord's signature cheer, The Getaway List is an uplifting and romantic read and a love letter to New York.

The day of her high school graduation, Riley realizes that she has spent the last four years trying so hard to be a Good Kid for her mom that she has no idea who she really is anymore. The solution? Pack her bags and move to New York for the summer to stay with her best friend Tom and do everything on The Getaway List.

Riley isn't sure what to expect from Tom, who has been distant since he moved away. But when she arrives in the city, their reconnection is effortless. As she, Tom, and their newfound friends work their way through the delightfully chaotic items on The Getaway List, Riley learns that sometimes the biggest adventure is not one you take, but one you feel in your heart.

Release date: January 23, 2024

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter One


If you think about it, getting rejected from all ten colleges I applied to is quite the feat. I did that whole thing where I picked three “shoo-in” schools, three maybes, and three reaches—even threw in a cheeky application to NYU, just in case a rich distant relative died and left me a zillion dollars for tuition—and got back a slew of “Thank you, but” emails and very thin envelopes addressed to one Riley Larson. Sure, our poor mailman hasn’t looked me in the eye since April, but you know what? Statistically speaking, it makes me kind of a big deal.

My mom is not especially pleased that I turned the rejection letters into a paper-mache collage and stuck it on my graduation cap, but I’ve been a mostly model kid as of late. Not to mention I just conceded my entire summer to helping her at the coffee shop. I’m entitled to a little teenage rebellion. Plus after four long years of sleep deprivation, GPA-related tears, and enduring the humiliation of having a literal earthworm as a school mascot (don’t ask), the students of Falls Creek High deserve some comic relief. I’m only doing my part.

I slide past my classmates toward my seat with the rest of the L last names, sandwiched between an already tipsy Elle Lake (in-state school) and a very grim Chet Lawrence (Harvard, the nerd). The school has apparently placed tiny packs of gummy worms on our seats. A little on the nose, but after I unwrap mine I raise a bright green worm and say, “To getting the hell out of here.”

A good number of classmates join me in this nonsense toast, though for me it comes with a slight bitter taste even a lime-flavored gummy worm can’t wash down. Most of them are getting out of here. Far as I know, I’m going to be stuck in Falls Creek until I Falls Croak.

Before I can indulge in another pity party I scan the crowd of parents behind us for my mom, who in true mom fashion somehow got here before I did. She’ll be somewhere in the front row and because of that I’ve already texted her a list of kids a mile wide who have asked her to record them walking across the stage. She’s happy to do it. Nobody loves a mission more than my mom does. Hell, she’ll probably just do the whole five-hundred-kid graduating class “just in case.”

Before I can find my mom my phone hums to life in my lap with a message from, of all people, Tom.

They’re livestreaming this. Don’t fuck up.

My face blooms with an immediate warmth, a smile tugging at my lips. Tom is my all-time best but also worst friend—best because we would literally die for each other, and worst because in the last year he’s texted with the frequency of a prehistoric rock.

Does the blue of this graduation gown make my existential terror pop?

Tom’s reply is instant: Not as well as a standard black might have, but well enough.

I know there’s no way Tom can actually see me, considering the camera is trained on the stage, but it feels like he’s in this stuffy gym with us just the same. Hell, he would be, if it weren’t for his mom, Vanessa, abruptly moving him up to Manhattan the summer after freshman year of high school in a bold attempt to ruin both of our lives. (All right, it was for her enormously cool job as a scriptwriter and director—her debut indie film became a cult-classic, Oscar-nominated hit—but the other point still stands.)

What happened to the entirety of NYC that you’re bored enough to be watching this? Thought you’d have a whole gang of Columbia nerds to hang out with by now, I text back.

The principal shoots me a pointed look from the stage. I aim my cheekiest grin at him but don’t bother trying to hide my phone. What is he going to do, suspend me again in the last five minutes of my high school career? Been there, permanent recorded that.

So plot twist I think I’m taking a gap year? Anyway NYC’s hottest club is virtual graduations in Virginia. Keep up with the times

I blink at my phone screen and let out an audible “Huh.” Last I checked Tom was all gung ho on the whole Ivy League scene. Hence the mug I got him off Etsy with the Columbia logo on one side and the words “nerd juice” on the other.

Excuse you sir?? What are you doing with a gap year??? And then to soften the assault of my many punctuation marks, I add, If you’re joining the circus and didn’t invite me I’m about to make you dearly regret it.

Tom doesn’t answer immediately, but this is to be expected. Lately anytime I ask Tom a personal question it takes him three to 314 times as long to answer. I settle in with my gummy worms and allow myself the indulgence of completely and utterly dissociating through all five graduation speeches by reading the latest fantasy novel I’ve got downloaded on my phone, only to get bodily yanked by Elle when it’s finally our row’s turn to cross.

A lot of things occur to me as I take the steps up to that stage. Largely unhelpful things—like for instance, I still have no idea how to write out a check even though the lady at the bank recklessly gave me a whole box of them when I opened my account on my eighteenth birthday last month. Or that I have never successfully cooked anything that didn’t have microwave instructions. Or that I have no idea what I’m planning to do with my life, or what I’m doing beyond this summer, or even a solid enough sense of my own hobbies and interests not to immediately fail even BuzzFeed’s most ironclad “Build A Pancake Breakfast And We’ll Tell You Your Future Career” quiz.

All too soon Elle is walking ahead of me, beaming her best “I definitely did not sneak sips from my mom’s boxed wine” smile as she crosses the stage. I feel the outline of my phone in my pocket take a deep breath, buoyed by a sudden calm. Tom’s here. Or as here as Tom can possibly get. It doesn’t matter how much time passes—I always feel like the bravest version of myself when I’ve got him near.

The lights are so bright when I cross the rickety stage that I can barely find the camera livestreaming the event but manage to clock it just in time. I take my diploma from our principal—who could maybe do a better job of not looking so happy to see me go—and when he extends his hand for me to shake I look right at the camera and make a quick series of gestures with one of my hands that ends with me making a trumpet with my fingers against my nose.

The student section erupts in laughter. I blow a kiss for good measure, immediately catching sight of my mom with a palm to her forehead but the camera still diligently held up in the air with the other hand.

Tom’s already texted before I get back to my row. Congratulations, you absolutely ridiculous person. Alongside it are a jumble of hand-gesture emojis that approximate the handshake I just did a short one-sided version of onstage, the silly one we made up in fifth grade.

The smile on my face aches a little, thinking of how far we are from those little ragtag, rowdy kids now.

Now please explain to me what you did to that unsuspecting graduation cap, he adds.

I ease back into my seat, taking the cap off and settling it into my lap to look at all the rejection letters, glossy with glitter glue. Tom knows about the rejections, of course. I text him at least once a week with updates and questions about what he’s up to, even if half the time it’s a bit like talking to a wall. I know he’ll get a kick out of my little art project, but before I can take a picture of it I flip the cap over to look at the inside, feeling like I’m flipping over some tender underside of my heart.

There’s another piece of paper taped precariously underneath. This one is handwritten, and something only Tom would recognize—“the Getaway List,” we dubbed it after Tom moved away. It’s made up of adventures we never went on—an interactive writing class in Manhattan we wanted to take the summer after freshman year before my mom got promoted and needed me to help take over shifts when they were short-staffed at the coffee shop. A camping trip we tried to orchestrate with some friends sophomore year that fell through. A part-time job I wanted to get last summer at the same bike-messenger service where Tom works in the city so we could relive the glory days of spinning our wheels all over this town, but my mom had me indefinitely grounded for the infamous suspension.

The idea was that when we met up again we could do everything on the list to make up for lost time. The problem is we just kept losing more of it. The list started as a denial that we were apart, but over time just became an acceptance that there was nothing we could do to change it. An acceptance that’s led me to this absurd moment now, when it’s hitting me with a fresh ache that I haven’t seen the person who knows me best of anyone in the whole world in almost three years.

It feels like a risk reminding Tom, because neither of us has mentioned it in months. I’m worried it would almost feel like admitting defeat. Only as I’m sending Tom a photo of it and feel an uncharacteristic shiver of nerves do I understand the truth—part of me is still hopeful we could do some of it, and another louder part of me is scared that we’re so far removed from the kids who started that list that Tom wouldn’t even want to anymore.

Tom doesn’t reply right away, but I do get a text from my mom that says Can’t wait to show this to your grandparents, along with a photo of me grinning like a jackal onstage with my thumb jammed against my nose. I snicker and tuck my phone away for the rest of it, trying to put the anxiety out of my mind.

It feels like someone pressed fast-forward on the whole morning after that, because before I know it the principal is congratulating the graduating class and rickety chairs are squeaking as we all clamber to our feet. Graduation caps and gummy worms are flying through the air, kids are yelling like they’ve suddenly grown a third lung, and I feel the electricity of the room like it’s buzzing in my bones.

No, wait. My phone is literally buzzing against my hip. I pull it out and see the belated response from Tom.

I miss the shit out of you you know. Every day. I’m sorry if I’ve been bad at keeping in touch so I just wanted to say that.

I blink at the text, my throat tight. Caps are still flying and students are jostling each other and hollering and setting off confetti poppers and I’m standing in the middle of it all, staring at my phone screen and typing out the words I miss the shit out of you too.

“Riley!”

I snap my head up to see Jesse half jogging over to me. His robe is already wide open, his ripped black jeans and faded band T-shirt a sharp contrast to everyone else’s spiffy graduation best, including the upsettingly traffic-cone-orange sweater set of my mom’s I’m wearing now.

I’m half considering demanding he trade outfits with me—those few months we dated sophomore year we swapped enough clothes that there’s actually no guarantee that isn’t my shirt he’s wearing—but he’s already spilling over with excitement, his mop of dirty blond curls lifting as he runs over.

“Dude, high five.”

I oblige Jesse, who doesn’t just high-five me but grabs my hand and holds it up like I’m a champion prizefighter. His eyes look like someone backlit them with neon.

“Look at us, actually going out there and following our dreams,” he says, emphasizing the last word with another squeeze of my hand.

“Getting a McFlurry and napping until August?” I ask.

Jesse is even more absurdly enthusiastic to be alive than usual, because he spins and releases me like a clunky ballerina.

“Nah, I mean saying ‘screw the establishment!’ and going our own way. You know we’re among the select few cool kids without colleges next to our names in the graduation program?” he says, proudly holding one up.

I did not know there was a program in the first place, let alone one that tattled on us. Jesse tucks his carefully into his robe the same way he always does with flyers and knickknacks from events, collecting mementos like a tall magpie.

“Huh. Well, I’m not really yelling anything at the establishment,” I admit. “I’m probably just going to start taking community-college classes in the fall.”

Jesse’s grin wilts like he wasn’t expecting such a boring thing to come out of my mouth, and to be fair, I wouldn’t have either. He recovers quickly and says, “Well, maybe you’ll have to come up to New York. You can crash with the Walking JED anytime.”

“The band is moving to New York?”

I’m more surprised that I didn’t know than I am at the idea of them moving. The Walking JED (so named because their names are Jesse, Eddie, and Dai, and all three of them are painfully obsessed with zombie lore) are so ridiculously talented that it’s kind of a wonder they didn’t all get Walking GEDs and ditch this Popsicle stand years ago. Jesse’s the lead singer and writes most of their songs, and between his delightfully offbeat sense of style and distinctly sweet and smoky voice, it’s only a matter of time before someone is shoving a record deal in their faces.

Jesse nods, every inch of him thrumming with energy. “Bright and early tomorrow morning!”

There’s no ignoring the pang between my ribs this time—the one that’s been aching just under the surface for months. Truth be told I don’t really have any designs on college, so it’s not getting left behind in the literal sense. More like the figurative one. I look around and everyone has some kind of plan. College. Pursuing a passion. Seeing the world.

I’ve got the McDonald’s drive-through and then just a giant blank slate of “???” on the other side. I feel a surge of irrational fear, like I’ve just stepped too close to an edge I didn’t realize was a cliff.

But then I feel two firm arms wrap around the back of me and my mom’s familiar minty breath saying into my ear, “Well, if it isn’t my newly graduated hellion.”

I lean in as she kisses me on the temple and gives me an extra squeeze before letting me go.

“Look,” I say, handing her the diploma. “Free kindling.”

But then she gets all misty-eyed and says, “I bet we can find a decent frame for this. Put it up somewhere in your room?”

I’m about to object to the idea of disrupting the vibe of any place in the apartment with a reminder of the most monotonous years of my life when Jesse squints at us and says candidly, “Yeesh, I always forget how alike you look.”

He’s not wrong. This is partially due to the fact that I am a carbon copy of my mom, to the point where the dad I’ve never met might as well have just hit Control + C, Control + V on my mom’s internal keyboard and walked away. We have the precise same honey-brown curls, the same hazel eyes, the same tall, wiry frames and even, somehow, the precise same freckle under the right side of our lower lip.

But the alikeness is even more exaggerated by the fact that my mom is only nineteen years older than I am, and people assume she’s my sibling as often as my parent.

“Oh. Hello, Jesse.” My mom gives him an amused once-over and says, “I see you’ve added more tattoos to the collection.”

My mom likes Jesse just fine, but likes him a lot more now that we are very firmly exes. Jesse and I never got into the kind of shenanigans that drove my mom up the wall the way Tom and I did growing up, but dating him right on the heels of Tom leaving probably didn’t help matters. Jesse’s love of tattoos and guitars reminds her a bit too much of her alleged “wild youth” in New York she has been afraid I’ll make a sequel out of probably since the moment I was born. No offense to my mom, who was likely a badass in her day, but staying out all night clubbing to early 2000s hits in low-rise jeans while sneaking sips of Fireball from a glittery hip flask isn’t exactly her nerdy daughter’s scene.

(To be clear, I only have this hilarious mental image thanks to my aunts’ retellings; my mom glosses over the details as if she’s worried I’m going to take notes.)


Copyright © 2023 by Emma Lord