Bucket List - [ H . S ]

Chapter One

Quinn Parker

24th June 2017

"Oh, come on. There has to be at least one massive thing on your bucket list." Charlotte peered down at the messy writing in my journal, skim-reading through the scribbles on the paper. Reaching out with her painted fingernails as she ran her index finger along the writing. I swear I could see her holding back her laughter.

I couldn't really remember why, but Charlotte came up with the idea of writing bucket lists for us to complete together. Something about 'living dangerously and being wild', which I could bet my last dollar she read on an inspirational Instagram post. I liked the idea when she mentioned it during her lunch break at work earlier, but now that I was faced with actually having to put pen to paper, my brain decided it would be the perfect time to draw a blank. It wasn't that I didn't want to do anything interesting and adventurous with my life, I just couldn't pinpoint specific things that seemed like a good idea to write down at this moment in time.

I wish I could say that I had spent my weekends studying and preparing for whatever life was going to throw at me, but that wasn't me. I was the girl who spent most of her nights with a nose pushed into a book or laying around in a field with her best friend, complaining about how we were stuck here and doing nothing about it. It's not like I didn't know what I liked doing, it was more the fear of choosing a career path and having to stick to it.

I knew I enjoyed reading and journaling. It was something I had taken up a couple of summers ago, I liked keeping track of the things I did day to day so I could revisit those memories whenever I wanted to. My mother tried desperately to push me into studying something 'worth my time -like law', as she would put it, but I didn't see the point in forcing myself into four years of college to have a degree in something I didn't particularly want to do.

"What? It can't be that bad." I murmur.

I looked down at her finger hovering over my horrible writing, her painted nail pressing along the paper slowly; hovering above the words 'take a pottery class' before her dark brown eyes met my blue ones. I watched as her lips stretched into a grin and her eyebrow lifted slightly, her head slowly tilting to the side.

"...Pottery, Quinn?" she laughed.

I chuckled quietly and shrugged my shoulders, "what?" I asked.

"Come on, you can take a pottery class somewhere in town, I've seen adverts for that type of thing before. When I mentioned writing a bucket list, I meant like...the bucket list. The ultimate list of once in a lifetime things you want to experience." She continued, her brunette hair falling over her one shoulder messily. "Something crazy! Life is way too short; you know. I want to get out of this small town and do something with my life, and as my best friend you're pretty much obligated to come with me on that journey. No take backs." She grinned cheekily, sitting back on her thighs with both of her hands on her lap.

Charlotte and I grew up in a relatively normal neighbourhood together. Nothing interesting really happened around here, and the town was so small that everyone seemed to know each other. Nestled in the evergreen state of Washington was our little town, Snoqualmie. Population: 13,480. Surrounded by nothing by forests and the same faces we had seen all of our lives, it seemed like we truly lived in the definition of a 'small' town. It was great for when you needed help with something, however, not so great if you ever wanted to do something without it coming back to your mother. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it just meant that all my life I felt a little...coddled.