Since You've Been Gone

Emily Hughes, a shy seventeen-year-old living in Stanwich, Connecticut, spends the first two weeks of summer in a panic. Her best friend of two years, Sloane Williams, an outgoing girl who drew Emily out of her shell, has vanished. Sloane's phone goes straight to voicemail, and the windows of her historic backcountry mansion are dark. At home, Emily's parents, Scott and Andrea Hughes, a playwriting team who teach at the local college, announce they have begun a new play about Tesla and Edison, meaning they will be absorbed in their work all summer. Then Emily's mother mentions a letter. Emily finds it: an envelope in Sloane's distinctive handwriting containing a list of 13 tasks, from "Kiss a stranger" and "Go skinny-dipping" to cryptic entries like "Penelope" and "55 S. Ave. Ask for Mona."

Sloane's lists are a tradition between them. Before every trip Emily took, Sloane mailed her a humorous set of challenges, always ending with the instruction to find Sloane afterward and tell her about it. But this list is different. The items correspond to fears Emily has backed away from, things she was too shy or scared to attempt. Emily resolves to complete every one, hoping the list will lead her back to Sloane.

She starts with the most approachable item. At 55 Stanwich Avenue, she discovers Paradise Ice Cream, where Sloane had secretly submitted job applications for both of them, planning a summer they could spend working together. Emily accepts the position and begins working alone in the quiet shop.

Emily's first trip to the Orchard, the town's outdoor party spot, to complete "Apple picking at night" is miserable. She arrives alone and hides behind a tree. Her car runs out of gas at the exit due to a broken fuel gauge. Frank Porter, the junior class president, is nearby and drives her to a gas station, where he chats easily with the attendant, James, and helps her fill up. Before they part, Frank asks if Emily can teach him to run. She agrees, certain he will forget.

He does not forget. Frank shows up at her house early one morning, and they begin running together regularly. Emily learns that Frank's polished exterior conceals real problems: His parents, an architect and a decorator, are getting divorced, and neither is consistently living at the house, leaving Frank largely on his own. His girlfriend, Lissa Young, is away at a Princeton academic program. As Emily and Frank trade stories on their runs, Emily stops seeing him as the class president and starts seeing him as a friend.

Emily's world expands further when Dawn Finley, a tearful delivery driver from the adjacent Captain Pizza, stumbles into Paradise after catching her boyfriend Bryan cheating with her best friend. They bond over the shared pain of suddenly losing a best friend, and Dawn becomes Emily's confidante. Emily rides along on a pizza delivery to a customer named Jamie, hoping to complete "Hug a Jamie," but freezes at the door. Later, she stops for gas and realizes that James was once called Jamie by his grandmother. She impulsively hugs him across the counter and hurries out.

Frank and his childhood best friend, Matt Collins, who goes by his last name, become active collaborators in Emily's quest. Collins produces his cousin Benji, a boarding school student Emily has never met, for "Kiss a stranger." Emily and Benji kiss in Frank's darkened pantry, and Emily emerges feeling braver than she has all summer. When Emily's parents forget they are hosting their annual play reading, Frank is cast opposite Emily in her family's most successful play, Bug Juice. In the final scene, their characters must kiss, but Emily's younger brother Beckett, reading stage directions aloud, yells "Curtain!" just before it happens.

As summer progresses, Emily crosses off item after item. Dawn brings Bryan's sunglasses for them to smash in the parking lot. Emily buys a backless black dress, gets her hair cut, and takes Beckett camping in the backyard. She uses a fake ID Sloane obtained for her under the name "Penelope Entwhistle" to enter a bar alone. She rides a gentle horse named Butterscotch around a ring for five terrified minutes. She crashes a wedding where Dawn is catering, dancing for hours among strangers. During a slow dance, Frank pulls her close and tells her she is the brightest thing in the room. Emboldened, Emily proposes they all go skinny-dipping at Frank's beach, and they do, the four friends emerging exhilarated.

Emily's feelings for Frank have been building. During an indoor camping trip at a house Frank's parents built on speculation, which sits empty and unsold, Emily wakes to find his arm around her and acknowledges she likes him as more than a friend. She avoids him for days but reunites with him at a gala held, to her shock, at Sloane's old house. Everything inside remains, but all of Sloane's personal belongings are gone. Driving Frank home in the rain, Emily kisses him. He kisses her back deeply, then pulls away and gets out of the car.

The fallout is swift. Frank goes silent. Dawn, still raw from being cheated on, reacts with cold anger. Collins tells Emily he cannot take her side against his best friend. Emily spirals into isolation, having completed every item on the list but having lost every friend she made over the summer.

In frustration, Emily crumples the list and throws it away. That night, she stops at the gas station, where James notices a faded bumper sticker on her car: a South Carolina palm tree and crescent moon, the same symbol Sloane drew on the envelope instead of a return address. Emily retrieves the list and picks up two disposable cameras she had dropped off for developing, including one she found under a floorboard in Sloane's old room. The photos reveal candid pictures Sloane took of Emily throughout the year, proving Sloane cared deeply about their friendship. Among the photos is a picture of a recipe card from Sloane's aunt, "Laney Alden, River Port." Emily searches online and finds an address in South Carolina.

Her parents are away for the weekend with both cars. Emily runs barefoot to Frank's house and asks him to drive her to South Carolina. After a pause, he agrees. The 10-hour drive begins in tense silence. In Pennsylvania, they confront each other: Frank is angry that Emily ran away when he came to her house to talk; Emily admits she assumed he was ending their friendship. In South Carolina, Frank reveals what he had actually come to say. He and Lissa broke up. Their relationship had been fading for months, and he drove to Princeton to end things, not to reconcile. He admits that at some point over the summer, he began thinking about Emily more than he knew he should.

They arrive at a fading white mansion. Sloane is sitting on the front steps, stunned to see Emily, and they embrace. That night, Sloane explains why she left: Having moved constantly her whole life, she has lost every friendship to distance and preferred to preserve the memory rather than watch it fade. Pressed further, Sloane reveals a deeper secret: Her parents, Milly and Anderson, blew through their trust funds and have no money. They move wherever relatives will let them stay; the Stanwich mansion was never theirs. Sloane hid all of this out of shame. Emily tells her none of it mattered and that she only wishes Sloane had trusted her. Before leaving, Emily writes Sloane a list of her own, ending with the instruction Sloane always gave her: "When you finish this list, find me and tell me all about it."

On the drive home, Emily slides close to Frank and takes his hand. He pulls off at a secluded overlook where the sun is rising over a valley and kisses her. Emily leans toward him, and toward whatever comes next.