Julie Halpern - The F- It List

“Thank you for the text,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” I offered. It seemed like enough to start the flow of conversation.

“How’s Becca doing?” He surprised me with the question, even though it was what a nice person would ask. She did have cancer, and she did once barf in his general direction.

“She’s okay. Chemo is over, but she’s in radiation which seems to also suck. She’s really weak.” I didn’t like the sound of that, since Becca was trying to kick cancer’s ass. “I mean, she’s tough, but it’s never-ending. I still don’t understand why the treatment is so unbelievably cruel. She passed one hundred days. Sick for one hundred fucking days.”

“Seriously? That long? I feel like this year has gone on for ten years.”

That wasn’t good. I was part of his extra-long year. So was his brother, I knew, but if only I had been there for him when I should have, maybe it wouldn’t have felt so long.

“So how are you?” I asked. The dumbest question in the universe. Still working on moving along the conversation.

Leo shrugged, an appropriately ambiguous answer. The awful thing was that I really wanted to know how he was, and that was one of the things that kept me from talking to him since his brother’s death. The longer I waited, the less we’d have to say, the more blanks no one wanted to fill in. Those blanks could be sadder than that ridiculously sad movie I sent to laughless Becca.

“How are you?” Leo asked back.

“Okay,” I answered. “I hate this snow. I mean, I actually love it aesthetically and how quiet it makes everything at three a.m., but I’m terrified of driving in it,” I admitted.

“You? Terrified of something? You’re full of surprises today.”

“Full of them? What else?” I asked.

“I think that might have been the first time you asked me how I am. Ever.” He was serious.

“It’s not because I don’t want to know. It’s just such a contrived question. I usually figure if someone really wants to tell me how they are they’ll just tell me. No need to pull it out of them.”

“You are abnormal.” Leo studied me.

“Thank you,” I answered dryly.

“Sometimes I think you might be a robot. Or an alien. At least genetically engineered somehow,” Leo said.

“That would explain my freakish elbow dimples.”

“Or how you could just stop talking to someone after what we had.”

So it was time to talk about that.

“Can we go sit at a table?” I asked, noticing that the lack of customers made Leo and me center stage for my fellow sub makers.

Leo didn’t answer but led the way to a table, the same table where we first sat months ago. I wished I could say life was simpler back then, but it seemed like life was never going to be simple. Maybe if we were Amish. He shrugged off his jacket and flipped it over the back of his chair, which I took as a positive sign compared to the coffee shop. His hat stayed on, probably to keep his newly shorn head warm. The hat made him look snuggly, and I had the urge to lean over and rub it. I resisted, knowing we weren’t there yet, nor did I know if we would ever be again.

Leo looked at me intently, and I knew he expected me to speak. It was he who had come to my work, though, and I hadn’t prepared anything. The text was a huge step for me, and I hadn’t yet figured out what would follow it. I convinced myself I’d probably never hear from Leo again.

Yet here he was.

He kicked back in his chair and slung one arm over the back, his eyes never leaving my face. Feigning confidence, I continued to meet his eyes, which had the uncomfortable effect of making me want to touch him again. Even though I stopped talking to Leo, even though I totally fled when he probably needed me most, and even though I made it a point to move on with my semblance of a life, I couldn’t dispute the fact that I. Liked. Leo.

Shit.

It was so much easier being with guys I didn’t like. Davis went off to join the army, and I hadn’t thought about him since. For all I knew, he was dead, too, right alongside Leo’s brother.

Leo’s brother. Right then it hit me what it could have been like if I were with someone like Leo when my dad died. I doubt he would have left me out of fear like Davis left me.

Like I left him.

“I am such an asshole,” I said, not quite meaning to, aloud.

Leo didn’t disagree.

“I was your Davis,” I decided. “I should just go off and join the army.”

“Who’s Davis? And there’s no way you’re joining the army.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I argued.

“You seriously want to join the army? All five feet of you?”

“I’m five foot two, and, well, no. I don’t want to join the army. I just need to stop speaking.”

“You already did that, remember?” Leo looked smug.

“What are you doing here, Leo? I have no idea what to say to you. I’m not going to apologize anymore because I did that and apologies are really just bullshit to make the apologizer feel better. And I don’t deserve to feel better. I should feel like absolute, total shit. I deserve someone to take out my tendons and parade me around like a marionette.”

“Diarrhea mouth, can you plug it for a second?”

The thought of having plugged diarrhea in my mouth shut me up.

“I’m not looking for another apology—” Leo started, but I cut him off.

“I don’t know what to give you. I have nothing to say that will make anything better. Nothing is going to bring Jason back, and it’s totally my fault.” Wait. What?

“Alex, how could Jason’s death be your fault?” Leo unhooked his arm from the chair and put his hand on the table near mine, but not touching.

“I don’t think I meant that. I mean, of course I didn’t.” I picked at a jagged fingernail.

“Do you think your dad’s death was your fault?”

“No,” I argued. “But I just don’t get it. Any of it. I don’t want any more real horror in my life. There’s nothing funny about actual death and disease. If only my dad could come back because of a rabid monkey at the zoo.” I laughed to myself at the ridiculous horror movie sentiment.

“Or as a reanimated prostitute,” Leo added.

“Maybe we should have buried them in pet cemeteries,” I suggested.

“That never ends well,” Leo admitted. I had never joked about my dad’s death with someone, not someone who had a death of their own to joke about.

“Do you believe things happen for a reason?” Leo brought the conversation back to serious.

“No,” I answered emphatically.

“Me neither,” he concurred. “I can’t buy the idea that we’re supposed to live and learn from horrible things. That somehow these things happen so we can grow as people.”

“I hope nothing else happens to you,” I told him, “because you have done enough growing.” I held my hand over my head acknowledging his exceptional height.

“Maybe that’s why shit does keep happening to you. Because you need to grow. Shorty.”

“That was quite possibly the lamest insult anyone has ever bestowed upon me.”

“Forgive me. I’m out of practice. Being away from everyone except your depressed parents will do that to you.”

“That sucks,” I said. “You should come back to school. Better of two evils? I’m there.” I prodded.

“So that would make school the bigger of two evils.” Leo smiled, and one of his fingers stroked one of mine. My toes wiggled.

“Alex! A little help here!” I hadn’t noticed that the snowy eaters had arrived, and a line was backing up.

“I guess I have to go work.” I rolled my eyes.

“That is what they pay you for.” Leo stood as I did.

“I thought it was for my bubbly personality and smaller-than-average butt.”

“Imagine the tips if you had an even average-sized butt.”

“You’re lucky I still feel guilty, or I might have to hit you.” I started walking behind the counter.

Leo grabbed my arm. “No more guilt, okay?”

I nodded weakly. Guilt was the one thing I’d held on to for everyone. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t blame myself for you smoking again?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Let’s say you were a coconspirator, but I was the mastermind.”

“I can live with that.”

“Good.”

“Alex!” Doug yelled again. “I need more meat!”

“Should I be jealous?” Leo asked.

“I wouldn’t mind if you were.” I almost felt coquettish, if such a thing were possible. We both smiled.

“Alex! Meat! Now!” Doug harassed me.

“Better go give Doug his meat. See you in school?” I suggested. “There’s a book closet that misses you terribly.”

Leo pulled a chain out from his shirt that hung around his neck and held it up for me to see. I recognized a familiar-looking key and the distinctive shape of dog tags. He tucked the chain back in, gave a small wave and a smile, and walked up the stairs.

I felt really good. And it scared me.

NO LEO THE REST of the week at school, nor the entire next week. We started texting, benign conversations about movies on Svengoolie. I subtly tried to coax him back to school, but I was afraid to push it.

They’re threatening to start construction on the book closet wing if you don’t show up.

Nice try. That’s not scheduled until next year.

I might knock it down myself then.

That I’d come to see.

But the days passed, and that was as much contact as we had. I started to believe I imagined our Cellar visit, residual brain fog from Becca’s pot smoke. She was having a particularly nauseous time from the radiation combined with the sore throat. I did my best to cheer her up with visits and pints of ice cream, but it didn’t feel like enough. It never did.

Becca’s mom was in a particularly dark, religious state. Every moment she could get away from the house, she did. Sometimes it was shopping, sometimes spa days, but she spent most of her time at the synagogue. On the rare occasion I did see her, I wished I hadn’t. One afternoon, when Becca seemed to ache in the most random places, her mom walked in with a grossly pained expression. I think Becca’s cancer installed at least six new worry wrinkles on her mom’s face. She tutted, clicked her tongue, made all sorts of exaggeratedly worrisome sounds as she watched Becca on her bed. Under her breath, I heard her say, “God will see you through.” Then she left again. Unsettling.

“What is up with your mom?” I asked, taking over game duty from Becca. She liked to think of herself as my sensei to the world of RPGs, and I complied as long as she agreed to watch Waxwork I and II with me. I bought the set with some birthday money from Aunt Judy.

“She’s like the prophet of doom.” Becca’s voice was quiet and scratchy, but her head was together. I liked that. “She thinks it’s a bad sign that I’m so sick, even though I’m done with chemo.”

“She told you that?”

“I speak crazy mom clicks.”

“You don’t think it means anything, do you?”

“Who knows? I never thought about having cancer in the first place, and here I am. We still have to wait a month to find out if destroying my body also just happened to destroy the cancer.”

“It fucking better have.”

“You tell that cancer, Alex. Maybe you’ll scare it out of me.”

If only.

Friday afternoon I came home to an empty house and plopped myself in front of the TV. No Leo, Becca in limbo, and I was in a bad head space. As I flipped through the channels, it all seemed so pointless. Why were brainless people followed around all day with cameras, and why did people watch them? Why did singers spend millions of dollars on one stupid video for one shitty song when there was still no cure for cancer? Why were so many assholes all over the news and reality television and on sports teams and so many good people were dead?

And where did I fall in all of it?

My dream, to make horror movies, was so pointless. What good did it do for anyone? Who did it help? Nothing I did ever helped anyone. I couldn’t stop my dad or Leo’s brother from dying. I couldn’t stop Becca from getting cancer. She could still die. My mom could die. My brothers. What if there were a zombie attack, and I was the last person left on Earth? Everyone dying around me, everyone becoming the undead, and I was the only one left living?

When my mom and brothers came home, I sat comatose on the couch, staring forward at nothing after the TV finally sickened me to the point of turning it off.

CJ, always the turd, saw me and asked, “Who died?” AJ smacked him in the back of the head, but CJ just asked him an incredulous, “What?” I guess we were related.