Julie Halpern - The F- It List

You awake? I typed.

I waited for an answer, but got none. I typed on anyway.

Maybe you’re asleep. I hope you’re dreaming aboard Battlestar Galactica.

Weird true story: I saw Leo at the park. Tried a cigarette! Tasted like ass. Then, no shit, we made out. I think I may have imagined it. Wish you were there. Not to watch us, just to verify it happened.

I waited again for a reply. Nothing. She must have left her messenger on.

Well, good night then. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. Good luck tomorrow.

I stepped away from the computer to put on my nightshirt, which was really just a t-shirt that had become too holey and yellowed in the armpits to wear in public.

The familiar chime of a message alerted from the computer. On my screen was a message from Becca:

You just did something off my Fuck-It List! I forgot which number. So the question is: Did his mouth taste like ass, too?

I fished the Fuck-It List out of my crumpled jeans on the floor. There at number 12: Kiss a boy who smokes.

I typed back, Not like ass. Like a burnt hamburger. But a sexy burnt hamburger.

Goodnight, Alex.

Goodnight, Becca.

I got into bed with the Fuck-It List and crossed out number 12. Something about that action, the dragging of the pen over Becca’s words, made me feel like I was helping her. I couldn’t cure her cancer, but there were things I could do. And if they happened to be with a guy who I kind of liked, I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. After all, it’s what Becca wanted.

THAT NIGHT I SPENT over an hour reading over Becca’s Fuck-It List. It was like a window into her tween-through-present-day soul. I had no idea about some of her dreams, like number 7: Eat a hot pepper. How tiny. How insignificant. And yet, it must have seemed like a big enough deal to put it on her list. Was that one I would complete for her? Or did she want the easy ones to do on her own?

Number 4: Write Rupert Grint a love letter.

I remembered Becca’s Rupert Grint phase, after we first saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on DVD. “He looks so different. So kind of manly.” I was a Seamus Finnigan gal myself, but I could understand the appeal of Rupe. I mean, the guy’s last name was Grint, and I was no stranger to the admiration of a redhead.

Did Becca actually want me to write him a letter? I wished we had gone over some ground rules. Which ones were more important to her, which she wanted to do herself, and which were so outdated that they could be taken off the list altogether?

What about number 1: Have a Kool-Aid stand with every Kool-Aid flavor invented.

How did that make it to her Fuck-It List? Was it a dying-of-cancer priority? And what kind of asshole would I look like if I did set up a rainbow-flavored Kool-Aid stand?

As the list grew, it also matured in content, hence the neighbor flashing and the smoker kissing. Toward the end, practically every item was about sex or drugs. Number 16: Smoke pot with a burnout behind the school. And number 17: Make out with a burnout behind the school.

I knew which burnout she had in mind, too. Chad Dominguez, her lust-from-a-distance delinquent that fulfilled her bad-boy movie requirements (remedial classes, multiple suspensions, held back at least one grade, and completely edible). Did that mean I had to smoke pot and make out with Chad Dominguez? Would Becca appreciate that I fulfilled items like that or be livid with betrayal? Did Becca have her own copy of the list for reference? What if I lost the list? I vowed to scan the paper first thing in the morning, email Becca a copy, and save one to my hard drive. The paper was already in slightly disintegrated condition; I would hate to fail Becca by accidentally getting it wet or leaving it somewhere. During sleep, I decided to store it under a tall stack of books on my nightstand. I have always kept a stack of library books next to my bed as a lifeline. If I ever woke up in the middle of the night too scared to move or too sad to roll over, the books were my saviors. I picked up an aged copy of Stephen King’s Thinner. Not his best, but I liked it enough to read it for the third or fourth time. Three pages in, I fell asleep.

The next morning, a half hour before my alarm was set to begin the monotony of the day, and half asleep to where I was still dreamy, I remembered my time with Leo on the grass. Even if he was only kissing me back because he thought I wanted to kiss him, I could feel he enjoyed it. Both from the hand on my ass and the stiffness in his pants. In my bed, I inched my hand down my stomach and into the band of my underwear. I relived the feeling of my body on top of Leo’s, and I rubbed my fingers between my legs, gently at first, just one finger in a circle. As Leo kissed me deeper, pressed against me harder, I added more fingers, my whole palm, faster, urgently until my entire body shuddered.

I lay still, my hand still in my undies, my heart beating heavily. Then my eyes popped open, and my hand ejected itself from the hot seat.

Becca had cancer, and I just fucked myself.

Guilt consumed me, as it had since the moment I learned of her fate just the day before. The day before. Was that how long it had been? Not even really a day? And it was just the beginning. Today was Becca’s first day of treatment. She could be in the hospital for days. She could feel sick for weeks. She could even…

No. What’s that bullshit people love to spout? The power of positive thinking. It couldn’t hurt, could it? Not as much as the pain Becca was about to go through, was probably going through already. If she can endure having every cell in her body attacked, then I could make the effort to be a more positive person.

Fuck.

I rolled over and looked at my alarm clock. Two minutes until the radio turned on to the only station that came in with the weak, dangly antenna: Lite FM. It always ensured I got my ass out of bed pronto lest I had to listen to Maroon 5 torment me with their mediocrity.

Underneath the library book stack, I spied the crinkly edge of Becca’s list. I gingerly pulled it out so as not to knock over the tower of books or rip the delicate paper. I grabbed a pen from the nightstand, skimmed the list, and found what I was looking for. Number 11: Masturbate.

Even though she wanted to do it, which now meant for me to do it, I still felt guilty. Reluctantly, I crossed it off just as the dulcet vocals of a recently tattooed male assaulted my ears. “Why?” I yelled at my alarm clock, and shut it off. I whipped off my covers and headed straight to my computer.

While the computer booted up, I placed the list into my scanner, a birthday present last year when I was experimenting with Photoshopping old family photos. My personal favorite was one where I airbrushed my parents to look young and added wrinkles, jowls, and hunched backs to me and my brothers. I called it “Ye Olde Family Portrait.” It won second place in the county’s high school art competition. What I really hoped for someday was to win an award for my films. If I could ever actually finish one. I was really close at the end of the last school year. I thought I might have a shot at this local film contest hosted by a teen center two towns over. But then my dad died, and I couldn’t look at the movie again. Deleted the whole thing from my hard drive. Which was fucking stupid, since it starred Becca and now Becca might not be around forever and I could have had all that footage to remember her and…

My mind spiraled to a dark place until I realized my computer was ready for me. I scanned the list, saved it as F-IT LIST, which I thought looked kind of funny. I took out the hyphen. The FIT LIST. As if I were creating some sort of exercise goals list and sharing them with my friends. I opened my email account and saw I had one new message from something called CaringBridge. I thought it might be junk, but I clicked anyway. Completely unjunk, it turned out to be a link to an online cancer journal set up by Becca’s mom. I clicked the link, which required me to set up a password, and I read the first entry. It was short, just a few sentences, and read, “We begin treatment today. Becca, newly bald, looks beautiful with or without hair. She is in decent sprits, saying this is perfect research for a future movie role. If only that’s all it were.”

I pictured Becca’s mom typing in a hospital seat, the same kind I had sat in while awaiting the verdict on my dad’s life. So kind of hospitals to provide Wi-Fi. I meant that, too. Nothing like the inanity of the web to take one’s mind off the stench of pain and death that resides in hospitals.

Positive thinking, Alex.

I opened a new email, subject: The FIT LIST.