Time to go to school and pretend I give a shit.

Love, Alex

After my shower, I dressed myself in my Dead Set uniform of black t-shirt, jeans rolled up once, black high-top Chucks, and my low ponytail, and got in my dad’s car. Just as I was about to pull out of my driveway, I remembered the list resting in my scanner. It was cleaning-lady day, and who knew how nosy Paulina was when she cleaned my room? I shut off my engine, pounded up the stairs, and pulled out the note. Not wanting to leave it behind, I folded and stuffed it in my front pocket for safekeeping. A quick good-bye to my mom and brothers, who could barely manage a word through shovels of cereal, and I was on my way to school, the lump of the list a constant reminder of my best friend and her lumps.

CHAPTER 11

THE SCHOOL DAY PASSED in a muddy blur. The only class that was interesting enough to help me forget about what I wished I didn’t have to forget about was English. My teacher, Ms. Norton, was a spark plug filled with energy and information. She loved the shit out of books, which I couldn’t say for all of my English teachers. Some of them liked to analyze a book to death—suck all the truth and light out of a character until they were just inanimate, dissected letters on a page. We went over the year’s reading list, and I vaguely listened.

* * *

The only interaction I had with Leo that day was through the tiny glass window of the heavy metal hallway doors. We made eye contact, but I lost him in the shuffle of the passing period. Fine with me. Now that we’d actually talked, and then some, I didn’t even know what I wanted to say, or do, with him.

At lunch I checked my email in the library. Nothing new from Becca or her mom’s journal. I dug around online to see if I could learn anything specific about Becca’s treatment, but Google gave me billions of hits and I didn’t know what I was looking for anyway. According to Becca, treatments and drugs are tailored to each patient, so even if I did read something it might have nothing to do with what Becca was going through.

All my searching really did was make me puddle-on-the-floor depressed. Not only was my best friend going through this, but millions of other people’s best friends, moms, dads, sisters, brothers, fuck, even cats were going through it. I looked up at the ceiling and asked, “WHY?” I didn’t know who I was talking to. After my dad was killed, I pretty much gave up all belief in God. People loved to say “comforting” things to me, like, “It’s part of God’s plan” or “God only gives you what you can handle.” Um, fuck you? And fuck God. Seriously, if the god they believed in was giving out dead dads and cancer, I wanted nothing to do with him. And yeah, of course I can handle what was doled out to me. Because I was forced to. What were my options? Not handling it? Even that would be a choice and, therefore, the way I handled the situation.

It’s pretty damn hard to believe in God when you’ve lost so much. I know some people go the opposite way. God can be a great being to lean on, like a falling star to make all your superstitious wishes come true. But no matter how long or hard I prayed, I knew my dad would never come back. So why bother?

Still, as I stood up from my chair in the library, I mumbled, “Not her, too.” If there was a god, an all-seeing, all-hearing and -knowing superpower of a god, then he’d hear me and know what I was talking about. Not that he’d do anything about it.

After school, I drove to my job at Cellar Subs, a local institution loved by college students and the monetarily impaired. I was the only high school student who worked there, and I got the job after recommending Dead Alive to the owner. He went home and watched it the night of the interview, obviously wowed by my taste, and hired me the next day. The college students I worked with were a mix of art majors, lesbians, and frat boys. As much as I loved living here, what with the excellent public library system and the selection of old-timey movie theaters, I would never stay here to go to college. Or, at least, I wouldn’t have before my dad died. Now I couldn’t even think about college, about leaving. Mom needed me here, and I didn’t want to spend my year writing sob-story college applications. The new plan was to save up some money, maybe travel, and figure it out when I was ready. Becca’s cancer solidified my idea. Mom didn’t push. Maybe she wanted me around, too.

Being at work, where the college students always got to choose the music (that day was a totally weird band called Ween) and the business was always steady, turned out not to be so bad. The rhythmic slap of meat on bread put me at ease, so much so that it took several times of Leo calling, “Alex!” for me to recognize someone was talking to me. I wiped my meaty hands on the rag tucked into my shorts and old t-shirt, rotated from my sleep-shirt collection, and walked out of the kitchen. The restaurant was organized with the front counter at the bottom of the entrance stairway (because, naturally, the restaurant was in a cellar). Above the counter was a menu sloppily written in chalk. When people ordered they were given a number, and their handwritten ticket was passed back to me and my cohort, Doug, a kind of cute, definitely annoying sculpture major with a minor in astronomy. After one of us made the subs, usually me unless we were busy enough to warrant Doug to stop sketching and start sandwich making, we placed it in a basket, left the small, narrow kitchen behind the counter, and yelled out the customer’s number. Sometimes I liked to do it in an accent. Today, I just did it as loudly as I could.

Leo waited by the counter, ready to pick up an order.

“Hey,” I greeted him with confusion. “How did you know I worked here?”

“I didn’t. I always come here on Wednesdays after my tuba lesson.”

“You play the tuba?”

“No. I just thought it sounded funny.”

“So you’re stalking me?” I checked.

“Sorry, no. I actually come here after I pick up my comic subscriptions.”

“For real this time?”

“For real.”

“The tuba was cooler.”

“Says you.”

I ignored the annoyed looks of the college students around me, pretending I was oblivious to the fact that they wanted to eat.

“What number are you?” I nodded toward Leo’s order ticket.

“Forty-two.”

“The meaning of life, no less. I’ll be right back.”

I went into the kitchen and fixed Leo’s order, a veggie deluxe with cheddar and Muenster cheeses heated up. I popped the sub into the microwave above my head and prepared myself the Alex Special: turkey and Muenster, topped with a pile of pickles. When the microwave beeped, most definitely emitting heaps of radiation so near my brain, I informed Doug, “I’m taking my dinner. You have orders to make.” I didn’t wait around to see if he heard me, tossed my rag onto an empty counter, and carried out the two baskets to Leo.

“Lead the way,” he directed. I took him to my favorite spot next to a fake fireplace. Cellar Subs’ walls were covered in graffiti, one of those places that encourages it. I left my mark one night after closing, high on the wall so as not to be written over, standing on a ladder from the back room: “Belial was here,” a nod to the Basket Case Trilogy.

When we began eating, Leo said, “My compliments to the chef.”

“Mine, too,” I agreed. “So you really didn’t know I worked here?” I asked.

“Did you know I played basketball over at Irving?”

“Nope.”

“Then I didn’t know you worked here.”

“That kind of makes it sound like you did know I worked here, but that I was lying about knowing you played basketball at Irving. Which I wasn’t.”

“Pickles?” he questioned.

“Want one?” I offered.

“I’m good.”

We ate our subs, not breaking for more confusing chat until Leo, wiping his mouth on a tiny, useless napkin, asked, “Should I try a conversation starter?”

I liked the way Leo talked. It wasn’t as matter of fact as the way I spoke, but it wasn’t as forced as most people would be when getting to know someone. “Do you have one?” I asked.

“That was pretty much it.”

“And look at the conversation it started.” He shrugged. “I’ve got one,” I said. “My dad made it up. It’s called half and half. Like, half empty, half full. You’re supposed to say something that happened today that was half empty, you know, shitty? And then something half full, the good.” I waited for him to make fun of the quaintness, but he took a thoughtful pause and asked, “Can you go first? I need a minute to think.”

“Don’t think while I’m talking because then you’re not listening.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

I flipped him off pleasantly and said, “I’m getting drinks. You think about your half and half while I get us pop. What do you want?”

“Coke.”

I walked behind the counter to the drink fountain. Ila, a gorgeous women’s studies major with waist-length strawberry-blond hair, worked the register. “Who’s that?” She waggled her eyebrows at me. I could’ve been jealous at the thought of not only a college girl, but a beautiful one at that, ogling Leo, but Ila was a lesbian with the cutest girlfriend who, when not going to school full-time, worked as a carpenter.

“That’s Leo. From my school.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” she asked, completely ignoring the backup of customers. Part of the charm of Cellar.

“No. I don’t think so. I don’t know what he is. I barely know him, really.” I pumped the pop out of the fountain into two worn, plastic tumblers.