Julie Halpern - The F- It List

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.

“Your fucking dad died, remember?” I asked coldly.

“Alex!” my mom scolded.

“Did you hear what he said, Mom?”

“It’s just an expression. Tone it down,” CJ said.

In a second I was on him, smacking CJ in the face and slamming my fist into his shoulder. I don’t remember the last time I hit one of my little brothers, since they had passed the point of being little and outgrew me by at least five inches. CJ was an athlete, and while I may be scrappy, he outweighed me by thirty pounds of muscle. Somehow he had me pinned to the ground in seconds.

“What? Are you on the wrestling team? All you need now is a lobotomy and some tights.” I quoted The Breakfast Club into the carpet.

My mom came to my rescue, although I wouldn’t have minded before my brother’s knee wedged into my back. “CJ, get off your sister. Boys, up to your room. Your sister and I need to talk.”

“Why are we the ones in trouble? She started it.” CJ pouted as he huffed up the stairs.

“You’re not in trouble. You have a computer in your room, and that’s where you would have gone anyway to play Blood and Bones 12 or whatever horrific game it is you boys are into now.”

My mom helped me off the ground. We sat on the couch and waited for the twins’ bedroom door to slam before Mom started talking. “I know you’re having a hard time, honey—”

“That’s the thing. I’m not having a hard time. I’m still alive. I’m still healthy. It’s everyone around me that horrible things are happening to. And I feel guilty every second of every day because I can’t do a thing about it.”

“Hold on. You think because you’re alive, because you’re not sick, that nothing is happening to you? Oh, honey. That’s just not true. You’re allowed to have feelings, you know. Your dad is gone. I cry about that every single day because he was my husband, the father of my wonderful children.” She stroked my cheek. “And I loved him so much. Do you think I shouldn’t be upset because I’m not the dead one?”

I shook my head.

“And Becca, of course you feel bad. It’s almost harder for those who love the person who is sick because, you’re right, there’s not a whole lot you can do. Except what you are doing: being there for her. You have to stop thinking you’re supposed to be so tough all the time.”

“I don’t think I’m tough!” I was appalled by how dorky that sounded.

“You know what I mean. You have such an emotional wall up. Like, if you let it down that means you’re weak.”

I hated to admit she was right because it sounded ridiculous, but I did hate the idea of being weak. The stupid girl in the horror movie who hid from the killer instead of fighting back. The screaming idiot who went up the stairs instead of to their car and away from the scene. In a way, I knew it was one of the reasons I watched horror movies; it gave me a feeling of moral superiority. But in real life, there was no obvious bad guy for me to slay, no ending where the dead person came back to life.

“I feel useless,” I admitted to my mom. “Nothing I do is important.”

“Now that’s bullshit.” My mom surprised me with her swear, usually reserved for driving. “You want me to make you a list?” Mom didn’t wait for an answer and started ticking things off with her fingers. “You help keep this family together. You have a job and make money instead of sitting on the couch. You make people laugh. You’re mostly nice to your brothers who need a big sister more than ever now. Your grades are good. And you are a wonderful friend through thick and thin. And someday”—Mom cleared her throat, as if this were hard for her to admit—“you will be an incredible filmmaker.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to make movies. That it wasn’t practical. And you were totally right.”

“No, I wasn’t. If it will make you happy and fulfilled, then it is practical.”

“But it’s so pointless. Horror movies don’t help anyone.”

But right when I said it, I knew I was wrong. Horror movies could help people, just as they helped me. I don’t know how I could have made it through the last summer without their mindless gore to keep my thoughts off my life. The conventions and all of the people who shared their love of horror. And Leo. Without horror movies, I didn’t know what would have brought us together.

“You are a wonderful person, Alex. A little dark, maybe,” Mom laughed. “Don’t beat yourself up. You’ve got two brothers who can do that now.”

“Yeah. When did that happen?”

Mom kissed my forehead. “I love you very much.”

“Love you, too,” I mumbled, and Mom went to the kitchen to make dinner. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and sent two texts. The first was to Becca.

Want me to come over tonight? Buffy marathon on Logo.

The second was to Leo.

I’ve been waiting in the book closet for 2 weeks. Starting to get hungry. Where are u?

Maybe it wasn’t overly emotional, but whatever it was, it was time to stop kicking myself for it.

I DIDN’T EXPECT to hear back from Leo. I thought, and hoped, that Monday would come and there he’d appear in the hallway asking me to smoke a cigarette as if he had never left.

Later Friday night, while Becca slept in her bed next to me as I watched the Master break Buffy’s neck in a parallel world, my phone buzzed.

If you can get out of the closet, want to come over?

It was only eight, but Becca had crashed early from her pain meds. I liked to be around in case she woke up and wanted a glass of water or a note thrown at Caleb’s window. But Leo wanted to see me. And I wanted to see Leo. Leaving Sleeping Baldy didn’t make me a bad friend. Plus, visiting Leo when he wanted me to made me a good friend. Or at least an okay one.

I texted him back.

Yes. Rabid Grannies?

Definitely.