Julie Halpern - The F- It List

We both started giggling when she hung up. “That was weird,” I told her.

“I know. Cassandra’s such a tramp.”

“Cross it off.” I pushed the list at her along with a pen from her nightstand. “Let’s do one more,” I suggested. “We have five minutes. Is there a quick one? Like where we make out or something?” I asked.

“What? That’s not on there, is it?” Becca scanned the list. “How about this one?” Number fifteen: Flash the homeschool boy next door.”

Becca lived next to a family with six girls and one boy, all homeschooled. We knew nothing about them except that the boy was our age, ridiculously hot, and his bedroom window lined up perfectly with Becca’s.

“You little whore. You have to do this one.” I nudged her.

“I don’t know. Is it too skanky?”

“It’s not like your list said to give the homeschool boy a handjob. Unless that’s further down. Ha. Get it? Further down?”

“Alex! Time to go!” Becca’s mom called once again from downstairs.

“Your mom is insane, by the way,” I told her.

Becca wasted no time answering me. Before I finished my sentence, she was on her feet and heading to her window.

“Oh my god. He’s there. At his little homeschool desk facing his little homeschool window. He looked up. He sees me.”

“No time like the present for a nip slip,” I advised.

“I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it,” Becca chanted. She threw her t-shirt to the floor. “I’m totally doing it. He’s looking! I’m going to take off my bra. I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it.”

“This play-by-play is really sexy, Becca,” I teased.

Becca reached around her back and unhooked her bra. “Here I go. I’m taking off my bra. One. Two. Three.” Becca flung her bra across her room and threw her arms up in the air. “He’s smiling!”

“Yeah. I’d imagine so.”

“I’m going to blow him a kiss.” Becca did just that. Then her bedroom door opened, and her mom barged in. Becca spun around instantly, arms crossed over her chest. “Mom! Get out!” Becca screamed. “Alex is leaving! Give us a minute, damnit!”

I don’t know if Becca’s mom left because of what Becca said or because she didn’t want to know what Becca was actually doing. We busted out laughing the second the door closed. Becca threw her shirt back on and climbed into bed.

“That was so excellent. See how good it’s going to feel when you do these things for me?” She was really serious about me doing her list.

“I’m not showing my tits to your neighbor, Becca.”

“You don’t have to. I already did!” she squealed. “Calm thyself, Becca,” she breathed, something she often did before a show to center herself. “You don’t have to do all of them. I know it’s a lot. Just some of them so you can report back to me. Really live while I can’t.”

“When you put it that way, I’m pretty much obligated to say yes, aren’t I?”

“That’s the idea.”

“I better go, or your mom might try to smoke me out. Should we hug?” Hugging now felt too infinite.

“Yes, we should, and we will.” Becca worked herself out of the bed and wrapped her arms around me. That did it. My hard candy shell melted into a puddle of chocolate in her arms. “I always knew you were a softy.”

“Careful what you say. I’ve got a shiv in my pocket.” I sniffed.

“I love you, Alex. You and your shiv.”

“Love you, too, Becca. Even if I have to sleep on a beach to prove it.”

“I hope you get sand in your undies,” Becca whispered in my ear.

WHEN I PARKED my dad’s car in our empty garage, I knew I’d be home alone. But I didn’t want to be. A note on the kitchen table read, “The boys have soccer. Be home by 8. Pizza in the freezer. Hope you had a good first day. Love you, Mom.” The thought crossed my mind to actually watch my brothers’ soccer game, but that momentary lapse of sport dementia quickly passed. I could’ve studied Becca’s list, started my game plan, created a schedule. But maybe I didn’t want to think about it, about anything. Instead, I opted for a pint of Cherry Garcia and a viewing of my comfort film Dead Alive. Most people know Peter Jackson as the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, and rightly so because they’re brilliant. I would argue even more brilliant is his early, and finest, film about a man in New Zealand whose mom gets bitten by a plague-infected monkey at the zoo. As a result, she turns into a festering, hungry horndog along with other not-so-upstanding members of town, and her son does his best to take care of them. Possibly one of the goriest films ever made, there is even a sweet love story, a hilarious running zombie baby, and a priest who yells, “I kick ass for the Lord!” Could there be anything better?

As much ice cream as I consumed from the too-tiny pint, and as mind-bogglingly sublime as Dead Alive was, I couldn’t kick Becca out of my head. What was she doing at that moment? Was there any way to stop her from remembering that she had cancer? Was it completely unfair that I was using food and film to try to forget? How could I let myself forget when she had no choice?

I stirred the last of the ice cream into a nice soup, then tipped the cup back and chugged it. I had to get out of my quiet house. With the Fuck-It List folded in my back pocket, I got into my car.

I found something heavy on my MP3 player, someone screaming punishingly into my ears. I felt I deserved it, that here I was in my dad’s car, alive when he was dead, healthy when my best friend had cancer. Who was I to be alive? Who decided? I cranked the music even louder to drown my thoughts. Admittedly, my head hurt, but I enjoyed the annoyed looks from the people pulled up next to me at stoplights. What did they know? Their lives were probably so simple. I glared at the back of a bald man’s head in the car in front of me. You deserve to be bald, bastard. Becca does not.

My car led me to the parking lot of my old elementary school, Irving. The same school Becca and I attended together, where our friendship grew. Maybe if I sat there long enough, time would move backward and none of this cancer stuff would exist. Maybe even my dad would still be here. I closed my eyes and let the music consume me. My lips pursed tightly, willing my eyes not to cry.

BAM!

A loud pound on the glass shocked my eyes open, and I squinted at a figure hovering around my car window. The glare of the sun made him difficult to see, but I knew that military jacket from one too many hallway stares at Leo Dietz. He tried speaking to me, his straight lips moving but the sound drowned out by my music. I switched off the ignition, and he tried again.

“Rough day?” he asked, as he leaned slightly into my window.

“Why would you ask that? Do I look like shit or something?” I don’t know why I said that, except that I was worried I did look like shit. Then I felt guilty for worrying about how I looked when Becca was awaiting her fate. I wondered if I’d ever have a guiltless thought again.

“Nah. You don’t look like shit. I only listen to Lamb of God when I hate someone. Or myself.” That’s when I noticed a basketball tucked under his arm.

“You play basketball?” I asked with a hint of disgust in my voice. There was nothing less appealing to me than an ass-smacking member of a high school sports team.

“If you mean I know how to manipulate a basketball, then yes. But I’m not on a team or anything.” His jacket smelled of stale cigarettes.

“Well, that’s good. ’Cause I was about to ask you to leave if you said yes.”

He smiled at me, a smile I’d never been that close to. His teeth weren’t perfect. They weren’t snaggletooth or stained, but his canine teeth stuck out a little farther than his front two. I chuckled to myself at the notion of him being a vampire, something Becca and I would have had a field day with.

“You want to shoot with me?” For a quick second I thought he meant guns, but he held the basketball up with the invite.

“Really?” I didn’t know if my apprehension was because I hated sports or I didn’t want to look stupid in front of him.

“Yeah. It’s fun to play here because the baskets are so low. It makes me feel like a giant.”

“You are a giant,” I noted.

“Get out of the car already,” he commanded. I obeyed.

This close, our height difference was noticeable. I had to look up to talk to him. I was glad it wasn’t the other way around because that would make me on constant booger alert.

We walked together to the nearby basketball court, and he was right: It was kind of fun to feel superior to the baskets.

“This almost makes me want to join a basketball team,” I told him as we lay down on a grassy berm for a rest. “Like, one for six-year-olds.”

Leo laughed a small, inward laugh and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He held the pack out to me as an offer. I hesitated. “When in Rome.” I shrugged. “Or an elementary school parking lot.”

He put both cigarettes in his mouth, lighting them at the same time. He passed one over to me, and I held it between my fingers. I never imagined a cigarette would feel so light and insignificant. It seemed like such a constant crutch in so many lives, I thought it would have more substance to it. I gingerly held the cigarette up to my lips, as it had been to Leo’s, and took a tentative inhale. Then I coughed like the inexperienced asshole I was. “Damn. Why do you bother with this? My mouth tastes like I just sucked on a turd.”

He laughed his quiet laugh again and said, “It gets better once you get used to it.”

“That’s stupid. That’s like when someone tells you, ‘He seems like a prick at first, but he’s really nice once you get to know him.’ Why bother?”