The F- It List

by Julie Halpern

  “Why are we here?” I broke the silence. He managed to look at me. I wanted to drown in his green eyes, until he said, “Fuck if I know. Brian made me text you last night.”

  “He made you? Like, held a gun to your head and threatened your firstborn?”

  Leo stared at me drolly. “This was your idea. Total mistake.” He abruptly pushed his chair back but didn’t stand.

  “I don’t feel like it is,” I told him.

  “What do you feel, Alex?”

  Shit. Was this the moment where I was supposed to excrete emotions? Was that the only way to make this thing right?

  “Do you still love me?” I asked.

  Wrong question.

  “Seriously. Seriously? You are royally fucked up, Alex.”

  “Oh, is that why you asked me here? To be a total dick and tell me shitty things about myself? Because I don’t need you for that. Perfectly capable of self-loathing on my own, thank you.”

  We stared at each other through squinted eyes. If we were bulls, steam would have come snorting out of our noses.

  “Why did you ask me here? And don’t tell me because Brian made you.”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a shitty few months, and as much as I hated running into you yesterday you looked really cute with that viscera hanging off your head.”

  And … melt.

  I tried not to smile at the compliment, but it was impossible not to. “That’s a good word. Viscera.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. We watched each other, silent again, less snorty. “I need more than cute viscera, though.” He sipped his coffee.

  “Like what?” I asked, stumped.

  “I’m not going to feed you your lines, Alex.” I still didn’t know what to say. He waited. “So that’s it, then?” he questioned.

  Part of me had hoped that everything that happened, or didn’t happen, in the last few months could be erased. Forgotten. What good would it do to rehash all of the shit?

  I’m the idiot who asked if he still loved me. And I’m also the idiot who decided to say, “I got a new print of Children of the Corn if you want to watch it.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t look quite as mad anymore, just disappointed. Which was much worse.

  I stood up and walked over to his chair. We were about the same height when he sat and I stood, and I pulled off his hat to run my fingers over his hair. It had worked for me in the past when words failed me, as they often did. I leaned in and stole a kiss, then backed away to gauge his reaction. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward him, his other hand cupping my neck as he kissed me back. The warmth rushed from my lips to my toes, and for a minute all was forgiven.

  Until he pushed me away and snatched back his hat. “Damnit, Alex.” He wiped his lips off with the top of his hand. “I gotta go.” He crushed his hat back on his head and shoved his way out the door, leaving his large coffee behind.

  I slunk back to my chair and sipped my mocha. When I was done, I forced myself to drink the rest of Leo’s coffee, too. The bitter taste filled my mouth and coated my stomach. I imagined it was poison, a concoction that would eat away at my tongue, my teeth, my esophagus, rendering me physically speechless. A fitting end to someone who never said the right thing.

  CHAPTER

  35

  BECCA STAYED HOME from school much of the next week. The radiation made her throat incredibly sore, to the point where swallowing hurt. Her mom wouldn’t let me come over, telling me I made Becca laugh too much and that would just hurt her throat more. I sent Becca a link to Ordinary People, the saddest movie ever made, with the note, “I hope you never laugh again.”

  She wrote me back that Caleb had come to her rescue with homemade hard candies.

  Right. Hard candies. I know what you mean.

  Perv.

  Takes one to know one.

  It was hard to communicate with Becca about Leo through typing only. She was stuck on the positive of “At least he wanted to see you. And he kissed you!”

  “And then he stopped kissing me. Is there anything more mortifying than a guy not wanting to kiss you back?”

  “Try not being able to kiss a guy because you have puke breath twenty-four, seven.”

  That shut me up. My problems still weren’t real problems next to Becca’s.

  I drowned my sorrow and guilt in Ben and Jerry’s and horror movies. Friday night, my mom asked if I would watch the twins so she could play mahjong with some friends.

  “I know they’re old enough to be alone, but I’d feel better if you were home with them. Please don’t drive anywhere.” Mom had chilled a lot with her tension over driving, except at the thought of her three children being alone in a car together. She never said, but I knew what she thought; if we were all driving together, we could all die together, too. I told her we’d stay home, order pizza, watch some movies.

  “Nothing too scary,” Mom requested. “CJ wouldn’t want you to know, but he’s been having nightmares lately.”

  For being such a turd, CJ sure was sensitive.

  I suggested we watch Dead Set with our pizza. “You know how you always ask me why I dress like this everyday? Well, now you’ll know. Plus, you love reality TV.”

  “Sounds cool,” AJ agreed.

  CJ wasn’t so convinced. “Is it scary?”

  “No. It’s fake. Do you believe in zombies?”

  “Not really. I mean, no.” CJ played it cool.

  “The show is about a group of idiots on a reality show where they all have to live together in the same house. We get to watch behind the scenes, too, which is where my character is. Then, outside the house, where they’re totally locked in, the world is overrun with zombies. And they have to figure out what to do. It’s genius. Way more gross than scary. You love gross, CJ. Remember that mole rat that was eating its own baby at the zoo? It’s practically the same thing.”

  CJ was lightly convinced by the mole rat, and we started the marathon. All was well for the first hour. But then things took a turn for the worse, and not just for the characters turning into the living dead.

  “Can we turn it off?” I hadn’t noticed that CJ was squinting his eyes in an effort not to see the screen. I paused, unintentionally on a screen shot of someone getting their eyeball eaten.

  “Just turn it off!” CJ yelled. I complied. This wasn’t normal CJ behavior. Tears formed at the corners of his closed eyes.

  “It’s off. What’s wrong? It’s not real,” I told him.

  “But it was real! People die! And they look gross! Dad looked gross!” CJ began full-on sobbing.

  I didn’t know what to do. Not that I ever did, but it was paralyzing seeing my normally brash and annoying tween brother turn into a blubbering little kid. Then things got even worse. AJ began crying, too.

  “What’s going on?” I panicked.

  “Don’t you ever think about him, Alex? Don’t you miss him?”

  Dad. I rarely heard them talk about Dad, not in a way that expressed any sadness.

  “Of course I do,” I admitted.

  “Then how come you never talk about him?” CJ sniffed.

  “What do you want me to say? Remember when Dad got mangled in a taxi?”

  Wrong again. CJ exploded like a four-year-old who lost his blankey.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I fumbled. “I do miss him. I loved him so much. He was my dad. Our dad. He was funny. And smart. And he listened and taught us things and now he’ll never be here to teach us anything else. Like how to make my gigantic brothers feel better when they’re crying next to me on the couch.” I pressed back my own tears, until AJ started laughing.

  “We’re not gigantic,” he snuffled.

  Somehow that made more tears escape from my eyes. “To me you are. You sure you guys weren’t adopted?” I joked.

  “You’re the death-loving weirdo,” CJ noted.

  “I don’t love death,” I defended myself.

  “Then why do you watch this stuff?” He waved his hand at the blackened
television.

  “Because it’s not death. It’s ridiculous. It’s fake and it’s controlled and it’s hilarious and girls like me can kick zombie ass, that’s why. Because in the movies, I could stop Dad from getting in a cab and turning into shrapnel.”

  AJ and CJ just looked at me. I didn’t know if they got the full impact of my confession, that even making a confession was one of the hardest things I could do.

  “What’s shrapnel?” CJ asked.

  “Never mind. That’s not important.” I rubbed my eyes. “You guys want to watch something else?”

  “We never got to watch this week’s Wipeout,” AJ hinted.

  “Big balls it is.” I switched on Wipeout, and my heart warmed at the sight and sound of my brothers laughing at others’ stupidity.

  It wasn’t a direct lesson from my dad, and it was about the most sour lemonade I could have made out of lemons, but his death forced me to have a real talk with my brothers for maybe the first time ever. And for the first time in forever, some of my guilt finally lifted.

  That night, my mom home, the twins in bed, I sent a text to Leo.

  I want to say I’m sorry, but I don’t know how.

  Those words, “I’m sorry,” felt so contrived to me for so long and yet I knew they were important. What Leo did with them was up to him.

  CHAPTER

  36

  SNOW FELL STEADILY on my way to work Saturday, and I gripped the steering wheel to the point of hand cramps. Drivers ed never prepared me for skidding sideways uncontrollably until my possessed car decided to stop inches from a stop sign. Not to mention how other people drove like complete assholes. I don’t know how many times I yelled into my rearview mirror, “Two car lengths, dickwad!” There were very few things I feared, and driving in snow was one of them. My mom claimed it would get better with practice, but since it didn’t snow year-round, how could I ever stay on top of it? I’d either have to move to Antarctica to have snow all the time or the equator to never have it. But I liked the seasons.

  I arrived at work shaking and dripping in sweat.

  “Did you run here?” asked Ila. She wore fingerless gloves, as the front counter received a lot of the draft from the opening door.

  I peeled my scarf away from my neck and shivered at the newly exposed wetness. “Snowshoed, actually.” I hung my jacket up in the back room and pulled my grungy work t-shirt out of my schoolbag. Before I re-smoothed my hair into a low ponytail and tucked a towel into my waistband, I checked my phone. No reply from Leo. Using Becca’s positive thinking, I told myself he probably slept in. Using my usual apocalyptic brand of thinking, I guessed he barfed on the word “sorry” and had his phone number changed.

  Since it was only 10:00 a.m., the lunch rush was still to come, although on a snowy day there could either be a ton of people who didn’t want to cook or just a trickle of customers. Enough people lived within walking distance, and walking around in the snow was a lot easier than driving. I passed the time by refilling the mayo and mustard squeeze bottles, restocking cheese, and arguing with Doug about the greatest sequels of all time.

  “Aside from the obvious Evil Dead and Basket Case, I think A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 was really good,” I said.

  “I haven’t even seen that. I’m sure it sucks. Commercial crap.”

  “Aren’t we all pretentious, Mr. College Student? You can’t judge a movie you haven’t seen. We’re talking teens in a mental hospital. At one point, Freddy pulls out some kid’s tendons and works him like a marionette. Brilliant.”

  I was so busy making my obviously winning point that it took me a few minutes to notice Leo watching me on the other side of the counter. He wore a gray winter hat this time with his black winter coat. Not that I noticed. His cheeks were red from where the falling snow burned them.

  “You know nothing,” I told Doug as I budged past him toward Leo. “Hey,” I greeted him, hopefulness practically exploding off my face.

  “Hey.” He leaned on the counter, as was his usual position here. It had been so long, though, did he actually have a usual position?

  “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.