I turn to face her. “I’m dying.”
Derek drops the fork and it clatters to the table.
“Ohmigod!” Evelyn says. “Are you sick? Do you have black lung?”
“Why would I have black lung?” I ask. “Isn’t that something coal miners get?”
“We learned about it in history class last week and it’s been stuck in my head.”
“So you failed your last pop quiz but you do remember what black lung is?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Diseases are easier to remember than dates and names.”
“Coal mining,” Derek says, his fork back in his hand as he fidgets. “That would be a good topic for Deep Dive.”
“Do they have coal mining in Denmark?” I ask.
“The people of Denmark aren’t my only listeners,” he counters.
“Right.” I smile. “There’s me. And your mom.”
Evelyn snaps her fingers. “Uh, hello? Are you just going to drop that you’re dying and then not finish the thought?”
Derek grabs my hands and inspects my fingernails. “No coal dust. I think you’re good.”
I pull my hands out of his. This isn’t going like I’d planned. “I’m not dying, like, right now. But I could die. In the hospital.”
Evelyn and Derek stare at me in silence for a minute. Then Derek says, “Have you been watching Worst-Case Scenario Television again?”
I squirm a little bit. “Yes, but…”
Derek gives me a serious look, then firmly says, “You’re not dying. Evie, tell her she’s not dying.”
She reaches up to adjust her glasses. “It’s not like you’re certainly going to die. But … well, it could happen. Sometimes people go under anesthesia and never wake up.”
“See!” I point triumphantly to Evelyn.
“My uncle had to have jaw surgery when he got hit in the face during a softball game,” Derek says. “And all that happened was that part of his bottom lip went a little numb. Literally the worst thing about it is that sometimes when he’s eating dinner he doesn’t realize that a piece of corn is stuck to his mouth until we laugh at him.”
I throw up my hands. “So you think I should be totally chill about facing a life of having unnoticed corn stuck to my face?”
“All I’m saying is that you’re not going to die in surgery.”
I turn to Evelyn. “You know my ‘Things to Do After Surgery’ list?”
She nods encouragingly. “Vampire teeth, apple eating. Yes, I know it.”
“Well,” I say, “I need to make another list. ‘Things to Do Before My Surgery.’ You know, in case I die on the operating table.”
Evelyn leans forward. “What’s on your list?”
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Derek says, sliding out of the booth before heading toward the back of the restaurant.
“I don’t know yet,” I tell Evie.
Evelyn leans back. “Just think about what you would regret not doing if you died.”
“I guess … I want to finish Jane Eyre.”
Evelyn notes this in her phone. She has a list for everything (“Things I Need to Do This Afternoon,” “Films I Need to Watch Before I Turn Twenty”), and I know she’s just started another one: “Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It (Which Is Super Unlikely, but Still, It Could Happen).”
“Let me get this straight,” Evelyn says. “You have two months left on this Earth, and you’re going to spend it reading? I mean, no offense to whatever Brontë wrote that, but…”
Evelyn doesn’t understand because she’s never been a huge fiction reader. Her shelves are filled with, like, weird German art books and other stuff she uses for inspiration. She says she doesn’t see the point in reading a book that’s been around for hundreds of years when she could be making something new … which I guess is a good point, but I like those books that have been around for hundreds of years.
“I wish I had time to read the entire literary canon, but I don’t,” I say. “So I’m going to focus on Jane Eyre. I don’t want to end up in the afterlife wondering if she ever gets together with Mr. Rochester. Oh! Okay, I have another one. You know that cliff that hangs over Brentley River?”
“You mean the one with the sign that says ‘No Jumping’?” Evelyn asks.
“Yeah, I want to jump off that. And,” I say, ticking things off on my fingers as I really get rolling, “I want to eat every appetizer on the menu at Applebee’s. We always get the Chicken Wonton Tacos and mozzarella sticks, but now that I’m staring death in the face, maybe we should branch out, you know? And I want to go to a real bar. And…”
I trail off as I think about my list of things to do after my surgery. Sure, I’m looking forward to biting into an apple, but what I’m really concerned about is kissing a guy. What if I die before I get the chance? Maybe I need to bump that one up, just to make sure I don’t turn into a sad ghost who can’t move on to the afterlife because she keeps floating around haunting cute boys she never had the chance to kiss.
“And I want to kiss Noah Reed,” I say, folding my hands in front of me on the table.
Evelyn’s eyes widen as she types in what I said. “Damn, girl. Aiming high. On that last one, anyway. The first one should be easy to accomplish.”
Derek sits down again, and we fill him in on the list we’ve just compiled.
“You know there are literally two bars in Brentley, right? And we’re sixteen?” Derek asks.
“And I might never get the chance to turn twenty-one!” I practically shout. A drunk dude at the bar sits up, scowls at me, and slumps over the bar again.
“You’re not going to die,” Evelyn and Derek say at the same time.
“And Noah Reed?” Derek asks. “Really?”
“Do you have something against Noah Reed?” I bristle.
Derek shrugs. “I just don’t see what the big deal is. You could choose to kiss any dude in school and that’s who you pick?”
Okay, well, I can’t really choose any guy to kiss, and finding a way to kiss Noah Reed is going to be a challenge, but whatever. I’m not going to argue that point right now. It’s not like Derek would even understand that Noah Reed’s hair is so fluffy and perfect that it’s basically sonnet worthy.
“I get that you guys don’t understand why I want to become more literate or kiss someone before my surgery,” I say. “But this isn’t your list. If it were, it would include, like, competing on Project Runway—”
“Please.” Evelyn sniffs. “I would blow them all out of the water.”
“Or getting syndicated on NPR—”
“No thanks,” Derek says. “Independent media is the future.”
“Whatever!” I shout. “That’s not the point! The point is that I want to do these things. I could die, and if I do, I want to be more well-read, and to have kissed somebody, and to at least know what the inside of a bar looks like. Even if it is Happy Endings. And even if I have to sneak in the back door or get a fake ID.”
“My cousin could help you with that,” Evelyn says, just as Derek says, “That’s super illegal.”
Evelyn puts her phone down as a waitress lays two plates on our table.
“Chicken Wonton Tacos and fried mozzarella sticks,” she announces before walking away.
“Here’s to branching out—next time,” Evelyn says, toasting me with a mozzarella stick.
Chapter Two
After about another half hour of talking about my list, Derek’s phone buzzes.
“It’s Melody,” he says, meaning his girlfriend, whom neither Evelyn nor I have met. “I’m telling her we’re wrapping this up so I can call her when I get home.”
“All right,” I say, even though I would gladly hang out until we shut down this Applebee’s. “Let’s roll. I wouldn’t want to keep Melody waiting.”
I try not to let sarcasm seep into my voice, but there it is anyway. It’s not that I don’t like Melody—I mean, I don’t even know her—but it’s just annoying that we have to cut our hangout sho
rt so she and Derek can, like, make kissy noises at each other on the phone. Or whatever it is that people in relationships do.
Derek doesn’t seem to notice my annoyance, though. He’s busily, if begrudgingly, tapping out a message.
In the parking lot, we say our goodbyes as Derek gets into his rusted-out truck. After we watch him drive away, Evelyn turns to me and asks, “Do you think Melody is real?”
I choke out a laugh. “What?”
She puts her hands out. “I don’t know, think about it! We’ve never met her. She lives in North Dakota, a place Derek has never been. And he brings her up when he wants to get out of things or go home. It all just seems too convenient.”
I fix her with a skeptical stare. “He met her at an Academic Challenge meet last year. You know that. And he’s a terrible liar. Also, what motivation would he have for making up a girlfriend?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. So he could spend more time alone without people bothering him about it?”
“That does sound like Derek,” I say. “I’m still pretty sure Melody’s real. But he didn’t seem to be in a very good mood when he left, did he?”
“Uh, no shit, Jolie,” Evelyn says. “No offense, but you don’t exactly have to be Benedict Cumberbatch to figure out why our conversation bothered him.”
“That’s an actor playing a detective, but sure,” I say. “What are you talking about?”
She widens her eyes and gives me a pitying look. “His dad, Jolie. It’s been four years today, and you just spent an entire evening talking about your possible upcoming death.”
“Oh, shit,” I say.
* * *
Derek’s dad died four years ago, when we were twelve and the twins were only three. He was a surgeon, just like Derek’s mom, and he had a heart attack when he was at work—sudden, unexpected. They said he was dead before he hit the floor, which I think was supposed to be comforting but really wasn’t. It would’ve been more comforting if he were still alive.
No one was one hundred percent sure what had caused Dr. Jones to have a heart attack in his forties. It could’ve been his high-stress job. It could’ve been genetics. It could’ve been his love for eating huge steaks every Sunday, which he said he deserved because “a life without red meat isn’t worth living.”
Or it could’ve just been plain old shitty luck.
But in the end, it didn’t really matter what caused his heart attack, because figuring it out wasn’t going to bring him back.
The funeral remains the one and only time I’ve ever seen Derek cry. Evelyn and I went with my parents, both of us dressed in whatever black clothing we could scrounge together from our twelve-year-olds’ wardrobes. Seeing Derek there felt like a punch in the gut, like there was no air left in my lungs. His arms hung limp at his sides as he stared off into space. I still remember the awful music, a tinny version of “Amazing Grace” that Derek’s dad would for sure have hated. Why couldn’t they have played music he liked, like one of the records that was always spinning at Derek’s house whenever I went over?
I couldn’t help myself when we walked in and saw Derek standing there by the coffin—he just looked so small, staring off into space as his mom hugged some adults I didn’t recognize. I ran to him and threw my arms around him and he sobbed into my neck. We didn’t say anything. We just cried.
And the next day, when he came over, I guess I expected more of the same. Crying, hugging, maybe some talking about feelings this time.
But instead, when I opened the door, I found him there with Boggle. “Do you think Abbi wants to play with us?” he asked, because everyone knows basically all games kind of suck with just two people.
And then we played Boggle all afternoon, him finding words like “fart” and “poop” and ignoring the fact that when he went home, his dad wouldn’t be there.
That’s how it’s been for the past four years. There are times when it comes up, but we always move right past it, dancing around the topic with a joke or talking about something—anything—else. Mom says everyone deals with trauma differently, but I can’t help but think that totally ignoring it is maybe not the best tactic.
But I guess I can’t really make him handle his dad’s death in a certain way. All I can do is be his friend.
I realize that bringing up my potential death considering Derek’s relationship to the subject makes me sound like a monster. But in my defense, we literally never talk about it. Like, ever. If I didn’t have such visceral memories of him letting me hug him at the funeral, I might forget it even happened.
But I know it did, and it was stupid of me to forget about it, especially on today of all days—the four-year anniversary of his death.
Dad made me promise not to text or talk on the phone while I’m driving, not even if I’m using the Bluetooth, because he’s worried about me being distracted. So instead I call Derek the second I pull into the driveway and park my car behind Mom’s Subaru.
“I’m sorry,” I say as soon as he picks up.
“For what?” he asks. I can picture his bedroom perfectly: the crate of his dad’s records in the corner, the ones that haven’t been played in four years. His laptop set up on his desk so he can edit his latest episode. The airplane quilt that’s been on his bed since we were kids, which should probably seem childish but actually just seems kind of sweet.
“For…” I trail off. I need to bring this up delicately, but I don’t really know how to be delicate. Derek and I have a long history of not talking about this subject.
“For bringing up death,” I say finally.
“It’s okay,” he says with studied ease.
“Because I wasn’t even thinking about your dad when I—”
“Hey, have you ever heard about the world’s loneliest whale?”
I pause for a second. “What?”
“There’s this blue whale who’s been making whale sounds for, like, twenty years, but his whale voice sounds so weird that no one else can understand him. So he’s just wandering around the ocean, making sad whale sounds, looking for someone to love him.”
“Huh,” I say thoughtfully. “Not to turn this back to me, but I can relate.”
“Jolie,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “You aren’t a lonely, sexless whale.”
“Not in so many words.”
“I’m gonna talk about this on an upcoming Deep Dive. Bonus: I’m learning so much about whales, I’m gonna kill it if there are any whale questions in the next Academic Challenge meet.”
I can’t help laughing. Only Derek would think knowing a bunch of random stuff about whales was in any way a bonus.
“Okay, but can you at least accept my apology before you go down a lonely whale rabbit hole and emerge knowing way too much about ambergris?”
“How do you know about ambergris?”
“You’re not the only super-nerd who read Moby-Dick for extra credit last year, bro.”
“Well, I accept your apology, even as I maintain that it was wholly unnecessary,” he says. “And Jolie?”
“Yeah?” I ask, turning off the car.
“It’s okay. Really. It was four years ago.”
I run my tongue over my braces. “Yeah, I know, but…”
“I’ve gotta get back to editing, okay? Talk later.”
“Yeah,” I say, suppressing a sigh. “Talk later.”
I hang up and lean back against the headrest. I know Derek’s free to handle his own problems any way he wants to, but I can’t help but feel like he’s holding back. I know he says it’s totally fine, but I’m still worried he’s hurting, and it’s among my official job duties as his best friend to help him deal with it.
So, okay, sure, I’m still afraid I’m going to die and I still have my list of things I need to do before surgery. But maybe from now on I won’t refer to it as my death plan in front of Derek. From now on it’s “Jolie Peterson’s List of Things She Has to Do Before She Gets Surgery and Can’t Tell If She Has Corn on Her Face An
ymore.”
* * *
When I go inside, Mom and Abbi have gone to bed. No doubt visions of serial killers and stalkers are dancing in their heads as they slumber.
I know I should feel lucky that I actually get along with my parents. My dad’s worst crime is that he’s kind of goofy, and I can’t really complain about that. Likewise, my mom’s always been more weird than irritating, even though all the television shows about high school tell me that I’m supposed to hate her and yell things like “I’m not like you, Mom! And I never will be!” before speeding off to make reckless and dramatic decisions.
But I don’t hate her. Sometimes I’m like, “Seriously, why are you whistling Christmas carols even though it’s nowhere near Christmas and everyone knows whistling is so annoying that it should be punishable by jail time?” but it’s no big deal. Mostly I think of my parents as comforting, like an old but soft blanket or a plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes. As weird as it sounds, and as much as I love hanging out with Derek and Evelyn, some of my favorite nights are the ones I spend with my family. They’re the ones who’ve known me forever, the ones who don’t even register my jaw, the ones who just see me.
Derek gets along just fine with his mom, but it’s in that typical boy way where he barely talks to her unless she asks him a question, and even then it’s a one-word answer. He’s obsessed with the twins, Jayson and Justin, though. He spends most of his evenings (the ones he hasn’t crammed with Academic Challenge meets and track practices and volunteer work at an animal shelter or one of the other million extracurriculars he’s picked up) playing basketball with them in the driveway or helping them with their homework.
And at Evelyn’s house, it’s just her and her mom. There’s nothing wrong with her mom—I mean, I know she loves Evelyn, in her own way—but she one hundred percent does not understand anything Evelyn’s doing with her life. As Evelyn puts it, “She’s always like, ‘Evelyn, why aren’t you getting better grades? Why aren’t you studying more?’ and I’m like, ‘Do you think Christian Siriano spent time studying for biology tests? I need to make a new A-line skirt! Stop breaking my balls, Patricia!’”
Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It Page 2