The F- It List Part 30

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CHAPTER.

27.

WINTER.

Becca finished her last round of chemo yesterday. She claimed it was at maximum toxicity, and I didn't doubt it. It seemed like the chemo was meant to kill everything except her. Sometimes she could barely lift the remote, and other times her head hurt so badly all she could do was silently cry.

School and life had been lonely, but not much diff erent than it had been over the summer. I worked, watched movies, helped my mom out. Talked to friends at school, but that was about it. When- ever Becca felt up to it, I went to her house. My mom had taken up making a diff erent ca.s.serole for each visit. I don't think Becca man- aged to try even one. The smell of her bedroom had evolved. In eighth grade, Becca went through a phase after her aunt Vicki visited the Ca rib be an and bought her a perfume called White Witch. Becca thought this was the coolest thing ever, never mind the nose- piercing smell. She managed to collect dozens of bottles and sprayed every- --1 thing she owned with the scent. Thankfully, she fi nally moved on to -0 -+1 105-54406_ch01_1P.indd 175 105-54406_ch01_1P.indd 175 4/17/13 8:58 PM.

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a new smell, one of Britney Spears's concoctions, but the White Witch bottles still remained in a box in her closet. The White Witch smell hung around too, and, I couldn't be in her room without fl ash- ing back to innocent dances and early curfews.

Her room smelled nothing of White Witch anymore. The smell was a combination of disinfectant, Jell- O, and puke. I won- dered if Becca could smell it. Or if her nose was immune to it, like how grandparents have an old person smell that I'm sure they're not aware of.

Some days the smell in Becca's room was so bad I almost sug- gested pulling out the old box of White Witch and coating the air with it.

I watched helplessly as she dealt with the side eff ects: constant nausea, puking, not being able to walk, not being able to see, not to mention the tubes and holes and weight loss and not wanting to eat.

Why did this happen? To Becca, and to anyone? Why can someone get so sick that the only way to get better is to make them more sick?

It's like the world's longest exorcism. It doesn't make sense that I can chat with someone live on a tiny screen, that governments spend bil- lions of dollars on war and mayhem, that actors make millions of dol- lars to just look pretty and skinny, yet no one can f.u.c.king fi gure out how to cure cancer without torturing people.

The other day Becca's mom said, "Thank G.o.d" about some- thing. It wasn't anything important enough to remember or anything big enough to warrant divine intervention, but she felt the need to thank G.o.d, something she'd been doing a lot more of recently. Becca didn't hesitate to tell her mom, "I don't believe in G.o.d."

-1- "What?" Her mom looked shocked, uncomfortable, as if saying 0-

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she didn't believe in G.o.d would somehow make Becca cursed. If she could be more cursed than she already was.

"I don't believe in G.o.d," she repeated.

"I suppose that's understandable, though I'm sure you don't mean it," Becca's mom conceded. "I'm going to believe in Him and keep praying for you."

"That is just wrong, Mom." Becca's mom had hit a nerve. "What kind of G.o.d do we have to beg to make us well? What kind of G.o.d allows people to get this sick? And not just get sick, but have months of pain and misery? Is it some kind of vengeance? A lesson He's try- ing to teach me?"

"G.o.d gives what you can handle."

"So it's a test? Let's see how much s.h.i.t Becca can endure, so she can come out a better person on the other end? Was I that bad a per- son to begin with?"

"It's not just what you can handle, Becca. And G.o.d doesn't con- trol everything, but He can help us get through."

I wondered if Becca's mom had always been this religious and I hadn't noticed, or if this was a direct correlation to watching her daughter disintegrate.

"I don't want to believe in a G.o.d who can help me because I can't believe in a G.o.d who would let something like this happen in the fi rst place."

Becca's mom was shaken. Maybe she was holding on to the belief that G.o.d would save Becca. That if she prayed long enough and hard enough, she'd get better.

I didn't know what to believe anymore. Here I was, surrounded by death and sickness, guilty for the tiniest crumbs of plea sure --1 -0 -+1 17 7.

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I allowed myself: ice cream, horror movies, and the selfi shly selfi sh act of fi nding happiness in making Becca laugh. Where did G.o.d fall into any of that? I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want the blame, or the hope, to be on someone else. So I carried on, waiting for what ever was to come, with or without G.o.d's help.

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CHAPTER.

2 8.

I hadn't seen Leo since the funeral. I told myself he needed s.p.a.ce, that he wouldn't have taken a semester off if he wanted to be around people. I tried to convince myself that somehow we were dif- ferent; that my absence was appreciated instead of begrudged. But really, why would he want me around after the way I treated him?

I went with that, but I thought about him all the time. When a movie came on TV that I thought he'd like, or I read about what celebrities were coming to Dead of Winter Con next month. I wanted to call, or at least text. Once I managed to force my fi ngers onto my phone.

Got a second copy of Frankenhooker. You want?

Two painful days later, I heard back from him.

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Like I said, ouch.

Becca tried to keep things light, when she could willingly move her body. We made a list of things to do at Dead of Winter Con, and we planned on going, no matter what state she was in. I told her if she couldn't walk, I'd push her around in a shopping cart.

"What if I throw up?" she asked.

"Who would know that was real and not just some realistically sick- a.s.s costume?"

Just one day earlier, Becca got the news everyone was waiting for: chemo was offi cially over, at least until after radiation and the results came back.

Then why was she still so f.u.c.king sick? Instead of cancer being over, Becca was in total, all- consuming pain. Her joints ached, her head hurt, and the nausea was just as bad as it ever was. What ever they used to kill the cancer was beating the s.h.i.t out of her insides nonstop. Her meds made her groggy and incoherent, and she still seemed to be in so much pain.

The last time I visited, packing Mom's patented tuna noodle cas- serole, she slept most of the time, except when she woke up to whim- per. I stayed out of obligation and guilt, not because I liked it. There was nothing I could do for her, and even being next to her didn't mat- ter when she was unconscious. Her mom came into her room every few minutes, and each time she told me, "You're such a good friend, Alex." It made me feel worse. Especially the fi fth time she added, "G.o.d bless you."

The only thing that lightened my mood was reading the love notes Caleb had been writing to Becca for the last couple months. He -1- was a smart guy and an old- fashioned romantic.

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My dearest Becca, Today I chose to study the fi lms of Lillian Gish. She reminds me of you, and I envisioned you on the screen someday as bright a star as there ever was. My sister is still in her baking unit, and she made some chocolate- chip cookies using coriander. I'll make sure to drop some off. I don't know if you can eat them now, so she froze some for you when you can.

Looking forward to our next visit,Caleb If a guy wrote me a letter like that, I'd be embarra.s.sed to the point of burning the paper. But it suited Becca. She deserved to fi nd some joy in the s.h.i.tty quagmire of her life.

During the quietude of her bed rest, I tinkered with the idea of getting in touch with Leo again. It killed me that he ate away my brain like that. Maybe it was just the loneliness of being next to some- one who couldn't even talk to me, who had stacks of love notes tucked under her mattress. But she deserved those love notes. I deserved the loneliness. It was self- imposed, after all.

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CHAPTER.

2 9.

The holidays came and went. They were the fi rst without my dad, and therefore had more sadness and refl ection than antic.i.p.a- tion and celebration. Becca and I exchanged gifts aboard her bed. She gave me some hardbound cla.s.sic Tales from the Crypt Comics, and I bought her a Battlestar Galactica t-shirt reading, "I Fat Apollo." It was a hilarious misstep on the part of the show's creators, making the usually buff Apollo into a doughy mess to show the pa.s.sage of time (other characters just got new hairdos). Even better was how quickly and eff ortlessly he got back into shape. And even better than that: A shirt was created to commemorate the gaff e.

It would be the perfect shirt for Becca to wear to Dead of Winter Con, where none other than Jamie Bamber, aka Lee "Apollo"

Adama, would be appearing in the autographs area. That would fi nally give us a chance to get back to the f.u.c.k- It List, which had -1- fallen into obscurity soon after Leo's brother's death. Except for one 0- item.

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