Julie Halpern: The F- It List

I laughed, but switched gears quickly. “So was Jenna right about the chemo?”

“No, of course she wasn’t. I mean, yes, I’m having chemo, but not until tomorrow. So you can tell her know-it-all ass that she got something wrong. Fuck. She’s probably planning her audition scene for the fall play.”

“Who cares about that, Becca?” It felt like the two of us were avoiding the actual cancer discussion no matter how many times we brought it up or got close. But my stomach, heart, and hands wouldn’t get back to normal without knowing what the hell was going on. “Tell me what happened.”

“The long or short version?”

“Long, if you want to tell it.”

“It involves someone and some events that I probably shouldn’t bring up.”

“Davis, I’m assuming? He’s bagged and tagged to me. Speak about him freely.”

“If you’re sure,” she checked. I nodded the okay. “After we, you know, after your dad’s, you know, he kept calling me. And at first, I told him to leave me alone. But when you wouldn’t talk to me, I don’t know, I guess I was pissed at you, so Davis and I sort of hung out a bunch over the summer. Not really hung out in an intellectually stimulating way. More of an…” Becca pointed to the computerized sex on her TV. “That kind of way.”

I shuddered and grimaced, but I couldn’t fault her. Davis repulsed me at that point, and, well, Becca had cancer.

“I know this must suck to hear, and believe me it gets grosser.”

“I can’t imagine how, but go ahead. ‘It gets grosser’ is such an intriguing setup.”

“He was visiting down south”—she gestured to the crotchy portion of her body—“and he found some lumps. All very sexy, of course. I checked them out in the mirror later on, mortified I had some disgusting zit infestation or something. But they weren’t zitty, really, and then I realized I had them in other places, too. So my mom made an appointment for me at the doctor.”

“You told your mom Davis found lumps while deep-sea diving?”

“God no! I didn’t tell her how I found them, and she didn’t ask. After that it was like a shitstorm of doctor appointments and tests. The biopsy was fucking horrific. They seemed to want to rule everything else out before they went with the capital-C cancer diagnosis. Do you want more gory details about my summer?”

Gore, as in horror-movie-blood-and-guts-made-of-corn-syrup, I could handle. But after Dad’s death and the real-life gore of that, I could do without. “Why don’t you skip to what they said,” I told her.

“They said I have Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which they claimed is very treatable. So, yay me, I guess.” She didn’t look “yay me.” She looked petrified.

“That sounds promising,” I hoped.

“I guess, except that I still have to go through chemo, which, if everything I read about it online is true—”

“Which it never is,” I unhelpfully interjected.

“—is going to suck oversized donkey balls,” Becca continued.

“You have been hanging around Davis.” I rolled my eyes.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No. It’s okay. If Davis’s donkey balls help you get through cancer, then suck them all you like.” Becca threw a pillow at me.

“You know he stopped calling after I figured out it was cancer. Something like his next-door neighbor died of cancer, and he couldn’t handle it.”

“Sorry,” I told her. “He bailed on me, too, obviously.”

“He’s gone now. Joined the army.”

“What? When? We both dated a guy that’s in the army? That’s so weird. I’m a pacifist, for fuck’s sake.”

Our eyes floated over to the two sexing computer creations on her TV. “Dude, you need to turn that off. It’s so wrong.”

“Says you,” she uttered, but turned off the screen.

“So you go for chemo tomorrow? What exactly is chemo?”

“They explained it to me, but I only hear every sixteenth word when the doctors are talking. It’s so surreal. Like a TV show moment. You have cancer. And then I’m supposed to listen to someone explain a million billion things to me? What I got was that they inject me with a bunch of different drugs for a week that attack the cancer. Then I get at least a two-week break so my body doesn’t completely shut down, which sounds delightful because I’ll probably be puking and gross the entire time. And then I go back and go through it all again. And again. They said I need at least four rounds. I’m pretty freaked out.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. A stupid question that too many people asked me after my dad died. I would have taken the chemo for her if I could.

“No, I don’t think so. But if I don’t call or text you this week, don’t be upset, okay? I have no idea what I’ll be like.”

“I could bring you stuff. Crappy magazines and chicken soup?” It was all I could pitifully think to offer.

“Maybe. I’ll let you know. I’ve heard it can really get ugly.”

“You’ll never be ugly, Becca,” I assured her.

“I said it can get ugly, not I could.” She laughed a little, then choked on the laugh and coughed some more. Her eyes welled with tears. “I’m going to lose my hair, Alex.”

I deflated for Becca. That hair. If I had cancer, I could do without my hair. I had gone pretty close to no hair a couple of times. But Becca’s hair was too bountiful. “Alex?” She looked at me for help. “I want you to shave my head.”

“YOU WANT TO SHAVE your head? Why? Is your hair definitely going to fall out?” Cancer had so many preconceptions, so many things that I’ve heard about through passing Yahoo! articles I never bothered to read, movies I didn’t want to watch. Why depress myself? And here I was, living it. Or, not living it. Instead, watching it possibly devour my best friend.

“My hair will fall out. Fact. I don’t want to wake up with chunks of hair stuck to my pillow. This way, I control things.”

I understood that. Control in any situation is important; in one where you pretty much have none: imperative. “But maybe it won’t fall out,” I tried to reason, with no logic behind it.

“It will, and it will suck.” She stood up slowly off her chair. She moved more cautiously than I was used to. “Whatever they inject in me during chemo is attacking my cells, including the cells that do this.” She flipped the bottom of her bouncy, thick, nearly waist-length hair. A vacant and glassy expression let me know that as cool as she was being, she was not entirely one with the cucumber.

“Do you have a razor? Not, like, the leg kind, but for your head?”

“My mom bought one for me yesterday. She was totally crying because my soul lives in my hair, apparently. I’ll go get it.” Was that supposed to be funny? Was there a manual for this somewhere, How to Respond to People with Cancer, because I didn’t know what was appropriate and what was just plain off. Like when my dad died, and every person said they were sorry. I get that that’s the polite thing to say, but after a while it sounded so insincere. Just once I wanted someone to be honest, tell me that they couldn’t imagine what it felt like to one second have a dad, and the next second have a pile of body parts and insurance money that’ll pay for the college of my dreams. Would Dad even know if I went to college now?

I almost said something to Becca then about my dad, how I missed him or felt confused or even hated him sometimes for leaving just when I really needed him to lean on, but how did that make sense when the reasons I needed him all had to do with the cancer sufferer standing in front of me with a brand-new electric razor in her hands?

“Where should we do this?” she asked. I noticed a twitch in her hand, and I didn’t know if it was nerves or something to do with the cancer. I guessed nerves were technically something to do with the cancer. “Seeing as you’re the expert and all.”