Julie Halpern: The F- It List

“Let’s say I’m not, for the sheer joy of being not dead, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing amazing things.”

“Amazing things? You want me to build a well in a Third World country?” I stopped pacing long enough to give her my patented you’ve got to be kidding look.

“Your kindness shines through your blackened exterior, Alex.” I flipped Becca off. “Maybe not amazing, but we have to do what we want and not let conventional fear get in the way. Like when we were freshmen, remember when Channing Tatum was at an appearance at a bookstore because he wrote a page or something in a book on dancing, and you totally wanted to go…”

“I thought we promised not to talk about that.”

“I’m playing the cancer card and bringing it back.”

“How gloriously thoughtful of you,” I drolled.

“I know, right? Anyway, you had that box with all of those pictures of him in the secret hole in your closet, but you refused to go see him. And you cried, remember? Because you regretted not going.”

“I did not cry.” I sat down again at the degrading memory.

“Two tears, but for you that’s extreme.” I shrugged because I knew she was right. “We should never have any regrets, not when we’re dying and not when we’re alive. Like Ke$ha so wisely puts it, ‘Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young.’” Becca looked so determined, I couldn’t fault her for quoting Ke$ha.

“Does this mean you want me to write a bucket list, and we’ll drop out of school together and travel the world pursuing our sick and twisted fantasies and then drive off a cliff holding hands?”

“Take it down a notch, Alex. Your bucket list can wait. I’m the one dying here.”

“I’ll only help you if you stop fucking saying that.”

“I like saying it. The more I say it, the less real it sounds.”

“Fair enough. What do I have to do?”

Becca waved me over to her bed with a floppy hand, and I scrunched in next to her. Even without hair, I could smell her shampoo, citrusy and fresh, almost good enough to eat.

She reached underneath her mattress and pulled out a crinkled piece of Hello Kitty stationery I vaguely remembered giving her for her birthday in elementary school.

“This is my bucket list. I’ve been writing it since I was nine,” Becca shared.

“And I’m the morbid one?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Yes. I’m not the one who used a needle and pen to tattoo their thigh with a smiley face.”

“It’s not a smiley face. It’s a dead guy smiley face. That’s what the X’s instead of eyes mean.”

“Yeah, like I said, morbid. The point was—”

“There was a point?” I laughed a little.

“Alex, we’re running out of time. I’m running out of time. Tomorrow is it. Whatever happens, I have no idea what it’s going to be like or how long or what I’ll look like or when I’ll see you again, so we need to do this now.” Becca had worked herself up, or I had, and she started coughing. When she didn’t stop after a few hacks, her mom’s feet pounded up the stairs.

“Here, honey.” Becca’s mom reached for a small pitcher on her nightstand, and, with shaking hands, poured a glass of water. Becca drank it slowly, deliberately, until the glass was emptied and her mom filled it again.

“Thanks, Mom.” Becca sounded younger and sweeter, like a little kid version of Becca I remembered from when she had a broken arm and she worked the pity factor to get a massive Polly Pocket yacht. But this didn’t feel like working it. She was already becoming a smaller, frightened version of herself.

“Alex, Becca needs to get her rest for tomorrow. I hate to ask, but I think you should probably go.”

Becca snapped out of her Polly Pocket pity voice for a moment. “Mom, I need to keep talking to Alex. I might not see her for a while.” She looked at me. “The doctors said I’d be really out of it. And I can’t risk bringing germs into the house because of my weakened immune system. You won’t want to see me all gross and gnarly anyway,” she assumed, turning to me.

“Gross and gnarly is my business, Becca. But whatever you need me to do.”

“Fifteen minutes more, Mom?” Becca opened her eyes wide in their most manipulative, manga-like expression.

“Your hair—” It was as though Becca’s mom just noticed the mass of missing locks. Tears and shudders erupted from her, the absolute worst thing to watch. I knew parents are supposed to be human and all, but I wish she could have pulled it together for Becca’s sake. And mine.

“I saved some in a bag for you.” I tried to cheer Becca’s mom up and held the bag out for her to see. Apparently, that wasn’t the correct thing to do. The sobs and shudders turned even more extreme.

“Mom, you’re freaking Alex out, and I just got her back. Can you please give us fifteen minutes alone? I’m fine without the hair. Just pretend it’s for a big role starring opposite Hugh Jackman.” Becca always knew the right thing to say, and I saw the smile I had hoped for spread across her mom’s face. She loved Hugh Jackman.

“Fifteen minutes,” she agreed, and grabbed a handful of tissues on her way out.

“And you wonder why I’m in drama,” Becca sighed after her mom closed the door.

“The list?” I had to know where she was going with this.

“Yeah, so I’ve been doing this since I was nine. Not, like, as an I’m going to die list but more like a list of things I need to do someday.”

“Before you die,” I pushed.

“Well, I sure as fuck can’t do them after I die.”

“Says you. What if I learn the art of taxidermy, stuff you, and take you with me everywhere I go until we complete the list?”

“You’re totally going to turn that into a movie someday, aren’t you?”

“Probably.”

“You can use my dead body as the dead body,” Becca volunteered.

“You’ll be too busy starring as the gorgeous, living friend. Who is alive. And not dead at all.”

“Okay, good, because that’s on my list.” She pointed to number 19: Star in one of Alex’s movies, and have it seen by actual people instead of just me and Alex. “Sorry,” she noticed. “My bucket list isn’t very well-worded.”

“Can we stop calling it a bucket list? Again: implied death,” I noted.

“I thought it meant all the things you can fit into a bucket to do.”

“Um, no, I think it means all the things you can do before you kick the bucket. Which, actually, I think is an allusion to suicide, right? Like, kicking the bucket out from under your feet while you hang. Or maybe someone else is kicking out the bucket?”

“Yuck and gross and eeww.”

“So no more bucket. How about the Fuck-It List? Like, fuck it, I might die, so let me look like an idiot doing all sorts of ridiculous things?”

“The Fuck-It List. Noble, but with a hint of edge to it.”

“Think they’d ever let me name a movie The Fuck-It List?”

“Probably not. They’d be all, ‘How about The Stuff-It List? That’s how kids these days really talk, right?’” Becca perfectly adopted a hilariously oblivious male executive’s voice.

From downstairs we heard Becca’s mom yell, “Ten minutes!”

“Damn, woman. She’s probably got her stopwatch ticking. Okay, we need to focus. I don’t know how much of the list I can do by myself in a short amount of time, so I had the idea that maybe you could help me out with some things on it and I could live vicariously through you.”

I grabbed the list and skimmed through the scribbles written over every possible inch of the worn paper. “No way in hell am I sending my bra to Zac Efron.” I gagged.

“Shut up. I was like twelve when I wrote that.”