Julie Halpern - The F- It List

I found something heavy on my MP3 player, someone screaming punishingly into my ears. I felt I deserved it, that here I was in my dad’s car, alive when he was dead, healthy when my best friend had cancer. Who was I to be alive? Who decided? I cranked the music even louder to drown my thoughts. Admittedly, my head hurt, but I enjoyed the annoyed looks from the people pulled up next to me at stoplights. What did they know? Their lives were probably so simple. I glared at the back of a bald man’s head in the car in front of me. You deserve to be bald, bastard. Becca does not.

My car led me to the parking lot of my old elementary school, Irving. The same school Becca and I attended together, where our friendship grew. Maybe if I sat there long enough, time would move backward and none of this cancer stuff would exist. Maybe even my dad would still be here. I closed my eyes and let the music consume me. My lips pursed tightly, willing my eyes not to cry.

BAM!

A loud pound on the glass shocked my eyes open, and I squinted at a figure hovering around my car window. The glare of the sun made him difficult to see, but I knew that military jacket from one too many hallway stares at Leo Dietz. He tried speaking to me, his straight lips moving but the sound drowned out by my music. I switched off the ignition, and he tried again.

“Rough day?” he asked, as he leaned slightly into my window.

“Why would you ask that? Do I look like shit or something?” I don’t know why I said that, except that I was worried I did look like shit. Then I felt guilty for worrying about how I looked when Becca was awaiting her fate. I wondered if I’d ever have a guiltless thought again.

“Nah. You don’t look like shit. I only listen to Lamb of God when I hate someone. Or myself.” That’s when I noticed a basketball tucked under his arm.

“You play basketball?” I asked with a hint of disgust in my voice. There was nothing less appealing to me than an ass-smacking member of a high school sports team.

“If you mean I know how to manipulate a basketball, then yes. But I’m not on a team or anything.” His jacket smelled of stale cigarettes.

“Well, that’s good. ’Cause I was about to ask you to leave if you said yes.”

He smiled at me, a smile I’d never been that close to. His teeth weren’t perfect. They weren’t snaggletooth or stained, but his canine teeth stuck out a little farther than his front two. I chuckled to myself at the notion of him being a vampire, something Becca and I would have had a field day with.

“You want to shoot with me?” For a quick second I thought he meant guns, but he held the basketball up with the invite.

“Really?” I didn’t know if my apprehension was because I hated sports or I didn’t want to look stupid in front of him.

“Yeah. It’s fun to play here because the baskets are so low. It makes me feel like a giant.”

“You are a giant,” I noted.

“Get out of the car already,” he commanded. I obeyed.

This close, our height difference was noticeable. I had to look up to talk to him. I was glad it wasn’t the other way around because that would make me on constant booger alert.

We walked together to the nearby basketball court, and he was right: It was kind of fun to feel superior to the baskets.

“This almost makes me want to join a basketball team,” I told him as we lay down on a grassy berm for a rest. “Like, one for six-year-olds.”

Leo laughed a small, inward laugh and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He held the pack out to me as an offer. I hesitated. “When in Rome.” I shrugged. “Or an elementary school parking lot.”

He put both cigarettes in his mouth, lighting them at the same time. He passed one over to me, and I held it between my fingers. I never imagined a cigarette would feel so light and insignificant. It seemed like such a constant crutch in so many lives, I thought it would have more substance to it. I gingerly held the cigarette up to my lips, as it had been to Leo’s, and took a tentative inhale. Then I coughed like the inexperienced asshole I was. “Damn. Why do you bother with this? My mouth tastes like I just sucked on a turd.”

He laughed his quiet laugh again and said, “It gets better once you get used to it.”

“That’s stupid. That’s like when someone tells you, ‘He seems like a prick at first, but he’s really nice once you get to know him.’ Why bother?”

“I guess because it also gets addictive once you get used to it.”

“What about”—I wished I didn’t say it—“cancer?”

“It’s just death, man. Cancer or not, I’ll die.” He lay back into the grass and puffed smoke into the sky.

I lay down next to him, my arm touching his jacket sleeve. I wondered if he could feel it. “I don’t want to talk about death right now,” I told him.

“What do you want to talk about?”

I kept the cigarette in my hand and tried flicking off the ashes as they burned in the wind. I didn’t smoke any more of it.

“Did you go to school here?” I asked Leo.

“No. We moved away before and after grade school. My older brother, Jason, went here, though.”

“He’s in Afghanistan, right?” I asked, the not-so-subtle stalker.

“How’d you know?” he asked. When I paused to answer, he continued, “I don’t want to talk about him right now.”

“So what do you want to talk about?”

“You like horror movies, right?” Smoke wafted out of Leo’s mouth as he spoke.

“Yeah. How’d you know?” Welcome to the mutual stalkers society. I tried not to sound giddy at the thought of Leo knowing something about me.

“I saw you last year at the midnight showing of Evil Dead 2.”

“You did?” I wanted to tell him that I saw him, too, but that felt too eager.

“Yep” was all he said.

“What’s your favorite?” I asked.

“Horror movie?” he checked.

“Yeah. Your absolute favorite. Which one?”

“Is it too obvious to say Evil Dead 2?” He seemed less confident when I talked to him than when he stood around looking menacing and mysterious. I didn’t know if I liked the vulnerability on him. Just like I hated it on me.

“Maybe a little predictable, but still a noble choice. Did you hear Bruce Campbell—”

“Is going to be at the Orpheum for Army of Darkness. I know. I’m stoked. Do you want to go?” I smirked at the possibility of a date until he added, “My friend Brian was supposed to go with me, but he’s going out of town now. So I’ve got an extra ticket.”

This wasn’t quite how my fantasies went, but I’d take it. Horror movies were always more fun with someone else. And I didn’t think Becca would make it. Would she be bummed that I was going out and she wasn’t? Or would she want every detail of what it was like being near Leo? I wondered if there was a horror movie out there where someone gets killed by their own guilt.

“When is it?” I asked as if I didn’t already know.

“Friday at seven. It’s okay if you’re busy. Just thought I’d ask.” Aren’t we casual?

“I planned on going, so sure. Yeah.”

“Good,” he replied.

We lay on our backs quietly for a couple of silent minutes, until Leo asked, “So what’s yours?”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Your favorite.”

“Oh yeah. I like Dead Alive. I think it’s funnier than Evil Dead without trying as hard. Maybe it’s the New Zealand accents.”

“That’s a good one. The lawn mower scene is killer.”

“So good,” I agreed.

Several more minutes of silence rolled by with the clouds. I didn’t mind. Leo’s presence, the outdoor air, even the cigarette smoke was calming. I found a whale in the clouds, a sailboat, an evil clown.