The Bucket List

by Scarlett Haven

  I grin. “At least I married a good guy, right?”

  “Juliet, if you married a guy who wasn’t good to you, I would kill him,” Jason says.

  I know he’d never actually kill anybody. But he wouldn’t ever let a guy treat me badly. I think that is the reason he isn’t angrier about Kale and me getting married. Well, that and the bucket list. I have a feeling if Jason didn’t know about my cancer, he would be a lot angrier.

  “I was wondering, what did you think when you saw the video?” I ask Jason. “Of us in Vegas.”

  “Miranda showed up at my house at midnight,” Jason says. “I was asleep. And I was pissed when I saw it. I tried to call you, but your phone was off.”

  “Yeah, we both turned our phones off,” Kale says.

  “I wasn’t surprised, though. I mean, I was surprised about the Vegas wedding,” he says. “Who wouldn’t be surprised by two people who weren’t dating, getting married like that? But I always knew the two of you would end up together. I knew it when I was a kid.”

  “How did everybody know but me?” I ask.

  “Because, you have always had your head in the clouds,” Jason says. “You’ve been too focused to notice any guys.”

  “It’s a good thing, though,” Kale says.

  “And Kale has been too in love with you to notice any girls,” Jason says. “I tried to set him up with girls when we were in high school and college. But he wouldn’t even give these girls a second glance. And that is the only reason I’m allowing this marriage to continue.”

  Which makes me laugh.

  But I know Jason is serious.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t invite you to the wedding,” I tell him.

  “That’s okay. I know why you did it,” he says. “And like I said, if Miranda and I were in the same position, I’d have done the same thing.”

  I feel relief at his words.

  The last person on the planet I want to hurt is my brother.

  Future plans.

  At lunch, I tell my family and Kale’s family that I am cancer free, and they are over the top excited. Especially Kale’s mom. I know she loves me, but she was worried about Kale—what my death would do to him. To be honest, I was worried about that, too. Especially after he told me he loves me.

  My parents were happy, too. My mom cried. She always cries. But I know this time, it was happy tears, so I didn’t mind.

  “Mom, have you lost weight?” I ask her, after lunch.

  “I don’t think so,” she says.

  “You look like you have,” I say. “You look good.”

  Not that she didn’t look good before—she did. It’s just... I want my parents to be healthy. I want them to be around a long, long time.

  “What are you and Kale going to do now?” Mom asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are your plans for the future?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “I mean, you know that we are moving into a house this weekend. We’re saving money to buy a house. I’m not sure if we want to buy a home in LA or in Idaho Falls, so we’re probably just going to rent until we know for sure what we want to do.”

  “And your jobs?” she asks.

  I shrug. “We’ve been very successful with the daily vlogs. People seem to like them. And I’ve grown a lot in subscribers. Since the first of June, I’ve gained almost one million subscribers. I’m getting a lot of views, too.”

  “I’m really proud of you,” Mom says. “I know when you dropped out of college I was really hard on you, but I shouldn’t have been. You were always so smart, and you knew exactly what you wanted. I don’t understand the whole YouTube thing, but I know it makes you happy.”

  “It does.”

  “And Kale makes you happy,” she says.

  I can’t help but smile. “I’ve never been happier in my life, Mom.”

  “Are there grandchildren in my immediate future?”

  “I want to wait a little bit,” I say. “Maybe until I’m twenty-five. That’s six years from now. By then, hopefully I will be six years cancer free. I just worry about the cancer coming back, you know?”

  “It won’t come back,” Mom says. “You and Kale are going to make great parents.”

  “And don’t worry, if we’re still in LA, I’ll still come visit a lot,” I say. “I might even make you babysit often.”

  She smiles. “I look forward to it, Juliet. I love you a lot.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Monday, August 27

  Four million.

  Four million.

  I hit four million.

  Currently, I am sitting in my new living room of my new house. Kale and I are celebrating hitting four million by eating some vegan pizza—I know, a pizza without meat and cheese sounds gross, but it’s actually really good. Even Kale likes it.

  “I can’t believe four million people have clicked subscribe on my channel. That means four million people watched a video of mine and liked it enough that they wanted to see more,” I say. “That’s just... crazy.”

  “It’s awesome,” Kale says.

  He’s right.

  It is awesome.

  Mom and Dad are gone now on their cruise, which means we won’t hear from them for the next month. It’s weird not talking to my mom every day, but I’m glad they could go do something that they enjoy. They deserve it.

  “You know, I can’t stop thinking about you being cancer free,” Kale says. “I know that it is literally a miracle. And I just... I’m so happy. I didn’t know how I would live without you, and now I don’t have to know.”

  “Kale, I love you,” I say. “And I’m glad I’m going to live, too. But, someday I will die. Whether it is cancer or a car accident or old age—it’s gonna happen. If I die before you, I want you to be happy. If my cancer comes back, I want you to know that the time I’ve spent with you has been the best of my life. I’m so madly in love with you. You’ve helped me do things I couldn’t imagine doing, and I wouldn’t have done them without you.”

  “I’m madly in love with you, too,” Kale says. “And I want to keep adding things to the list.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Maybe we can do skydiving,” he says.

  I laugh. “No. That wasn’t on there for a reason. I don’t want to jump out of an airplane. Jumping off a cliff was hard enough.”

  “You wouldn’t jump out of an airplane with me?”

  I look at him to see if he’s serious.

  He is.

  “Um, well... if you really wanted me to, I guess I could try. But I don’t want to,” I say.

  “Good. Neither do I,” Kale says. “But I’m glad you’re at least willing to try it for me.”

  “Anything for you,” I say.

  “You know, sometimes I forget that you’re literally still a teenager,” he says.

  “That’s because I don’t act like a teenager,” I say. “And I’ll be twenty in February.”

  “I know, but... think about all you’ve done this year.”

  “Hmm... I moved out on my own. Hit three million and four million subscribers, I got married, completed a ton of bucket list items and I kicked cancer’s butt,” I say. “How am I ever going to top this?”

  “You’re right. You’ve pretty much hit the top,” Kale says. “There is only one way to go now.”

  I laugh. “Or, maybe I could just stay here and bring a few people with me. This kind of happiness needs to be shared with the world.”

  “And that is why I love you.”

  “Wow. And here I thought it was for my stunning good looks.”

  “That, too,” Kale says.

  “I was kidding.”

  “Not me,” he says. “Juliet Johnson, there is nobody in the world who is more beautiful than you.”

  “Well, that’s why I love you.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  “Because you make me feel like there is nobody in the world more beautiful than I am,” I say.


  Wednesday, September 21

  We lied.

  Today we are in Idaho Falls visiting Kale’s parents and Jason and Miranda. It’s weird that my parents aren’t here. I’m happy that they’ll be coming home next week.

  While Kale and I are at Jason and Miranda’s house, my dad calls. Which is weird. I thought they weren’t going to be able to make any calls on the cruise. But maybe they changed their mind about getting a phone package.

  “Hey, Dad,” I answer, putting my phone on speaker. “You must be psychic, because we were just talking about you.”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Hello?” I say. “Dad?”

  And then I hear him sob from the other side of the line.

  “Dad, what’s wrong?” I ask.

  “We lied,” Dad finally says.

  “What do you mean?”

  Kale, Jason and Miranda are now all sitting around me, trying to listen to the phone call.

  “Dad, what’s going on?”

  “We didn’t go on a cruise,” Dad says. “Your mom has cancer. She has had it for a while, but didn’t want you kids to know.”

  “What do you mean she has cancer?” I ask.

  “Juliet, she didn’t want you to know. Because you had cancer and she didn’t want you to be stressed out,” Dad says. “She was worried about you. So worried. And she didn’t want to set back the progress that you had made.”

  “What happened, Dad?” I ask, tears now in my eyes. “Where is Mom?”

  “We’ve been at the hospital for three weeks, pretending to be on a cruise. I went along with it because it’s what she wanted,” Dad says. “But...” his voice breaks. “She didn’t make it.”

  When I hear those words, my phone slips from my hands. I try to hold onto it, but it’s like my fingers have lost all the ability to hold onto anything.

  I didn’t even know I was crying until Kale pulls me against him. And it’s then that I realizing I’m not just crying. I’m sobbing. And screaming.

  No.

  My mom can’t be dead. She was fine three weeks ago when I saw her. She looked better than fine.

  Didn’t she?

  I mean, she was pale. Paler than usual. But she’s been pale. I thought it was because she was worried about me. I thought everything would be better since I was okay. I thought certainly the cruise...

  But there isn’t a cruise. There never was.

  “Juliet, are you still there?” I hear Dad ask.

  “It was my fault. I killed her. The stress. Because of my cancer. It was me,” I say. “I pushed her over the edge.”

  “That’s not true,” Kale says.

  “Juliet,” I hear dad say again.

  Jason picks up my phone. “Dad, it’s me. Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Your mom didn’t want me to,” Dad says. “I had to... I’m sorry, Jason.”

  But nobody says anything else. We just all cry. And Kale holds me.

  “It’s not your fault, Juliet,” Kale says. “You and I both know that. You’re just hurting right now.”

  “I know. I just... wish I hadn’t told her,” I say.

  “You had to tell her.”

  “Well, why didn’t she tell me?” I ask, tears falling down my face.

  “Maybe because the two of are too much alike,” Kale says. “You didn’t tell her because you didn’t want to hurt her. And she didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “But, if I hadn’t told her, maybe she’d still be alive,” I say.

  “And maybe she thought if she told you, that something bad would happen to you.”

  I can’t argue with that.

  He’s right.

  But it doesn’t help anything.

  My mother is dead. And I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

  Saturday, September 24

  Goodbye.

  You know in movies, how they always have flashback of all the good memories of somebody who has died? How seeing a life of happy memories somehow lessens the pain of their death, because at least they lived a good life? Well, those are a lie. All the good memories do is hurt and make you miss them that much more.

  She won’t be there for the birth of my first child.

  She’ll never get to be at my wedding, because I decided to run off to Vegas to get married.

  She’ll never get any more than what she got.

  It’s unfair. I only got nineteen years with her and she wasn’t even fifty years old. She was too young. And I wasn’t ready.

  I wish I could say goodbye to her. I wish I could hug her one last time. I wish I could hear her say I love you. But I can’t. To be honest, I can’t even remember the last thing I said to her. Was it have a nice trip? Was it I love you?

  Does it even matter what I last said? It’s too late now. She’s already gone. And all that’s left are these stupid memories. Memories that I don’t want, because all they do is bring me pain. I just wish I could forget everything.

  I know what everybody was going through, now, when I first told them I had cancer. I get why my mom, Jason... everybody... cried. I get why Kale had to call Jason when I was in that hospital in Arkansas.

  My mom died when she was way too young.

  And now, we are just supposed to keep going. Keep living.

  But how can I?

  I didn’t even know how much I loved my mom until this very moment.

  The worst part of it all is hearing people tell me how sorry they are for my loss. They’re shaking my hand. Or hugging me. But I barely know these people.

  There are people from my high school—the same ones who used to make fun of me and bully me. The ones who inevitably made me hide from them in the bathroom during lunch. Family I’ve seen once or twice in my life—the ones who couldn’t bother to show up at Christmas or Thanksgiving, and definitely couldn’t be bothered to invite us. There are friends my mom had in high school. I’ve never met them in my life.

  But then, there are the important ones—me, Kale, Jason, Miranda and Dad. The ones who mattered the most to my mom. We’re here to pay our final respects for her, and that is all that matters.

  My stomach literally hurts as the preacher steps up to the pulpit at the front of the church.

  This is the church I grew up in. I went to Sunday school here, and got baptized here when I was a kid. It’s the church where I learned about God. It’s the same church about which I used to fight with my mom every Sunday morning as a teenager, because I didn’t want to go. She never let me out of that one. And now I’m back here, but I really don’t want to be. Not for this.

  We start out with a song. It’s her favorite hymnal.

  And it’s all I can do to not throw up while everybody sings. I just stand there, feeling numb.

  The preacher gets up and starts saying nice things about my mom. It’s then that I realize I really am going to be sick. I run from my pew out the door. I only make it to the foyer before I throw up. I fall down onto my knees and all I can think is that I ruined my own mother’s funeral.

  I hear the doors open. The preacher is still speaking inside. I look back and see both Kale and Jason walk out.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Jason. Because she isn’t just my mom. She’s his mom, too.

  “Are you okay?” Jason asks.

  “I’m fine. I just... couldn’t take it,” I say.

  “I’m going to get something to clean this up,” Kale says.

  “No. You stay with her,” Jason says. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Kale asks me, as Jason runs off.

  “I don’t feel very good,” I say.

  Kale holds out a hand to help me up.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  I give him a look.

  The kind of look that you give somebody when they ask you “what’s wrong” at your own mother’s funeral.

  “I mean, why did you get sick,” Kale says.

  “I don’t know. Stress? Anxiety? Grief? Take
your pick.”

  “You’ve been complaining of an upset stomach for a week. Even before your mom died,” he says.

  “Look, I don’t know. I have other things to worry about,” I say. “Like cleaning up the puke and getting back to my mother’s funeral, Kale.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Fine.”

  But I know that’s not the end of the conversation.

  Far from it.

  A long night.

  “You’re going,” Miranda says.

  “No, I’m not,” I say.

  “Yes, you are,” Jason says.

  “Nope.”

  “You’re being unreasonable,” Kale says.

  “I’ll go tomorrow. Or Monday. I just need tonight,” I say. “I don’t think that is unreasonable to ask.”

  “Please, Juliet. I can’t lose you, too.”

  It’s my dad’s voice that finally got me to cave.

  “Fine,” I say. “But if there is a line in the ER, I’m waiting until Monday and I’ll go see my actual doctor in LA.”

  But I’m still worried. I haven’t been cancer free for that long. What if it came back? What if I’m dying? I mean, it hasn’t been that long since my last scan. But if it came back, it could be happening really fast.

  So, we all squeeze into Jason’s SUV. Miranda and Jason are in the front; Kale, Dad, and I in the back. I’m in the middle, between the two.

  I hate how quiet everybody is in the car. We’re all still upset from my mom’s funeral earlier in the day, but I know they’re also super worried about me. Worried that they might be going to a second funeral soon. And to be honest, I’m worried about the same thing.

  I don’t want to die.

  I don’t want to leave my family.

  But the thing is, beside my grief, I feel fine right now. I don’t feel sick. But then again, I guess I didn’t feel sick even when I was sick. Besides that one time in Arkansas.

  Well, that not exactly true. I did feel sick. But it was manageable. And I tried to ignore it, because I was determined to finish my bucket list. Which almost seems silly now. But how I’m feeling now is different.