The FBucket List

by Lena Fox

  Blake is good-looking. Blake is healthy.

  I stared at my plate, the tart there with its flaky and perfect crust cradling the rich ripe berries, and wanted to scream. Blake had so many options ahead of him.

  Blake has a future.

  And I was here, selfishly stealing time from him. All I had was The List. I had to finish it. As fast as possible. I didn’t have a future. I didn’t have time, and I couldn’t sit here a second longer pretending I did with someone who had so much to live for.

  I pushed my chair back and grabbed Blake’s plate off him while he was still eating.

  “We have to go,” I announced. “We have that thing.”

  “What thing?” Blake asked, trying to grab the plate back and missing.

  Dad passed the whole remaining tart dish to Blake, and damn, if the traitor didn’t grab it, sink his fork into the sweet dessert, and keep right on eating, with a sly wink to my dad.

  “That thing,” I said through tightly clenched teeth.

  “Is it so important that he can’t finish some dessert?”

  “Yes!” God, Dad was practically doting on him now. He did love people who appreciated his cooking.

  Blake shoveled one last chunk into his mouth, stood, and said, “Thanks for dinner, Mr. Stone.”

  “Call me Tom.”

  They stood there, giving each other a tender bromance look, so I grabbed Blake by the arm and propelled him to the front door.

  Dad walked us out, giving me a kiss on the cheek, tickling me with his beard. “I like him. Be safe.”

  I bit my lip, then kissed him back. The door closed, and I caught up with Blake out on the sidewalk.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. I just want to do the next thing on my list.” I was out of breath and had to lean against the motorbike for a minute. “Right now.”

  “Don’t you think that would be a bit awkward in your father’s driveway?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “We’re nowhere near a beach. It would take ages—”

  “The one after that then!” I snapped. I couldn’t wait. I had to cross something off. I had to do something.

  His eyes were soft, and he leaned close to me. I flinched away. I could see the curtain moving in my Dad’s living room, in the house where I had grown up, where my mother had died. My dad was watching. Watching what he thought was a new relationship. Imagining what might be a future I would never have.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Blake said. His breath touched my cheek when he spoke those words.

  I wanted to believe him. Death doesn’t give you many options though. You live well for the time you have or you die with things undone.

  Blake twined a finger around a strand of my hair. “Why is this so important to you?”

  His question made me angry. My reasons were none of his business. I closed my eyes and it all hit home …

  Chapter Eleven

  Georgina

  No. No. This is not happening.

  Only it was.

  My worst nightmare. The fear that had haunted me for years ever since my living nightmare had ended.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror and if things had been different, I might have laughed. The sight of myself standing naked in front of the mirror, one hand grabbing at my breast, open-mouthed shock on my face, was almost funny.

  But there was nothing funny about the lump under my fingers. I’d never wanted to feel that feeling again, but there it was, a hard little harbinger of death under the pliant skin of my right breast.

  Breathe dammit … inhale … exhale … inhale …

  My mom’s face swam in my mind. Pale, flaky skin, fleshy, red eyelids with no lashes, a scarf wrapped around her head that didn’t quite cover her hairline, or the lack of it. Cancer had spread its poison throughout her body, taking her from us too soon, and she had passed that gene onto me. We knew that for sure when breast cancer came for me at fifteen. I fought it, desperate not to die, not even really understanding that possibility with my youthful view of mortality.

  I could see the aftermath of that battle even now. My hair had fallen out in chunks. It finally grew out and had gotten long since I’d refused to ever have it cut again. But it had never really regained the thickness and sheen it once had. I had gained weight due to the treatments that had cured me. The steroids were supposed to help combat the nausea brought on by the chemo, but they also threw the pounds onto me. The foods that I could keep down were not only comforting, but fattening: ice cream, Dad’s mac and cheese, mashed potatoes with more butter than potato. Food was one of the ways Dad showed he loved me, how he cared for me through that hard time.

  Dad … this is going to break his heart. It’s going to break all of him. My reflected face collapsed, fell like a ruined soufflé, scrunched into wrinkles as though that could hold the stinging tears at bay.

  Could I have imagined it?

  I pressed my fingers into my flesh again. The lump was still there. The world and life and all it encompassed felt like it had narrowed down to a tiny little growth the size of a marble.

  I’m going to die this time. That thought made my belly feel cold.

  I hated the cold. I couldn’t stand it. I drank my sodas out of bottles that never saw the inside of the refrigerator, kept a space heater in my bedroom so I could heat it up when Julie ran the air-conditioning too high, and had a vast collection of oversized sweaters to hide inside. Anything to avoid cold.

  Cold reminded me of hospitals and chemo rooms, of the frigid, prying fingers of doctors, of beds that were never warm no matter how many blankets were laid out, how many flowers or cards were up on the walls around them. Cold made me think of the chilled chemo fluids pumping into my veins, of chewing crushed ice so my gums didn’t bleed, of a scalp so bare that no number of beanies could keep it warm. Cold made me think of death, the iciness and finality of it. Cold reminded me of my mother’s hands, the hands I touched for the last time as she lay in her coffin, when Dad lifted me up to say goodbye.

  I turned away from the mirror, unable and unwilling to look at myself any longer. The long scar on my left breast had always bothered me, always reminded me of the cancer, but now it seemed precious. It reminded me that I had survived … once.

  I wouldn’t again. I just felt it. I couldn’t make myself believe that I would, no matter how much I wanted to.

  Someone gave me a plaque once that read ‘Live like you are dying.’ I threw it away. I was trying not to die back then. Now, I could see very clearly that I’d never learned how to live. The cancer had stopped me in my tracks at fifteen. I’d fallen behind my peers, lost my friends, had to work so hard to catch up on the schoolwork I’d missed. I’d all but given up on my passion for drawing and painting. My body had survived, but my spirit had been broken. I could barely look at myself, and wanted no one else to look at me. All I had was studying, and waiting for my next check-up, and the next, to see when cancer would grow in me again. To get the six-month all clear, the one-year, the five-year, as though they would mean something. All they did was give me a way to waste those years in waiting until it really did come back again. I hadn’t lived, and now I wouldn’t have the chance.

  That made me angry as hell. It also made me so sad I couldn’t breathe.

  My gaze flicked to the photo of Mom on my bedside table. Mom. What am I going to do?

  That year of fighting against the cancer had been hard, but that five-year all clear had given me false hope. Maybe it was a one-time thing for me. I had been so sure I had enrolled in university, begun to think about the rest of my life: love, children, the great works of art I would create, the books I would illustrate, the adventures I would have.

  You haven’t even started dating yet.

  I wished I could turn off that nasty little voice inside my head. It was always talking and, worse, it was usually right. I hadn’t started dating yet. I had been unable to date through my teen years due to the cancer.
Most guys didn’t mind a girl that puked because she’d had too many beers, but none of the guys in my high school had been even slightly interested in dating the bald-headed blob that was prone to bouts of projectile vomiting at the drop of a hat. Literally at the drop of a hat too; even hats triggered nausea. I couldn’t wear them anymore. They reminded me too much of that time spent covering my baldness with hats and wigs. My pale skin took a beating because of it, and a light spattering of freckles had developed across my cheekbones. Cheekbones no man had kissed. A body that had done so little.

  I got dressed in whatever clothes I could reach first, and went to the drawer of my desk where I had a stash of blank journals. I’d been given so many over recent years, mostly from Dad since he knew my counsellors recommended journaling as a way for me to deal. I pushed away the pink glittery and rainbow ones and found a small, black, leather-bound one. It seemed fitting—black was the color of death, of mourning.

  I did need an outlet now, to write all the feelings that overwhelmed me. Maybe I could make a will or write my own eulogy in that journal. There was nothing to give away. Nobody would fight for my meager six-hundred-dollar bank account or my frumpy clothes. I squeezed the pen hard in my fist, angry at myself for not having anything of value, having left no mark on this world.

  Friends—ex-friends—sometimes asked what I would do if I knew today was my last day on earth. What was I going to do? I had more than a day, but how long I couldn’t know. I had to treat every day from now on like it was my last.

  So why am I sitting here staring at a blank page instead of going out and doing something amazing and enriching and …?

  Was there anything that I really even wanted to do anyway? I probably didn’t have time for the kind of grand items on the bucket lists of people with a whole life to fulfill them in. I hadn’t even done the basics.

  I’d never been kissed.

  Not really. Not romantically.

  Never been touched.

  Never known physical pleasure.

  Those simple, primal, human desires had been denied to me. By illness. By myself.

  Rage shook me. My hand scrawled words out into the journal. Black ink spilled onto white paper as I wrote out my bucket list.

  I stared down at those words, still shaking from shock and adrenaline, at the discovery and also at what I’d dared to write. I slammed the journal closed. This is crazy. This list is crazy. Did I honestly want to do those things I’d just written?

  Yes. I did. Some wild, vital part of me wanted to pour the last days of my life away into lust and mindless, physical indulgence. My body was mine only for a limited time, and it might be all I would ever have in this existence. Any thoughts, feelings, actions, creations … what would they really matter in the grand scheme of this infinite universe? Nothing would. Only here, now, this body, these experiences. I wanted to do all of it. I wanted pleasure, untouched flesh knowing touch, life knowing life.

  I had never told anyone that I had promised myself that if the cancer came back I wouldn’t go through treatment again.

  I just couldn’t.

  I knew how that would sound to other people, like I was too pitiful to deal with the necessary evil of getting well again. I knew damn well the people who would think that were the same ones who had never had to spend a night curled up on the cold floor of the bathroom, trying not to make too much noise while vomiting because someone you loved was sleeping down the hall and you didn’t want to wake them up. Because you didn’t want them to see you like that.

  I wouldn’t go through treatment again. Not just to prolong an unused life for another few years until cancer came again, and again. And if that meant I was going to die faster, then I would have to get my list done fast.

  I opened the journal and stared at the list again. The first few things were simple. I could do them. It would be like testing the waters. I could do those easier things and build up my self-esteem enough to do the rest of them.

  But how could I actually do them? Where would I even start?

  A club seemed the obvious place, but I had never been to a club. And then I’d have to actually pick up a guy, or hope one would pick up me. Would anyone even find me attractive? Desirable enough to do those things with? Should I just be using a hook-up app?

  No. I kind of wanted to do it the traditional way. It was something else to experience. And I wanted to do it right now. The only other option was to sit here alone and cry myself to sleep.

  I got up and went to my closet, rooting through it for something sexy to wear. No luck—all I had were the same jeans and T-shirts, sweaters, and childish dresses that always hung there.

  In the very back hung a dress I had never gotten to wear, one I kept for some reason I could never really explain. It was a short black dress with a sparkly little bow on the waist and a tiny ruffle of tulle around the hem. How I’d longed to wear that dress to the school dance. I’d begged and begged Dad to buy it for me, and he did. Three days before I discovered the cancer for the first time.

  I pulled it out, shed my baggy sweats and T-shirt, and tried it on. It barely fit, much tighter than it was meant to be worn when I got it five years before. I couldn’t even zip it up all the way, only enough that I was fairly sure it wouldn’t fall down again. The bow and ruffle looked silly and dated and I took the dress off, ready to put it back in the closet.

  I can’t give up so easily.

  I took my scissors and cut the bow off the dress. Then I cut the frilly little flounce off the bottom hem. It left ragged hems and loose threads, but I didn’t care. I cut a short slit down the middle front of the bodice to provide more chest room and put the dress back on.

  The dress looked a thousand times better. The cuts and roughness looked almost intentional, fashionable. It was still tight, but it clung to my plump curves like it was meant to. The pale skin of my cleavage glimmering in stark contrast to the dark material, and my waist looked smaller thanks to the tight cut of the dress.

  I rummaged around again, coming up with a pair of black pumps I had worn to an aunt’s wedding. The heels were scuffed so I colored them in with markers before putting them on.

  I dug around in my drawers for the one pair of silky little black panties I owned, and when I stepped into them I felt like a different woman.

  I had no idea how women wore their hair when going out, so just put a little leave-in conditioner into it and left it out. I ran a kohl pencil around my eyes until they were rimmed in heavy black, as though applying war paint. I smudged that eyeliner like I would charcoal on paper, then dabbed a dark maroon lipstick across my lips.

  Not bad, I decided. I might be able to do this.

  I grabbed my purse and marched out of my room, knowing any hesitation would stop me forever.

  When I walked past the kitchen, Julie looked up from the grilled cheese sandwich she was eating. Her physics textbook was open on the counter, and her big brown eyes skipped right over me at first, then widened, came back, and outright stared.

  “I thought you had a late class tonight.” Her eyes narrowed as they got to my feet, then made their way back up. “What kind of class are you taking?”

  “I’m going out. To a club.” The words started out strong then faded away to a bare breath. It sounded so ridiculous. Me, at a club, and on my own. I scuffed one toe into the worn linoleum. “You want to go with me?”

  “I’d have to shower for half an hour to get the fryer grease out of my hair, but—”

  “Never mind.” I cut her off, angered by her refusal, and how much I’d hoped she’d say yes. How much I needed someone to come on this adventure with me. I clutched my purse a little tighter under my arm and headed out the door.

  Halfway to the club, I lost my nerve. I pulled over into a breakdown lane, fighting tears and the beginnings of a full-blown anxiety attack. It was too scary, too hard, too crazy. I could stop this now. I couldn’t make it home, change, and make it to class on time, but I could spend the hours studying.


  Or I could find some guts and go to the club. What was the point in studying when I’d never be there to graduate? I had to do the List. The List Georgina is Brave Georgina.

  My tires squealed out of there as I headed for the nightclub.

  Dusk had smudged the sky with heavy purple shadows, hovering above the buildings surrounding the club. The entry door was a glossy red, like a beacon, a dare.

  I ran my hands over my face, angry and scared and torn. I was sweaty, and my makeup had smudged. I was looking for every possible excuse to not get up and walk into the club, so I had to just do it.

  And I did.

  The club’s interior was grainy black and white. I stood there, feeling like I had somehow gotten caught up in an old photograph, one that continuously moved around me. Bodies filled the small dance floor, limbs flailed, and laser lights cut through the darkness. It was as if the crowd was a huge sea and the music provided the tides that it followed.

  The smell was pungent: spilled beer and liquor, perfume and cologne, sweat and something else—something that smelled like life.

  I was jostled inwards by more people entering the club, and wound up close to the bar. I grabbed an empty stool and clambered up, my legs shaking from nerves.

  The bartender slapped a napkin down in front of me. Some suspicious-looking liquid immediately soaked through the thin paper. “What do you want?”

  I tore my eyes off the spreading brown stain and glanced in panic at the little stand-up pamphlet on the counter advertising the night’s cocktail specials. “That one,” I said, pointing at what I only found out later was a mojito.

  He moved away, and I let out a long breath. The music became more frenetic and louder. I wanted to cover my ears but didn’t. My purse was too heavy, and I sat it down on the bar just as the bartender reappeared with a squat glass full of liquid and leaves.

  The first sip stung my mouth and puckered my lips. Fire ran into my belly. It burned my doubts away.