Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (4 page)

“Girls like gentlemen,” she said. She was being kind of loud. “A girl likes to get
flowers
every so often.” She was glaring at Dad. It was the day after her birthday or something.

So the second day of school, I wore a suit and brought an actual rose to school, which I gave to Mariah before first period.

“I would be honoured and delighted to escort you to an ice-cream parlour this week-end,” I said, in a British accent.

“
Would
you,” she said.

“Greg, you look like a fruit,” said Will Carruthers, a nearby jock.

But it worked. Unbelievable! We actually went on a date. We met at a place in Oakland, and I bought us some ice cream, and we sat down, and I thought, from now on, this is how my life is going to be, and that kicks ass.

That’s when The Talking began.

My God, that girl could talk. She could go for miles. Invariably it was about her friends back in Minnesota, whom I didn’t know.
It was all she wanted to talk about. I heard hundreds of hours’ worth of stories about these people, and because I was being a gentleman, I wasn’t allowed to say, “This is boring,” or “I already heard that one.”

And so the problem became that the gentleman tactic worked
too
well. The expectations were ridiculous. I had to wear my nicest clothes to school every day, pay for stuff constantly, spend hours on the phone every night, etc. And for what? Definitely not sex. Gentlemen don’t get to fool around. Not that I really knew, back then, what fooling around
was.
Plus I had to keep talking in that stupid British accent, and everyone thought I was brain-damaged.

So I had to put a stop to it. But how? It obviously wasn’t an option to be honest and say, “Mariah, if spending time with you means paying lots of money and listening to you talk, then it’s not worth it.” I considered a campaign of freaking her out by suddenly only talking about dinosaurs, or maybe even pretending to
be
a dinosaur, but I didn’t have the courage to do those, either. It was a major quandary.

Then, out of the blue, Aaron Winer saved the day. He took her to some movie and made out with her in the back row. The next day at school,
they
were boyfriend and girlfriend. Bam! Problem solved. I pretended to be bitter about this, but in fact I was so relieved that I started laughing hysterically in history class and had to be excused to go to the nurse.

And that was that. During high school I didn’t even bother with girls or girl tactics. Frankly, the Mariah thing completely cured me of wanting to have a girlfriend. If it was going to be like that, then screw it.

Cameron “Cammie” Marshall
is now captain of the Math League. She still has a Hello Kitty backpack, which might not be ironic. She is definitely not the hottest girl in her class anymore, although I think that does not really bother her all that much.

Madison Hartner
is smokin’ hot and probably dates one of the Pittsburgh Steelers or something.

Leah Katzenberg
has a shaved head and a bunch of metal embedded in various parts of her face, and four out of five Benson English teachers have given up trying to make her read books written by men.

Mara LaBastille
and her two equally phenomenal boobs went to a different high school.

Mariah Epps
is a theater girl now. She has a posse of 100 percent gay male sidekicks, including Justin Howell, and holy shit, do they do a lot of talking.

Rachel Kushner
got acute myelogenous leukemia our senior year.

I found out about Rachel’s leukemia pretty much as soon as I got home.

So, just to repeat, the first day of senior year had been, if not awesome, then unexpectedly non-horrible. Everyone, from wealthy designer-nosed Olivia Ryan to Nizar the Surly Syrian, thought I was OK, and no one was actively plotting my downfall. This was unprecedented. Plus, in general things were a lot less stressful, now that there weren’t upperclassmen who could squirt mustard packets at my head or backpack. That is what being a senior is all about. My teachers were talking a lot of trash about how hard class was going to be, but by senior year, you realize that all teachers say that every year, and they are always lying.

My life had reached its highest point. I had no way of knowing that as soon as Mom walked in, the prime of my life was over. It had lasted about eight hours.

INT. MY BEDROOM — DAY

GREG is sitting on his bed. He has just gotten home from school and is trying to read
A Tale of Two Cities
for class, but it is difficult for him to maintain focus, because inside his pants he has AN INEXPLICABLE BONER. An image of some BOOBS on GREG’S LAPTOP, open nearby, is not helping things. There is a KNOCK at the door.

MOM

offscreen

Greg? Honey? Can I come in and talk to you?

GREG

quietly

Fuck fuck fuck

MOM

entering room as GREG conspicuously shuts his computer

Honey, how are you doing.

MOM squats down on the floor in front of the bed with her arms folded. Her eyebrows are scrunched, she has a crease in her
forehead, and she is staring Greg in the eyes without blinking. These are all reliable signs that she is about to ask Greg to do SOMETHING ANNOYING.

GREG’S INEXPLICABLE BONER is in full retreat.

MOM

again

Honey? Are you doing OK?

GREG

What?

MOM

after a long silence

I have some really sad news for you, honey. I’m so sorry.

CLOSE-UP of Greg’s confused face as he considers what this news might be. DAD isn’t home. Maybe the university fired him? For weirdness? Can you get fired for weirdness? Or maybe all along Dad has led a secret double life as a CRIMINAL MASTERMIND? And now he’s been discovered, and the family has to flee to an undisclosed ISLAND in the Caribbean?
Where they will live in a little hut with a rusty tin roof and AN ACTUAL GOAT? And will there be LOCAL GIRLS with coconut halves on their boobs and skirts made of foliage? Or is that Hawaii? Greg is mistakenly thinking of Hawaii.

GREG

OK.

MOM

I just got off the phone with Denise Kushner. Rachel’s mom? Do you know Denise?

GREG

Not really.

MOM

But you’re friends with Rachel.

GREG

Sort of.

MOM

You two had kind of a thing, right? She was your girlfriend?

GREG

feeling uneasy

That was like six years ago.

MOM

Honey, Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia. Denise just found out.

GREG

Oh.

after a short silence, stupidly

Is that serious?

MOM

now starting to cry a little bit

Oh, honey. They don’t know. They’re doing tests, and they’re gonna do all they can. But they just don’t know.

leaning forward

Sweetie, I’m so sorry about this. It’s really not fair. It’s not
fair.

GREG

sounding even more like an idiot

Uh . . . it sucks.

MOM

You’re right. You’re absolutely right. It
does
suck.

passionately, and also bizarrely, because parents don’t say that things suck

It
does
suck. It really, really

sucks.

GREG

still struggling to find something appropriate to say, and failing

This, uh, just sucks . . . really bad.

maybe if he keeps talking, he will say something that is not stupid?

It sucks so hard.

Jesus.

Man.

MOM

breaking down

It
sucks.
You’re
right. It just
really sucks so hard.
Greg. Oh my poor baby. It sucks so very much.

GREG, feeling just insanely awkward, gets off the bed and on the floor and tries to hug his MOM, who is rolling back and forth on the balls of her feet, crying. They SQUAT-HUG for a while.

CLOSE-UP of Greg’s confused and kind of blank face; obviously he’s upset, but actually the really upsetting thing is that he’s not as sad as his mom—not even close—and he feels guilty and sort of resentful about this. Does Mom even know Rachel that well? No. Why is Mom FREAKING OUT SO MUCH about this? Although, at the same time, why isn’t Greg freaking out more? Is Greg a bad person for not needing to cry about this? Greg has a premonition that this is going to turn into some REALLY ANNOYING, TIME-CONSUMING THING.

MOM

finally crying less

Sweetie, Rachel is going to need her friends now more than ever.

GREG

uhhh

MOM

again, forcefully

Now
more
than ever. I know it’s hard, but you don’t have a choice. It’s a
mitzvah.

“Mitzvah” is Hebrew for “colossal pain in the ass.”

GREG

umm

MOM

The more time you spend with her, just, you know, the more difference you can make in her life.

GREG

Huh.

MOM

It
sucks.
But you have to be strong. You have to be a
good friend.

It definitely sucked. What the hell was I supposed to do? How would it make things better if I were to call up and finally offer to hang out? What would I even say? “Hey, I heard you got leukemia. Sounds like you need an emergency prescription . . . for Greg-acil.” I didn’t know, for starters, what leukemia
was.
I reopened my computer.

That was when, for a second or two, Mom and I were looking at boobs.

MOM

disgusted

Ugh, Greg.

GREG

How did those get there?!

MOM

Let me ask you—do you actually like looking at those? They look so fake.

GREG

You know what this is? They, uh, have these new pop-up ads on Facebook, and they’re basically just porn–they just appear randomly sometimes—

MOM

Real breasts do not look like water balloons.

GREG

It’s an ad.

MOM

Greg, I’m not stupid.

So it turns out leukemia is cancer of the blood cells. It’s the most common kind of cancer that teenagers get, although the specific kind Rachel had—acute myelogenous leukemia—is not the normal kind for teens. “Acute” means that the leukemia basically came out of nowhere and is growing really quickly, and “myelogenous” has to do with bone marrow. Essentially, Rachel’s blood and bone marrow were being invaded by aggressive, fast-moving cancer cells. I was picturing her in my mind, with her big teeth and frizzy hair, under this invisible microscopic attack, with all these screwed-up things floating around in her veins. Now I actually was getting really upset. But instead of crying, I sort of wanted to throw up.

GREG

Does everyone know about this?

MOM

I think Rachel’s family is keeping it pretty secret, for now.

GREG

alarmed

So am I not supposed to know about it?

MOM

acting a little weird

No, honey. It’s fine if you know about it.

GREG

But why?

MOM

Well, I was talking to Denise. And, you know, we decided that you were someone who could make Rachel feel better.

starting to nag

Rachel can really use a friend, honey.

GREG

OK.

MOM

She can really use someone to make her laugh.

GREG

OK OK.

MOM

And I just think, if you spend some time—

GREG

OK OK
Jesus Christ.

Mom gives Greg a sad and knowing look.

MOM

It’s OK to be upset.