I quickly found out her shirt was, in fact, a tribute to Heathers and we spent twenty minutes trading our favorite quotes. We agreed that “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw” was probably the best sentence ever uttered in the history of the world and, from that moment on, we never spent more than a few hours apart from each other.
My parents and her father weren’t too thrilled with the fact that we quit the cheerleading squad before we’d even technically made the team, but Claire and I were geniuses when we banded together for a cause. They quickly realized that our friendship wasn’t to be messed with and that as long as we weren’t spending every waking moment of the rest of our high school lives alone in our rooms wallowing in misery, wearing all black and listening to The Cure, we would be okay. We had each other and nothing else mattered.
And that, boys and girls, is how the dynamic duo of Liz and Claire came to be. Next comes the part where you might want to put on that seatbelt I mentioned. Or grab a nice giant cup of vodka. You’re going to need it.
Present Day
“SO, I HAVE cancer. Who wants more wine?” Claire states with a big smile.
I know it’s probably not the most appropriate response to the words that just left my best friend’s mouth, but I laugh.
And once I start, I can’t stop. It could be due to the amount of wine Claire, Jenny and I have consumed tonight at our favorite bar, Fosters, or it could be the fact that, while this is the worst joke in the history of jokes, it still has to be a joke since Claire is smiling.
“Ooooh, I have something for that!” Jenny announces as she reaches for her purse on the empty seat next to her. After a few seconds of rummaging around, she holds out a tube of Blistex in Claire’s direction.
“Why in the hell are you giving me Blistex?” Claire asks as she tops off her wine glass and empties our third bottle of the night.
Claire used to work at Fosters back when she was a single mother and the owners still adore her, so they let her go behind the bar whenever we’re here and help herself to whatever she wants. Sometimes, it’s a little dangerous that we never have to wait for a waitress to refill our glasses and I’m guessing tonight is going to prove that point.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I get it all the time. Put a little bit of this on it and it will be gone in a few days,” Jenny says cheerfully.
Claire turns away from her and gives me The Look. The one that we silently give each other whenever our friend Jenny speaks. The one that quietly shouts “HOW THE FUCK DOES SHE FUNCTION ON A DAILY BASIS???”
“I’m pretty sure if Blistex was the cure for cancer, someone would have mentioned it by now, but thanks for the offer,” Claire says with a chuckle as she sips her newly filled glass of wine.
“Oh, you said cancer! Ha! I totally thought you said canker. You know, like herpes, but on your lip… Oh. OH. OH, MY GOD!” Jenny screams in horror when it finally sinks in.
A few of the other patrons look our way when Jenny shouts and Claire gives them an apologetic look, waving them off with a flap of her hand.
Claire barely has time to set her wine glass down before Jenny flies out of her seat and tackles her in a bear hug.
“This can’t be happening! You’re so young. It’s lung cancer, isn’t it? I told you we never should have smoked all that pot in our twenties!” Jenny wails, burying her face in Claire’s shoulder.
It’s right around this point that I stop laughing. Not just because I can see it written all over Claire’s face that I need to do something to get Jenny off of her because crying chicks and Claire do not mix, but because I can see it written all over Claire’s face that she’s not kidding. This isn’t some weird April Fool’s joke in the middle of July. She isn’t going to shove Jenny away and shout, “Ha ha, you bunch of gullible assholes! I’m totally messing with you!”
While Jenny cries out her frustrations all over the shoulder of Claire’s t-shirt, I do nothing but sit here staring at her. I should be the one crying. I should be the one running to the other side of the table hugging my best friend. I should be the one cursing God and shouting about the unfairness of it all. The problem is, I know exactly what I should be doing right now, but I can’t make any of it happen. My ass has become permanently attached to the chair and my feet are like giant cement blocks refusing to move.
“Stop it,” Claire says quietly, staring right at me as she pats Jenny’s back.
I look at her in confusion.
“There is only one overly emotional woman in this group and that’s how it’s supposed to be. If you started crying right now I would punch you in the throat,” Claire states softly.
And just like that, I’m reminded just how well she knows me. She knows I don’t do the whole touchy-feely thing just like I know that in about three seconds, she’s going to start getting the shakes from having Jenny’s arms wrapped around her along with the sounds of female sobbing so close to her ear. There has to be something wrong with me though, right? I mean, my best friend has cancer.
My best friend has cancer.
Why can’t I feel anything? Why can’t I do anything?
Finally, Claire pulls herself out of Jenny’s death grip and grabs a couple of napkins from the table, handing them to a still sniffling Jenny.
“I’m going to make this short and sweet. I found a lump in my breast last week and Carter made me immediately call my gynecologist. After I saw her, she sent me to an oncologist for a mammogram just to be on the safe side. I had a biopsy done and two days later the oncologist called to tell me I have breast cancer. I’m going in a week for a double mastectomy, and then I’ll have six treatments of chemo and finally, reconstruction surgery. Now, back to my original question, who wants more wine?”
Jenny raises her hand. “I do!”
Claire lets out a cheer and unscrews the top on another bottle. We’re such classy bitches.
“You know, Drew and I play mammogram all the time. I read about the importance of doing self-breast exams and of course Drew wanted to be helpful. He’s so cute!”
Claire leans back against her chair as she shakes her head. “Do I even want to ask what exactly “playing mammogram” entails?”
“Well, Drew dresses up like a doctor and I put on a robe. Then, he takes two dinner plates from the kitchen and he smushes—”
“OKAY! Stop. That’s enough. I’m going to puke up all this wine we’ve consumed. Never speak of that again. Ever,” Claire warns her.
Reaching for the bottle Claire just opened, I opt out of pouring it into my glass and just chug it right from the bottle. Fuck it.
“Um, you can’t do that.”
With the bottle still close to my mouth, I turn to look at the judgmental waitress who is half my age.
“This is a bar,” I tell her, holding the bottle of wine up in front of her face. “And THIS, is called alcohol. People like to drink it. IN A BAR.”
The perky twenty-something puts her hands on her hips and glares at me. “You can’t drink it straight out of the bottle.”
“What are you, the wine police? Don’t you have some Barbies that need to be played with somewhere?”
Jenny giggles, holding up her glass of wine. “Three cheers for Barbie! I learned what smithereens was with Gymnastics Barbie and Lifeguard Barbie.”
“What the fuck is smithereens?” I ask, taking another swig from the bottle.
“You know, where two women lock their legs together and grind their hoo-has against each other,” Jenny explains, making peace signs with both of her hands and then interlocking her fingers together.
“I think she means scissoring,” Claire provides.
“Look, ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you continue to drink out of the bottle,” Slutty Waitress Barbie informs me.
“Awwwwww shit,” Claire mutters as I slowly get out of my chair and stand in front of the girl.
“You did NOT just call me ma’am,” I growl.
The waitress takes a step back and I feel good
about the fact that even though I’m little, I’m mighty, and this bitch looks like she’s afraid I’m going to punch her in the kidney.
“Steph, I promise I’ll make sure she uses a glass,” Claire tells the waitress kindly.
She smiles at Claire and nods. “Okay. Just, try not to scream or cry anymore either. Some of the other customers are getting nervous.”
I clunk the bottle of wine on the table and take a step in Steph’s direction. “You should probably run along now before I find a fun way to make you scream and cry.”
Steph literally runs away from our table and I sit back down, snatching the wine glass from Claire’s hand that she is holding out for me.
“We should shave your head tonight,” Jenny suddenly announces, bringing us all right back to the matter at hand that I DO NOT want to think about. “You have great bone structure. You’ll look great with no hair.”
“You are not shaving my head tonight. I don’t start chemo for two weeks, so how about we just wait and see what happens?”
Jesus Christ. Mammogram. Lump. Biopsy. Mastectomy. Chemo. WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?
“And let me just add one last thing,” Claire announces. “No one in this room will be shaving their head in support of me. There will be no spaghetti dinners to raise money for my medical costs, you are banned from wearing anything pink or anything closely related to the pink family until this is all over and there will be no fucking candlelight vigils held for me. Can I get an ‘Amen’ from both of you?”
“Amen!” I deadpan the reply and Jenny shouts it excitedly but hey, at least we replied.
Jenny starts talking Claire’s ear off about her first mammogram last year and I stare into my glass of wine wondering when the fuck I’ll wake up from this bullshit nightmare I’m obviously having. I mean, how is it possible that one of us is even old enough to get breast cancer? I’m not stupid, I’ve seen the statistics and I know it can hit anyone at any time, but those are people I don’t know. They are women who have nothing to do with my life and I can continue living each day with only a passing thought about all of those poor ladies and what they’re going through. A friend of a friend’s mother’s sister on Facebook, your mom’s college roommate’s aunt, your dentist’s neighbor’s best friend. THESE are the people who get cancer, not someone I know and love.
This is happening right in my own backyard. Right in our motherfucking favorite bar! It’s impossible to stay oblivious anymore. Cancer has jumped off the pages of a Facebook post of a friend of a friend of a friend’s yoga instructor’s Starbuck’s barista and smacked me right in the face.
Wasn’t it just yesterday that Claire and I were in college, lamenting about her pesky virginity and dreaming about someday owning a business together?
Sophomore Year of College.
Still too many years ago to count…
“YOU GUYS! THERE’S a party at Pi Kappa Phi tonight! You absolutely HAVE to go!”
Claire and I glanced up from our spot on the floor of our dorm room where we’d been looking through our pile of VHS movies trying to decide if it was a Girls Just Want to Have Fun or The Lost Boys kind of night. We tried not to groan when we saw Candy standing in the doorway.
After years of us telling her point blank to her face that she was entirely too fucking chipper to be friends with us, she still hadn’t gotten the hint. Imagine our surprise when she enrolled in the same college as us two years ago and made sure we all lived in the same dorm.
“Wow, that sounds like a blast, but we have a project due on Monday testing the abhorrent amount of genetic mutations in certain female subjects with ecdysiast-related given names. Sorry,” Claire told her with a shrug.
Candy stared at her in confusion for a few seconds before rolling her eyes and giggling. “I swear, one of these days I’m going to get you two to go to a Pi Kappa Phi frat party and it’s going to change your lives.”
“Yeah, that will be the day,” Claire muttered under her breath as Candy blew us kisses and ran down the hall, shouting in excitement to a few poor souls who happened to be in her frat-party warpath.
“Remind me again why we didn’t get an apartment off campus and away from that fuck-knob?” Claire asked.
“Because we’re trying to be economical and save money for the sex club that we’re going to open as soon as we graduate,” I reminded her. “Also, ecdysiast-related given names?”
I raised my eyebrow at Claire as she pushed herself up from the floor and sat down on the bottom bunk.
“Ecdysiast means striptease performer. It was on my word-of-the-day calendar yesterday,” Claire explained before she flopped onto her back. “Also, we’re not opening a sex club. That’s just gross.”
Pushing the movies aside, I got up from the floor and joined her on the bed. We lie next to each other in silence, staring up at the wooden slats under my top bunk that I’d decorated with bumper stickers:
What’s your damage, Heather?
CORN NUTS!
Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?
What’s that smell? Vampires, my friend. Vampires.
It’s called a sense of humor. You should get one, they’re nice.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Where in the fuck did that MLP one come from?
“Do you think there’s something wrong with us because we don’t like people?” I asked Claire after a few minutes. I reached up and used my fingernail to start picking at the edge of that stupid My Little Pony sticker.
Claire grabbed my wrist and pulled it away. “Don’t take that one down, I like it!”
“Seriously? My Little Pony? What are we, ten?”
Claire shrugged, sliding her hands behind her head. “I have a feeling they’re going to make a comeback someday. Leave MLP alone.”
With an irritated scowl, I rolled onto my side to face her. “So, seriously. Are we weird?”
Claire turned her head to face me. “No, we aren’t weird. We just have a low tolerance for bullshit. Who cares if we haven’t gone to a Pi Kappa Phi party yet and made out with random douchebags? I mean really, those parties are crawling with STDs. You could probably get knocked up just by ringing the doorbell.”
We both laughed at that thought and then it got quiet again.
Even though we’d been to plenty of frat parties during our two years of college, we’d avoided Pi Kappa like the plague. That was the house known for its jocks and snotty rich boys. It was also the house that threw the best fucking parties on the planet, though, and pretty much everyone at this school and every school within a seventy-five mile radius showed up. Except for Claire and I.
“Do YOU feel like we’re weird because we haven’t been to one yet? I mean, if that’s the case, I would totally suffer through a Pi Kappa party to make you happy,” Claire informed me. “Just because it isn’t my idea of fun, doesn’t mean it’s not yours. Who knows? You could meet the love of your life there.”
Claire moved her hands under her chin and fluttered her eyelashes at me. “Oh, you big, strong, frat boy! Please, do another keg stand to pledge your undying love for me!”
I punched her in the arm as I laughed. “Oh, shut up, you whore. I’m pretty sure I won’t meet the love of my life or even someone worth a one-night stand at one of those things, but it might be nice to check one out and see what all the fuss is about. I mean, this is our sophomore year. We should do something memorable.”
Claire looked at me in mock horror. “Oh, my God! You mean watching movies or going to the boring frat parties where they serve h’orderves and cups of tea every Friday night while we smuggle in Boone’s Farm in our purses isn’t memorable?”
Speaking of Boone’s Farm…
I quickly scrambled off the bed and pulled two bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill out from under the bed and held them up.
Claire immediately started laughing, sprang forward and grabbed one of the bottles out of my hand and unscrewed the top. “Jesus, we’re so fuck
ing classy. It doesn’t get much better than screw-tops.”
She chugged a good amount of wine before letting out a loud, satisfied sigh and lying back down, resting the bottle on her stomach. I set the unopened bottle next to me in bed before grabbing Claire’s and taking a sip.
“Okay, so frat parties aside, we should really talk about the sex club,” I told her.
“You’re going to have to ply me with something a hell of a lot stronger than wine with only four percent alcohol in it to get me to agree to that shit,” Claire informed me, snatching the bottle back and taking another sip.
“Fine, it doesn’t have to be JUST a sex club. Maybe we could pair it with something you’re interested in. Make it sort of a joint company. What are you interested in, Claire?”
She thought about it for a minute while I curled up next to her and we passed the bottle of shitty but delicious wine back and forth.
“It would probably be easier to tell you what I’m not interested in. Like say, a club where people are doing gross things to each other in public,” she told me, sticking her finger in her mouth and mock-gagging.
“You are such a fucking buzz kill. Fine. We can rethink the sex club aspect, but we WILL own a business together. Maybe if you’d finally give it up to someone, Virgin McVirginsen, you would be more agreeable to all things involving sex,” I reminded her.
The virgin comment was Claire’s cue to punch me in the arm. I loved this girl to death, but she was wound up entirely too tight, pun motherfucking intended. I’d been trying to convince her to get rid of that pesky virginity since high school, but she was dead set on finding “the one.” She didn’t need to find “the one.” She just needed to find the one who would do for a few hours. Scratch that, we’re talking college boys. A few minutes, tops.
“Stop talking out of your ass. I’ll show you. Maybe I’ll drag you to one of those stupid frat parties and have a one-night stand,” Claire threatened.