"It f.u.c.king better have."

"You tell that cancer, Alex. Maybe you"ll scare it out of me."

If only.

Friday afternoon I came home to an empty house and plopped --1 myself in front of the TV. No Leo, Becca in limbo, and I was in a bad -0 -+1 2 2 3.

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head s.p.a.ce. As I fl ipped through the channels, it all seemed so point- less. Why were brainless people followed around all day with cam- eras, and why did people watch them? Why did singers spend millions of dollars on one stupid video for one s.h.i.tty song when there was still no cure for cancer? Why were so many a.s.sholes all over the news and reality tele vi sion and on sports teams and so many good people were dead?

And where did I fall in all of it?

My dream, to make horror movies, was so pointless. What good did it do for anyone? Who did it help? Nothing I did ever helped any- one. I couldn"t stop my dad or Leo"s brother from dying. I couldn"t stop Becca from getting cancer. She could still die. My mom could die. My brothers. What if there were a zombie attack, and I was the last person left on Earth? Everyone dying around me, everyone becoming the undead, and I was the only one left living?

When my mom and brothers came home, I sat comatose on the couch, staring forward at nothing after the TV fi nally sickened me to the point of turning it off .

CJ, always the t.u.r.d, saw me and asked, "Who died?" AJ smacked him in the back of the head, but CJ just asked him an incredulous, "What?" I guess we were related.

"Your f.u.c.king dad died, remember?" I asked coldly.

"Alex!" my mom scolded.

"Did you hear what he said, Mom?"

"It"s just an expression. Tone it down," CJ said.

In a second I was on him, smacking CJ in the face and slamming my fi st into his shoulder. I don"t remember the last time I hit one of -1- my little brothers, since they had pa.s.sed the point of being little and 0- outgrew me by at least fi ve inches. CJ was an athlete, and while I may

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be sc.r.a.ppy, he outweighed me by thirty pounds of muscle. Somehow he had me pinned to the ground in seconds.

"What? Are you on the wrestling team now? All you need now is a lobotomy and some tights." I quoted The Breakfast Club into the carpet.

My mom came to my rescue, although I wouldn"t have minded before my brother"s knee wedged into my back. "CJ, get off your sister. Boys, up to your room. Your sister and I need to talk."

"Why are we the ones in trouble? She started it." CJ pouted as he huff ed up the stairs.

"You"re not in trouble. You have a computer in your room, and that"s where you would have gone anyway to play Blood and Bones 12 or what ever horrifi c game it is you boys are into now."

My mom helped me off the ground. We sat on the couch and waited for the twins" bedroom door to slam before Mom started talk- ing. "I know you"re having a hard time, honey-"

"That"s the thing. I"m not having a hard time. I"m still alive. I"m still healthy. It"s everyone around me that horrible things are happen- ing to. And I feel guilty every second of every day because I can"t do a thing about it."

"Hold on. You think because you"re alive, because you"re not sick, that nothing is happening to you? Oh, honey. That"s just not true. You"re allowed to have feelings, you know. Your dad is gone. I cry about that every single day because he was my husband, the father of my wonderful children." She stroked my cheek. "And I loved him so much. Do you think I shouldn"t be upset because I"m not the dead one?"

I shook my head.

--1 "And Becca, of course you feel bad. It"s almost harder for those -0 -+1 2 2 5.

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who love the person who is sick because, you"re right, there"s not a whole lot you can do. Except what you are doing: being there for her.

You have to stop thinking you"re supposed to be so tough all the time."

"I don"t think I"m tough!" I was appalled by how dorky that sounded.

"You know what I mean. You have such an emotional wall up.

Like, if you let it down that means you"re weak or something."

I hated to admit she was right because it sounded ridiculous, but I did hate the idea of being weak. The stupid girl in the horror movie who hid from the killer instead of fi ghting back. The screaming idiot who went up the stairs instead of to their car and away from the scene. In a way, I knew it was one of the reasons I watched horror mov- ies; it gave me a feeling of moral superiority. But in real life, there was no obvious bad guy for me to slay, no ending where the dead person came back to life.

"I feel useless," I admitted to my mom. "Nothing I do is important."

"Now that"s bulls.h.i.t." My mom surprised me with her swear, usually reserved for driving. "You want me to make you a list?" Mom didn"t wait for an answer and started ticking things off with her fi n- gers. "You help keep this family together. You have a job and make money instead of sitting on the couch. You make people laugh. You"re mostly nice to your brothers who need a big sister more than ever now. Your grades are good. And you are a wonderful friend through thick and thin. And someday"- Mom cleared her throat, as if this were hard for her to admit-"you will be an incredible fi lmmaker."

-1- "I thought you didn"t want me to make movies. That it wasn"t 0- practical. And you were totally right."

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"No, I wasn"t. If it will make you happy and fulfi lled, then it is practical."

"But it"s so pointless. Horror movies don"t help anyone."

But right when I said it, I knew I was wrong. Horror movies could help people, just as they helped me. I don"t know how I could have made it through the last summer without their mindless gore to keep my mind off my life. The conventions and all of the people they brought together who shared their love of horror. And Leo. Without horror movies, I didn"t know what would have brought us together.

"You are a wonderful person, Alex. A little dark, maybe," Mom laughed. "Don"t beat yourself up. You"ve got two brothers who can do that now."

"Yeah. When did that happen?"

Mom kissed my forehead. "I love you very much."

"Love you, too," I mumbled, and Mom went to the kitchen to make dinner. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and sent two texts. The fi rst was to Becca.

Want me to come over to night? Buffy marathon on Logo.

The second was to Leo.

I"ve been waiting in the book closet for 2 weeks. Starting to get hungry. Where r u?

Maybe it wasn"t overly emotional, but what ever it was, it was time to stop kicking myself for it.

--1 -0 -+1 2 2 7.

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CHAPTER.

3 8.

I didn"t expect to hear back from Leo. I thought, and hoped, that Monday would come and there he"d appear in the hallway asking me to smoke a cigarette as if he had never left.

Later Friday night, while Becca slept in her bed next to me as I watched The Master break Buff y"s neck in a parallel world, my phone buzzed.

If you can get out of the closet, want to come over?

It was only eight, but Becca had crashed early from her pain meds. I liked to be around in case she woke up and wanted a gla.s.s of water or a note thrown at Caleb"s window. But Leo wanted to see me.

And I wanted to see Leo. Leaving Sleeping Baldy didn"t make me a bad friend. Plus, visiting Leo when he wanted me to made me a good friend. Or at least an okay one.

-1- I texted him back: 0-

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Yes. Rabid Grannies?

Defi nitely.

Rabid Grannies was an oddly dubbed Dutch movie, odd because some- times it actually looked like the actors were mouthing what they were saying in En glish. I always said I"d learn Dutch just to fi gure out what the h.e.l.l was going on. Maybe I could put that on my bucket list, if I ever made one. It wasn"t any less n.o.ble than prank calls and masturbation.

I gingerly slipped out of the bed and put on my shoes. "Becca," I whispered. "Becca." She stirred enough to roll over but only responded by way of a snore. I found a Post- it on her desk and scrawled, "Went to Leo"s. Will let you know what happens when you stop snoring." I posted it to her pillow.

The crud of February had set in. All along the side of the road sat piles of mucky snow, hardened and blackened from the toxic sludge of cars. At least it wasn"t scary to drive in.

I tucked my gloved hands into my down jacket and pulled my winter hat as far over my ears as it could go. The temperature had to be in the zeroes, which meant frozen boogers and cracking hair if I didn"t have time to dry it. I let my car warm up for two minutes, as was the advice of my dad when he taught me to drive. The worst part was having to sit in a frigid car until the little temperature gauge showed signs of life. Until then, turning on the heat only pulled freezing air away from the freezing motor.

When I saw the hint of temperature gauge movement, I turned the heat on full blast and put the car in gear. Before I went to Leo"s, I stopped at home to get the DVD. Mom sat on the couch with a tissue, blowing her nose and wiping tears from her eyes.

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I had the most selfi sh thought of disappointment, that if my mom was crying I"d have to put my visit with Leo on hold to console her.

But when she saw me, she pointed to a black- and- white movie on the TV. "Bogey and Bacall," she sniff ed. "One of my favorites." I kicked myself with relief that she was only crying over a movie and ran upstairs to my room for the DVD.

"Forgot this." I held up the movie, and she acknowledged with a wave of her hankie. I didn"t feel the need to explain where I was bringing the movie, and I"d still be home by eleven thirty as expected.

When I pulled up to Leo"s, I took a minute in the car to think about what might happen. The last time I was here, his brother had just died. We had s.e.x. He said he loved me. This time I was packing an imported DVD called Rabid Grannies.

I rang the doorbell, and to my surprise his mom answered. I had only been at Leo"s one time before when his parents were also there, and they left soon after I arrived. I fumbled with my words, not know- ing whether to bring up Jason or acknowledge how long it had been since I"d seen her. "Hi," was all that came out of my mouth, and I spent an inordinate amount of time wiping the wet off my shoes. I heard the pound of Leo"s feet down the stairs, and he said, "Thanks, Mom.