Jesus Christ I hate writing about this.

So I should probably try to explain what leukemia is just in case you are confused about it. I knew extremely little about it before the whole Rachel thing. Now I know a mediocre amount, which frankly is much more than I am actually interested in knowing.

Some cancers are localized in your body, like lung cancer, or b.u.t.t cancer. You probably think b.u.t.t cancer doesn't exist, but it does. Anyway, with those cancers you can sometimes go in and cut them out surgically. But leukemia is cancer of the blood and bone marrow, so it's spread throughout your entire body, so you can't just go in and cut it out with knives. I mean, the knife thing obviously is scary and disgusting, but then the other way to treat cancer is to blast it with radiation and/or chemicals, which is worse. And with leukemia, you have to do that to someone's entire body.

So that definitely sucks.

Mom said it's like a city that has "bad guys" in it-something about the Rachel situation makes Mom forget that I'm not a toddler-anyway, it's like a city with bad guys and chemo is like dropping bombs on the city to kill the bad guys. In the process, part of the city gets jacked up. I told Rachel about this, and she was dismissive.

"It's more like I have cancer," she said, "and I'm getting chemotherapy."

Anyway, in the process of bombing the bad guys to death, there was definitely some damage sustained by Rachel City, specifically in the neighborhoods of Hairville, Skinfield, and the Gastrointestinal District. That is why she bought the hat. It was this cute furry pink thing that you normally see on girls running around in shopping malls and not on pale girls lying in bed all the time.

So if this were a normal book about a girl with leukemia, I would probably talk a s.h.i.tload about all the meaningful things Rachel had to say as she got sicker and sicker, and also probably we would fall in love and have some incredibly fulfilling romantic thing and she would die in my arms. But I don't feel like lying to you. She didn't have meaningful things to say, and we definitely didn't fall in love. She seemed less p.i.s.sed with me after my stupid outburst, but she basically just went from irritable to quiet.

So I would go in there and say some things, and she would sort of smile and sometimes giggle a little bit but mostly just not say anything, and I would run out of things to say, and then we'd put on a Gaines/Jackson film and watch it. First the more recent ones, then the older ones when we got tired of those.

Watching them with her was a strange experience because she was just so focused on them. I know it sounds idiotic, but sitting next to her, I suddenly saw the films the way I think she was seeing them-as this uncritical fan who actually likes all the stupid choices that we were making. I'm not saying I learned to enjoy watching the films. I guess I just saw how you might kind of tolerate all the insane imperfections and f.u.c.kups that we had. You might look at the bad lighting or the weird sound design and have your attention taken away from the story we were trying to tell and instead just be thinking about me and Earl, as filmmakers, sort of accidentally drawing attention to ourselves. And if you liked us, you would like that. That's maybe how Rachel was seeing everything we did.

But she didn't actually say anything, so maybe I was just making that all up.

And meanwhile, she didn't seem to be getting any better, and there were a couple of days where she was in a really dark mood and there was nothing I could do to help. Like one day when we were watching something and she had been really quiet and then she said, "Greg, I think you were right."

"What?"

"I said I think you were right."

"Oh."

She was quiet like she expected me to know what that meant.

"I'm, uh, usually right."

"Don't you want to know about what?"

"Uh, yeah."

Or maybe she didn't expect me to know what she meant. Who knows? Girls are insane, and dying girls are even more insane. Actually, that sounds f.u.c.ked up. I take that back.

"So I was right about what?"

"I think you were right when you said I was dying."

I hate complaining about this, but at the same time, this made me feel like s.h.i.t. I was so p.i.s.sed off that she said this. I tried to swallow it.

"I never said you were dying."

"You thought I was dying, though."

"No I didn't."

She was silent and it was infuriating.

"I didn't," I said, too loudly.

I mean, this was a lie, and we both knew it.

Finally, Rachel said, "Well, if you had thought it, you would have been right."

We were silent for a really long time after that. Actually, I wanted to yell at her. Maybe I should have.

JESUS CHRIST I HATE WRITING ABOUT THIS.

A person's life is like a big weird ecosystem, and if there's one thing science teachers enjoy blathering about, it's that changes in one part of an ecosystem affect the entire thing. So let's say my life is a pond. OK. Now let's say some insane person (Mom) shows up with this nonnative species of depressed fish (Rachel) and puts the fish in the pond. OK. The other organisms in the pond (films, homework) are used to having a certain amount of algae (time that I get to spend on those things) to eat. But now this cancer-stricken fish is eating all that algae. So the pond is sort of jacked up as a result.

(That last paragraph is so stupid that I couldn't even bring myself to delete it. By the way, for every mind-numbing thing that you have read in this book, there were like four other things that I wrote and then deleted. Most of them are about food or animals. I realize that I probably seem obsessed with food and animals. That's because they're the two strangest things in the entire world. Just sit in a room and think about them. Actually, don't, because you might have a panic attack.) So that is what was happening in my life. My schoolwork was definitely suffering, for example. Mr. McCarthy even took me aside to talk about it.

"Greg."

"Hi, Mr. McCarthy."

"Purvey a fact for me."

Mr. McCarthy had ambushed me in the hall on the way to cla.s.s. He was standing squarely in front of me and adopting an inexplicable stance. It was like the stance of a sumo wrestler, except with less stomping.

"Uh . . . any fact?"

"Any fact, but it must be presented with extreme authority."

I wasn't getting a lot of sleep for some reason, so I actually had some trouble coming up with a fact.

"Fact: A change in one part of an ecosystem, uh, affects an entire thing."

Mr. McCarthy clearly wasn't impressed by this fact, but he let it go. "Greg, I'm gonna waylay you for five minutes. Then I'm gonna give you a note so you can go to cla.s.s."

"Sounds good."

"That's what's about to happen, right now."

"OK."

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Good."

We walked into his office. They still hadn't finished rewiring the teachers' lounge, so the oracle was on his desk, presumably containing marijuana-infused soup. Seeing it, I immediately started panicking that Mr. McCarthy was going to confront me and Earl about drinking from the oracle. This panicky feeling got worse when Mr. McCarthy said the following thing: "Greg, do you know why I brought you in here?"

There didn't seem to be a correct answer to that question. I'm pretty bad in pressure situations, also. This should not surprise you at all. So I tried to say "No," but my throat was dry from fear and I sort of just made a squeaking noise. I also probably looked like I was going to throw up. Because honestly, it was too stressful to think about what a big crazy tattoo-covered wacko like Mr. McCarthy would do if he knew we had discovered that he was doing something illegal. I was sitting there realizing that while I liked Mr. McCarthy, I was also deeply terrified of him and suspected that he might actually be a psychopath.

This suspicion deepened when, without warning, he tried to crush me with his giant brightly colored arms.

I was too terrified to fight back in any way, so I kind of just went limp. He had closed in on me and was sort of hugging me to death. A lot of thoughts were running through my head at that moment. One of them was: This is exactly the sort of dumb way a stoner would try to kill someone. By fatally hugging them. What is up with stoners? Drugs are asinine.

It took an embarra.s.singly long time to realize that he was actually just giving me a hug.

"Greg, bud," he said after a while. "I know how tough things are for you right now. With Rachel in the hospital. We've all seen it."

Then he let go. Because I had gone limp, this caused me to fall most of the way down. Unlike your average high school student, Mr. McCarthy did not find this hilarious. Instead, he became very concerned.

"Greg!" he shouted. "Easy, bud. Do you need to go home?"

"No, no," I said. "I'm fine."

I got up. We sat down in chairs. Mr. McCarthy had a look on his face of deep concern. It was definitely out of character for him and it was sort of distracting me. It was like when a dog makes a human-style face at you and you're temporarily thrown off guard by it. You're like, "Whoa, this dog is feeling a mixture of nostalgic melancholy and proprietary warmth. I was not aware that a dog was capable of an emotion of that complexity."

That's what I was like with Mr. McCarthy.

"We've all seen how you've been affected by Rachel," said Mr. McCarthy. "And we've definitely heard about all this time you're spending with her. Bud, you're a great friend. Anyone would be lucky to have a friend like you."

"I'm really not," I said. Mr. McCarthy did not seem to hear me, which was probably good.

"And I know school is not your number one priority right now," added Mr. McCarthy, staring me in the eye in a way that was really nerve-racking. "I get that, bud. I was like you in school. I was smart, and I didn't apply myself, and I did just enough to get by. And until recently, you've been doing enough to get by. But hey."

He got closer to me. I was trying to imagine Mr. McCarthy as a student. For some reason, in my head he was a ninja. He was sneaking around the cafeteria late at night, preparing to a.s.sa.s.sinate someone.

"Hey. Your schoolwork is definitely suffering. This is a true fact. I've talked to your other teachers. In all of your cla.s.ses, you're unfocused, and you're not partic.i.p.ating, and you're forgetting to do a.s.signments. And in a few cla.s.ses, bud, you're pretty deep underwater. Let me unload another fact on you. Rachel . . . doesn't want you . . . to fail your cla.s.ses."

"Yeah," I said.

To be honest, I was p.i.s.sed. Partially, I was p.i.s.sed because Mr. McCarthy and I used to have this casual teacher-student relationship that involved zero earnest annoying talks like this, and that relationship was great. And now apparently it was over. And partially I was p.i.s.sed because I knew he was right. I was definitely not doing all of my homework. Teachers had been pointing this out. I had been ignoring them, but it was harder to ignore Mr. McCarthy, because despite being an insane stoner, he was the only reasonable teacher in all of Benson.

"Bud, this is it," Mr. McCarthy said. "This is the last year, and then you're gone. Let me tell you this: After high school, life only gets better. You're in a tunnel right now. There's a light glimmering there at the end of it. You gotta make it to that light. High school is a nightmare, bud. It might be the worst years of your life."

I didn't really know what to say to this. The eye contact was giving me a headache.

"So you gotta make it out. You can't fail. You've got the best excuse in the world right now, but you can't use it. All right?"

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna do everything I can for you, because you're a good kid. Greg, you're a f.u.c.king great kid."

I had never heard Mr. McCarthy use the F-word, so this at least was sort of exciting. Still, my Excessive Modesty reflex would not be denied.

"I'm not that great of a kid."

"You're an absolute beast," said Mr. McCarthy. "That's all there is to it. Get to cla.s.s. Here's a note. We all think you're a total . . . ferocious . . . beast."

The note said: "I had to meet with Greg Gaines for five minutes. Please excuse his absence. He is a beast. Mr. McCarthy, 11:12 am."

Meanwhile, at home, Gretchen was going through this phase where she could not make it through an entire meal if Dad was at the table. This was in part because Dad was going through a phase of his own wherein he couldn't stop pretending to be a cannibal. If we were eating anything with chicken in it, he would pat his stomach and announce, "Huma-a-a-a-an flesh. TASTE LIKE CHICKEN." This caused Gretchen to burst into tears and stomp out of the dining room. Things only got worse when Grace started doing it, too, which was insane, because a six-year-old pretending to be a cannibal is one of the greatest things there is.

So that's what was going on at home. Actually, that's not even relevant, but I wanted to write about the cannibal thing.

And as for filmmaking, I dunno. Earl and I didn't really end up doing the Two Poncy Dudes movie. We met up a few times to watch David Lynch films, and we knew that he kicked a.s.s, but for some reason we were having trouble coming up with a script of our own. We'd kind of just sit around staring at the laptop screen. Then Earl would go outside for a cigarette and I would follow him. Then we'd come back and do more wordless staring.

So you're probably reading all this, and being like, "Wow, Greg was really sad about Rachel, to the point where his entire life was in this tailspin. That is sort of touching." But honestly, that's not accurate. It's not like I was sitting in a room, with tears running down my face, clutching one of Rachel's bedroom pillows and listening to harp music all the time. I wasn't wandering any dewy meadows, ruefully meditating on the Happiness We Could Have Had. Because maybe you don't remember this, but I really didn't love Rachel at all. If she hadn't had cancer, would I be spending any time with her at all? Of course not. In fact, if she were to make a miraculous recovery, would we stay friends after that? I'm not even sure if we would. This all obviously sounds terrible, but there's no point in lying about it.

So I wasn't sad. I was just exhausted. When I wasn't at the hospital, I felt guilty for not being at the hospital trying to cheer Rachel up. When I was at the hospital, most of the time I felt ineffective and useless as a friend. So either way, my life was deeply f.u.c.ked up. But I also felt like a moron feeling sorry for myself, because I was not the one whose life was literally about to end.

At least I had Earl some of the time to cheer me up.

EXT. GAINES BACK PORCH - EVENING EARL.

suddenly So you can be a heteros.e.xual, or a h.o.m.os.e.xual, and I feel like I understand that, like you're a woman in a man's body or some s.h.i.t, but I been thinking about it and how the f.u.c.k can somebody call theyself a bis.e.xual.

GREG.

Uhh . . .

EARL.

Man, ain't n.o.body like, that fine-a.s.s girl is making me hard right now. Oh wait, my mistake, that dude over there is the one that's making me hard. That don't make no G.o.dd.a.m.n sense.

GREG.

I guess sometimes I also wonder about that.

EARL.

G.o.dd.a.m.n. If you're seriously like, "For real, I'm a bis.e.xual, any person can get me hard," man, you must get a hard-on from all kinds of freaky s.h.i.t.