RACHEL.

Greg, you don't have to-try to make me laugh.

GREG.

What?

RACHEL.

You don't have to put on-a show.

GREG.

feeling like s.h.i.t OK.

Plan C was sock puppets.

First of all, let me just say that sock puppets can be way more emotional and expressive than they get credit for. There are a lot of different ways to put your hand in a sock and make it look like a face. Also, if you draw eyebrows over the eyes, that's really humanizing. You have to know what you're doing with the mouth, but if you do, you can make magic happen.

All that said, Plan C was a cancer-themed movie starring sock puppets. So it was pretty much doomed from the get-go.

Once we decided to try sock puppets, our main problem was plot. If Rachel was the star, what did she do? Whose a.s.s did she kick? Was she going to kick leukemia's a.s.s?

INT. BRIGHTLY COLORED CARDBOARD LANDSCAPE - DAY RACHEL.

La di da di da LUKE.

wearing cape and mustache, speaking with a Southern accent Howdy!

RACHEL.

suspiciously Hmmm. Who are you.

LUKE.

Uh . . . my name is Luke.

RACHEL.

What's your full name.

LUKE.

Luke mmmphlmmph.

RACHEL.

I can't hear you.

LUKE.

Luke Emia.

RACHEL.

TIME FOR A BEATDOWN.

How did this make us better than Justin Howell? The theater kid who wrote the song about how leukemia made Rachel want to scream-ia? We weren't sure.

INT. BRIGHTLY COLORED CARDBOARD LANDSCAPE - DAY LUKE EMIA.

addressing camera What's up, this is a public service announcement. I'm leukemia. I like to pick on kids and teenagers, because I'm extremely pathetic. Here's a list of things I hate: -delicious foods such as pizza

-adorable panda cubs

-if you were to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool with pleasant-smelling rubber b.a.l.l.s such as would be fun to frolic around in, I would hate that as well.

Not a lot of people know this, but my favorite thing in the world is a poorly made car commercial with generic guitar music in the backGROUN GAARRGGHH RACHEL, holding a baseball bat in her mouth, clubs LUKE while yodeling.

It was just all really childish and simplistic. It had nothing to do with anything. It looked like television for toddlers, and even worse, it was a big stupid lie. Rachel wasn't fighting leukemia. She wasn't interested in fighting. She seemed like she was giving up.

Plan D was stop-motion animation. In stop-motion animation, you shoot a single frame of something, move the characters slightly and maybe also the camera, shoot another frame, move things again, etc. It's painstaking and time-consuming. On the plus side, it allows you to use LEGO Darth Vader.

We wanted Rachel to watch a bunch of evil people talking about how much they love leukemia, and get p.i.s.sed off at them, and be inspired to fight back. This led to some terrible filmmaking.

INT. LEGO DEATH STAR - NIGHT, WHICH IT ALWAYS IS IN s.p.a.cE Elevator music. LEGO stormtroopers are wandering around in the background.

DARTH VADER.

singing to himself La la la. I am a jacka.s.s. Doot di doo. Big, big jerk.

looking at camera Oh! h.e.l.lo! I didn't see you there. My name is Darth Vader, and I'm the president of Evil Villains In favor of Leukemia, a.k.a. EVIL.

Appearing in the lower left-hand corner: Evil Villains In favor of Leukemia DARTH VADER.

We just think leukemia is the greatest. But don't take my word for it! Here's some testimony from some annoying pirates!

EXT. LEGO PIRATE SHIP - DAY PIRATE KING.

Arrrr! 'Twas a day the likes o' no other, athwart the starboard bow upon the rottin' maggoty beard o' Davy Jones hisself!!! Upon the horizon did Two-Eyepatch Bill not espy the hideous sucker'd limbs o' the mighty Kraken-fast amidships all cannons astern and swab the decks, ye filthy motherless bilge rat SWINE!!!!!

INT. DEATH STAR - NIGHT DARTH VADER.

Uh . . . sure.

INT. GREG'S DESK - DAY PLASTIC FIGURINE OF SERPENTOR.

with a snake accent I am Serpentor, Cobra Emperor, of the evil Cobra Command! Leukemia is my favorite thing in the world! Now, because I love leukemia so much, I am going to go make out with my sister, the Baroness Anastasia DeCobray! You can tell she's evil because her last name has the word "Cobra" in it!

BARONESS.

I love making out with my nasty-a.s.s brother! Because I'm disgusting as h.e.l.l!!

SERPENTOR.

How do we kiss again?

BARONESS.

My G.o.dd.a.m.n mouth won't open.

SERPENTOR.

Neither will mine.

BARONESS.

The h.e.l.l we supposed a do now.

INT. DEATH STAR - NIGHT DARTH VADER.

We sure do love leukemia! Don't believe me yet? Why don't you ask this spinning tarantula paperweight?

INT. GREG'S DESK - DAY The tarantula paperweight is a dead tarantula encased in gla.s.s. The magic of stop-motion animation is causing it to spin around in a circle.

SPINNING TARANTULA PAPERWEIGHT.

with a German accent for some reason Nothing makes me happier than leukemia.

Christ.

So this was Plan D. Maybe it would have been good. I don't know. I doubt it. What I do know is, it took forever to do, and a few days before Thanksgiving break, Rachel and Denise decided that they were done with chemotherapy, and being in the hospital, and getting treatment. They were just going to let things run their course, they decided.

At that point I didn't really know what to do.

So Rachel moved back to her room. Things were different, obviously. Actually, she was in a pretty good mood those first few days. The first day she came back was a Friday. It was late November but not cold yet.

"They've stopped shooting me up with chemicals," she explained.

"So that's over?"

"They just didn't seem to be doing me any good."

We silently contemplated this morbid utterance. For some reason, I said, "Certainly not in the hair department." I was trying to make things less depressing, which of course had the effect of making things more depressing. But Rachel actually laughed. It was sort of a different kind of laugh, like she had to reengineer the shape of her mouth during laughter, because the old way was too painful. I did a surprisingly good job of not thinking about this.

Pretty soon I was just talking a lot and I wasn't trying too hard to make her laugh and it felt a lot like before she went to the hospital and got all depressed. We were just sprawled out in her kind of dark poster-and-pillow-intensive room and I was going on at insane length about my life and she was just listening and absorbing it all and it felt like we were back on normal terms with each other. It was possible to forget that she had decided to die.

By the way, when someone stops cancer treatment and you point out that this is a decision to die, everyone freaks out at you. Mom, for example. I don't even want to get into it.

But yeah.

"So Gretchen is just acting nuts."

"Oh yeah?"

"Oh man. Girls at that age are just impossible. There's just a lot of shrieking and stomping around. Some of it doesn't even make any sense. Were you like that? At like age fourteen?"

"I fought with my mom sometimes."

"Gretchen even gets p.i.s.sed off at Cat Stevens. She'll be petting him and then he'll freak out and bite her, which he's been doing for his entire life, and then suddenly she's like, Oh my G.o.d, I f.u.c.king hate stupid Cat Stevens. She says he looks like a big garden slug. Which he does, obviously, but that's sort of what's so great about him."

"That he looks like a slug?"