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Girls Do Not Have Cooties Feat. Other Debunked Childhood Myths

  Christine's legs swung back and forth, which at the moment was kind of funny, considering the reason for that is because of how short she is, but the whole situation was, unfortunately, a bit more morbid than that.

Unlike Christine, my feet touched the white hospital floors. Annoyingly white hospital floors. The kind of white that strains and your eyes and requires you to squint everywhere you look. Christine stayed eerily quiet during the whole ordeal, staring down at her twiddling thumbs, her leg bouncing up and down repeatedly.

It felt like I've been here for hours, but in reality, we were maybe there for thirty minutes at most. Hospitals always freaked me out. They smelt like Listerine and there was this constant aura of death that seemed to hang over everyone's heads.

According to Jeremy, the whole check-up would take up to an hour. He insisted that we stayed home, but Christine practically manhandled her way in, and I'd seem like a bad friend if I didn't tag along.

Christine was astonishingly cool. Like amazingly cool. She bought me some snacks from the hospital vending machine and I am forever in her debt.

The hospital ended up not being as icky as I remembered it being when I was six after that asthma attack that was caused by my six-year-old dumbass self trying to spray paint sunglasses, but it wasn't a fun time either.

Christine and I had tried to have a decent conversation at first, but our voices got drowned out by all the nurses yelling at each other and all the people crying. Kinda sucked.

After an endlessly painful hour passed, Jeremy came out with an unreadable expression on his face.

Christine's constant fidgeting didn't seem to stop, as she stood up and walked over to him and whispered something I couldn't hear over all the racket. I saw him nod though. That nod could be a good or bad thing depending on whether or not the question is: "Are you busy dying right now?" or if the question is "Is your cancer miraculously cured?" God knows.

Usually, I'm the one to initiate hugs, since Jeremy is just a big bag of insecurities, but the moment he saw me, he pulled me in, which in a way was very comforting, but in another way it was nerve-wracking, considering that all those movies I watched when I was eight showcased a lot of dramatic goodbyes through the art of hugs.

When Jeremy pulled away, he had tears in his eyes, and that was what solidified it for me: "Yeah, he definitely just heard he has like eight days left to live or something," which put me in such a state of whiplash that I almost backhanded Jeremy into the fucking sun.

"My treatment starts next month," is what Jeremy said instead, and in no way was that a bad thing. It was such a good thing in fact, that my mind refused to soak it in for a solid half a minute.

"Wait... wait... so this is all... this is official now? You're getting treatment?"

Jeremy lets out a shaky breath and nods rapidly.

"Wow... wow. That's... Holy shit."

After I said fuck, shit, crikey, and other such expletives for a solid four minutes as Jeremy mindlessly rambled on about what the doctor told him, all three of us had decided that we'd have a celebratory 7-Eleven meal, which Christine offered to pay for.

I would pay for it too, but the only thing I could find in my pockets was a banana peel and an old Def Leppard CD, so I wasn't doing too hot financially. Luckily, as I said, Christine is a fucking saint.

"I Wanna Know What Love Is by Foreigner is the only good song ever made in the world ever. Anything that came before or after it is an embarrassment to not only the music industry but society as a whole. Anyways, I'd like the Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries Slurpee, thanks," I said to the 7-Eleven waitress.