book of mormon one shots

For The Love Of Poptarts

His sister was a dancer. 

Natalie loved junk food more than she loved most people- other than her little brother Chris. They would sit on the couch, watching bad reality shows about aspiring dancers, pageant moms, toddlers training for the stage. They would pass snacks back and forth, chips that coated their fingers with salty cheese dust, sugary sodas that tasted like pure syrup and made their noses fizz from carbonation, cookies fresh from the oven that melted gooey chocolate trails down their fingers. 

Natalie would rub the dust and chocolate from the corners of Chris's mouth, turn off the TV, head downstairs to the basement-turned-studio. She would stretch at the barre, little Chris mimicking her movements. He would copy her leaps and jetes as she glided across the floor as if weightless, flying. 

She would laugh and slide a tutu over his head, tying a knot in the back so it wouldn't fall down his narrow hips. Natalie would patiently show him every move, every twist of the leg, every flourish of the arm. She was his idol, he her muse.

But she got cancer.

It started out simply enough. Natalie would come home more tired than usual from practice, blame it on having too much stress from school and dance. She would trip and stumble when she danced, forgetting the steps in the middle. She barely touched any food, let alone her junk food pig outs with Chris. She would fall asleep in the middle of their shows, and wake up groggy and confused.

She stopped spending hours in the studio outside of the practice times. She would forget that Chris was waiting for her downstairs, leaving him alone in the scary basement. She started missing practices, the first time in years. One day she started driving home from school and couldn't remember where she was.

The doctor said she still had two months more.

They took Natalie to the doctor, and the news wasn't good. She had terminal brain cancer, there wasn't much time left. Chris didn't know who cried more, him or Natalie, when they told her she would never dance again. No more practice with her best friends. No more pushing for hours to learn five seconds worth of choreography. 

No more stretching at the barre with Chris. No more practice with her little brother. No one for Chris to look up to. No more weekends on the couch watching their shows. No more Natalie. 

He thought she had time.

They tried to use every moment that they could. Chris nestled next to Natalie in the stiff hospital bed, avoiding the tubes that kept her breathing. They watched more bad reality shows about up and coming singers, couples looking for houses, chefs cooking with their hands tied. Hours and hours of dramatic cuts and music, anything and everything, Chris clinging to the last moments he had with his sister. The only things they didn't watch were the dance shows. It was too painful for Natalie.

Chris saved up his allowance and bought Natalie magazines for when he visited on the weekends. They would pour through every last word of each article, the ones about fashion, about music, about sports. Chris always went through beforehand and glued together the pages that mentioned dance. 

So he got in line.

She would ask him about his day, talk to him about school, the boys he played with at recess. He would ask her about the people on her floor of the hospital, the other teen cancer patients, if her friends had come by to visit. They never had. They would talk until she fell asleep and then Chris would do his homework quietly, just wanting to be in her presence. 

They would talk about what she wanted to do after the hospital, like she was going to get better if they just pretended. They talked about prom, college, big picture items. They talked about smaller things like the albums she wanted to buy, the museum she wanted to visit. She talked about the newest craze in technology: the iPhone. 

For the new iPhone at the Apple Store.

Chris did extra chores for weeks, pet sitting for neighbors, always scanning the ground for spare change. Every little cent added up. His parents slipped bills into his piggy bank when he wasn't looking. He saved up birthday money, cashed in gift cards, dug through drawers to find dollar bills tucked away. The day came where he finally had enough.

He convinced his mom to drop him off at the mall before they went to see Natalie one weekend. The phone was already bought and wrapped, but he needed one more thing, one more finishing touch. In the years to come, he would wonder whether that one thing was worth it, worth not being there for his sister.

She lay there dying with his father and mother.

It took him longer than expected to find it. He paid with it with the last few crumpled dollars he had saved, the lady behind the checkout counter moving impossibly slow. He ran down the sidewalk, down the three blocks to the hospital. The light wouldn't change. He stood there shaking in the cold air, waiting waiting waiting for the light to change. 

The doors of the hospital were blocked by a crowd of people moving in and out. It was too hard for little Chris to fight his way through. The elevator broke down, and he ran up eight flights of stairs to deliver the present. He always looked back and wondered if he would have made it, if any of those things had been different.

Her very last words were 'where is my brother?'

Chris burst into the room, finding it nearly empty. Empty of people, empty of the beeping from the machines. Empty of life.

"Natalie?" He asked. His mother shook her head. 

His hands let go of the object tightly clenched in them, the poptart shaped phone case falling to the floor.

Every year he goes to her grave with a box of poptarts, Natalie's favorite snack. He lays them on the ground, leaning against the grave that bears his sisters name. And he remembers. He remembers the crinkly wrapping that he could always hear emanating from some corner of the house. He remembers the blue boxes on her night stand in the hospital. And most of all, he remembers Natalie. Remembers her laugh, the way she would fly across the stage, the way she looked at him like he was the world. 

Poptarts had never understood his sisters fascination with the little tarts. He found the cake too chalky and dry, the frosting too sweet, and the filling too little. But she loved them. There were boxes of poptarts stashed everywhere around their house, in her studio, in between the couch cushions, in random cabinets. 

He never understood, but he never let the poptarts go. They always had a place on his shelf, all different kinds, like Natalie would have wanted. 

It wasn't the poptarts that Chris loved so much, it was his sister.

A/N:

Well I keep promising not to write sad/angsty stuff, but here we are.

I went into my draft of this book to jot down an idea for a fluffy mcpriceley fic and I found the idea for this fic written on the first chapter. Don't remember writing the idea down, but I liked it so I wrote this.

Hope you enjoy!