Death. 'Tis inevitable. I just sort of wished my best friend, Abby, would have waited longer to push daisies via terminal Stage IV lung cancer at the crisp fine age of seventeen, maybe instead made the choice to go into remission. One might say, Juno, people don't choose to get cancer. Or Juno, people can't choose to go into remission. To that I would say, open up your chi or something and you probably can, try some essential oils, or like, drink kale smoothies. Eat a papaya. Are papaya's cancelled yet? Is bread allowed again? You want to know what should not be allowed? The pure audacity of dead people leaving things when they die, specifically leaving me a bucket list, but the bucket list isn't called a bucket list, it is called The Final To-Do List, which is sort of kind of sounds really menacing.
The Final To-Do list was given to me about two weeks ago, a week before Abby hit the snooze button for eternity, yesterday was her funeral which was really bland even though my best friend was anything but. Specific instructions were given to me as she leaned in real close and told me in a weak yet stern voice, the look of If you disobey me or forget these words, I will sub-tweet about you tattooed on her face. I wasn't allowed to open it until after her celebration of life — again, really bland celebration — and that statement would have made me afraid if it had been made months ago, but I had already come to accept that she would probably die, I was still going to visit and play Connect 4 and Uno to my heart's content. I didn't have time to open it immediately after the very lame death party as my helicopter mother had scheduled crying time, and I, Juno Melanie Drewbrook, would be damned if I didn't use every minute of it. And then some.
You might be thinking, besides of all the possible things that could possibly be on that list, what in the shit were my parent's smoking when they picked my name? Well, they weren't smoking, they are just white. I am their adopted miracle, prodigal daughter appearth, the Chosen One. That's what probably drew me and Abby together to be Best Friends Forever, minus the Forever. I was adopted, Japanese, and in the smallest town in the middle of nowhere, and while I did not have in common, lung cancer, we both had things going on that made us gossip for the red wine drinking book club Moms. I would be called exotic by old guys, she would have the football team kick her oxygen tank like it was a football.
I should probably discuss the list now, the list which included everything Abby wanted to do, but unfortunately could not go through from a hospital bed, a list that had been left to me because I could go through with number 13, Visit the biggest ball of twine. I was going to do every single thing on the list if it was the last thing I did. Which is why I had packed an unreal amount of clothes and my life savings, now all that was left was to steal Mom's mini van.
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The Final To-Do List
HumorJuno Drewbrook unknowingly receives the bucket list of her deceased friend, Abby Ferris. There were so many things that could have excused Juno with going through with anything on the list, but they were outweighed in her mind by the fact that not g...
