Dead Stars Read Free

it was Year IV
& counting
Telma could get a perfume, a
fragrance
, maybe call it
hero™
or
warriorgrrl™
, Telma wanted someone savvy to pull out all the stops, wanted to do the Ellen Show victory dance with Flotus or Emma Stone or Greyson Chance, steal Greyson away from Jackie Evancho, she wanted more hits than
Charlie Bit My Finger
, wanted to rock together with Greyson or whoever, maybe Rihanna & Katy & Avril, to the SU2C (
Stand Up To C
) Manifesto to music . . .
    Â 
    This is where the end of cancer begins!
    Â 
    When together we become a force unmistakable
    A movement undeniable
    A light that cannot dim!
    When we take our wild impossible dreams
    Â 
    And make them possible,
    Make them true . . .
    when together we rise as one.
    When we stand up -
    when we Stand Up To Cancer . . .
    Â 
    â€”—it was
her
time,
hersurvivor
time, her mom loved watching Laura Linney have C on TV, kancer was in the
air
, kancer was hot, Telma wanted someone to orchestrate the swag, the kancerswag, copyrighted back-to-school backpacks, journals and calendars just like Taylor Swift, she wanted to go kancerdashian, entrepreneured greeting cards and keychains with hands in the shape ofs logos, t-shirts, headbands & lunchboxes, maybe her own
zero to hero
clothing line, bandaids & babypowder & pajamas & K(ancer)-Mart pajama jeans, maybe even design the bottles the medicine comes in——the wheels were turning . . .
    . . . everything old is new again
————
    She got a big idea and maybe the genesis of the big idea had something to do with Lea Michele and (an unannounced) Barbra Streisand dueting on “Children Will Listen” at the NMJC! Ball (
No More Juvenile Carcinoma!
) at the Beverly Hilton—she was supposed to be there but that was the weekend she went with her mom to the White House——maybe it had something to do with Miley Cyrus, Drake, Jeff Bridges (Gwen
loved
Jeff Bridges), Chris Colfer (Telma
loved
Chris Colfer) and Rihanna taking the stage at that very same event . . . maybe it had something to do with (an unannounced) Steve Perry joining all the above ½way thru “Don’t Stop Believin’”——or maybe it had something to do with the upstart Canuck’s malicious personal best . . . because Telma wasn’t interested in the silver: she wanted Olympic gold.
    Whatever
it had something to do with, she already had that tried & true familiar tingly feeling in her tummy, same as when Christina Applegate flew her & two other hersurvivors (dubbed “The Pink Bucket Brigade”) to Louisville to lipsynch dance a raucous, hypomanic “Single Ladies” at KFC’s lavish corporate HQ “Buckets For the Cure” Breast Cancer Awareness Brunch.
    So her idea was to be on
Glee
.
    Not as a guest, and not as a
Glee Project
loser doing a 4-part consolation arc. No way!
    To be on
Glee
—
permanent cast member
.
    They already had cripples and fags and fat sexless mountainous black monsters & whatever. They needed a spunky funny pretty girl being stalked by an unseen predator, the one that would come for us all, it’d be like Lea or Heather or Matthew suddenly got a fatal disease. It would be
hot
and awesome, & it would
rock
.
    With newly minted brainstormy resolve, the fear receded—that wild, vicious little-girl-fearing-littler-girl poison fear—not rescinded but softly retreated, soaking her to the bone in
Ellen
ish Hope, & the ajar world opened wide like an awesome fragrant flower blooming in the night.

EXPLICIT
    [Reeyonna]
    Everyone’s a
*
    (*and deserves the right to twinkle)
    Reeyonna’s
    mother insisted she go with her to the Central Library for an
event
. She rolled her eyes and took more pills.
    â€œYou’re going to go, Jerilynn, and you’re going to like it. And
no
texting
. For one whole hour.”
    She used to call herself Jeri but it’d been Reeyonna for a while now. Mom was