Free Single Player: Humor, Love, Breast Cancer and a Gaming Girl... by Jamie Nicole

his large frame and am about to start Heimliching him to within an inch of his under-oxygenated life when he starts laughing. You heard me… LAUGHING!  .
    “WHAT?” I yell at him while simultaneously smacking him really, really, really hard, especially for someone so petite. I am now trying to hurt him. A minute ago, I couldn’t stand the thought of him dead. Now I want to personally kill him. 
    “NOT FUNNY!” I shout, then I push him once more for good measure and harrumph over to the kitchen counter where the pizza box is.  Master, the traitor that he is, sits at Ash’s feet and looks up at him with a face showing nothing but adoration mixed with the extreme gratefulness he feels for having him home. Home my butt Master, show some damn loyalty.
    “Are you done having your hissy fit yet little girl?”  Now he’s walking towards me with his arms held up in surrender, a look of imaginary fear etched across his gorgeous face. No, ugly. Ugly face is what I meant. Then he does what he’s always done after we’ve had any kind of fight or disagreement. He puts his big hands on either side of my cheeks, adding just the right amount of pressure to let me know he’s not backing down, stares into my big blue eyes with his beautiful golden ones and says, “Forgive me.” He doesn’t ask. Not Ever.  He just tells me.  You forgive me, reminding me of The Pact that we made when we were kids. 
     
    ***
     
    Ashton’s been in a real bad mood today and my just-turned-eight-year-old self doesn’t know what I can do to make him feel better. I suggest all of our favorite go-to activities, especially the ones I know he likes best. First, we ride bikes even though I don’t really like that as much as he does. Then I suggest we play Guitar Hero, he loves Guitar Hero because I suck and he kicks my butt every time, but today that doesn’t even make him feel any better. I got it, we can play doctor. He thinks it’s hysterical when I look into his eyes using my pretend eye scope, while wearing my practiced and very serious doctors expression and say silly stuff like, “Wow, look at that? You have poop for brains.  That explains so much.” 
    He agrees to my game and as I begin to write out a prescription on my Hello Kitty notepad for the treatment of poo for brains he jumps from the exam table(my bed) and runs over to my desk where he threatens to read my diary if I don’t change the diagnosis. 
    Why I care if he sees inside my private thoughts is beyond me.  The only things he’d read are the stories about how I wish I had a mom like all of the other kids at school or that my best friend Ashton is the greatest person I know (that would be bad though because his head is way too big for that kind of compliment) and also, how my brother is a poopoo head. Clearly I like potty humor. There are a lot of poo references in my innermost, private thoughts.
    Anyway, today is the day that I learn something bad about Ashton. Plastic stethoscope in hand I lift up his shirt in order to check out his heart and I see something really scary. There on his torso is a big, ugly bruise about the size of a football that circles around from the front of his ribcage to the middle of his small, thin back. He quickly pulls his Power Rangers t-shirt down but it’s too late I already saw the damage done to his small body. He stares at me with tears in his eyes and all I know is that I do not want my friend to cry. I know it would embarrass him for me to see him do that. He always says crying is for sissies and he is decidedly not a sissy. He’s a total tough guy according to everyone in our second grade class, so I look down at the floor, respecting his vulnerable state, and I wait. 
    Then, after a minute, I look up to see him staring into my big, glassy, blue eyes. He’s on the bed while I stand wearing my fake lab coat in front of him. Then I do it. I put my little hands on his soft, sad face and say very seriously, “forgive me.” I