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“Chasing Life” recap (1.10): Star-crossed

Previously on Chasing Life, Brenna chose Greer over Kieran because Greer helped her steal away to meet her secret sister and Kieran made out with her terrible friend Ford in her bedroom, and April chose Dom over Leo even though Dom was MIA because Leo was refusing to get a potentially life-saving surgery.

The summer finale begins with April, Brenna, and Beth lying on the grass, looking up at the sky. April is trying to enjoy this, the last day she’ll feel the sun on her face for a full month. Brenna and Beth make jokes and make April smile that easy smile, but Sara interrupts to tell her that it’s time to go inside. April says goodbye to the sun, and her sister and her best friend lead her inside.

Through a fairly traumatic-looking process of needles and tubes, April begins chemo. Brenna takes her for a walk around the halls, to get the lay of the land, and they run into a nurse who is a little cold and not very receptive to Brenna’s sarcasm. When they get back to April’s room, everyone is setting up the paper flowers and iPads and other things to make it feel like home. An old man shuffles in and warns her that Candy Crush will give her migraines, but grandma sasses him right out of there.

April’s doctor comes in to help April get settled, and Uncle George tries to out-doctor her, but she tells him to cut the Uncle Doctor gig and just stick to the Uncle gig for now.

At school, Brenna finds Ford talking to Lou from The Fosters. Brenna asks to talk to her for a minute, but Ford snaps at her and tells her to go hang out with her shallow rich bitch girlfriend. Brenna says that Greer isn’t shallow, and Ford makes a joke about Eco club, and Brenna has that moment so many of us have had with old friends, especially from when we were younger. She looks at Ford and she looks at herself and she realizes that they’re not in the same place anymore. Brenna used to want to sit around and complain about everything and judge people, but Greer opened her eyes to the idea that there’s more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done. Brenna’s interested in learning more about the world. Brenna has evolved, and unless Ford can, too, the friendship just won’t work.

Back at the hospital, an awesome nurse comes in to make sure April is ready for bed and warns her about the bed alarms that go off mostly when she gets out of bed, but sometimes just when they feel like it. Sara is sleeping over on the cot in April’s room tonight, and she brought a bedtime story to read to April just in case she had trouble sleeping. It’s really quite sweet and everyone looks cute in pajamas.

When April wakes up, Dom comes to visit and says he shouldn’t have left. As an apology for not being in touch, he gives her a playlist he made her. A playlist that lasts seven days, the length of chemo. April confesses that she knew she was sick before he left, in fact, pretty much the entire time they dated, and Dom is hurt that she didn’t trust him enough to tell him.

Brenna is heading to class when a teacher stops her and tells her that she’s wanted in the principal’s office. When she gets there, Greer is already there, and the principal tells Brenna that she has reason to believe her and Greer skipped out for an adventure of their own during the Eco Club trip. Greer starts in by trying to fill Brenna in on the lies she told, but the principal interrupts her and makes Brenna tell the story herself. It goes pretty well at first… …but Pretty Little Liars they are not, and they had not aligned their phone story. Brenna said their phones were dead but Greer said she left hers in the room. The jig is up and the principal starts to call Sara. Brenna begs her not to and says her family’s having a hard time right now, but the principal thinks she’s still lying. Greer earnestly tells her that Brenna’s not lying, and the principal hears Brenna out about her sister. Brenna just wants the chance to break the news to her mother herself, and the principal gives her 24 hours. I had two different guidance counselors two different times give me that same exact line but both times they called my parents before I was home from school anyway, so I was actually very impressed when the principal kept her word.

Danny goes to visit April in the hospital and she asks him what his deal is; he’s been super weird ever since he found out she was sick. He admits that he doesn’t know how to act around her, but she says that he can continue being his douchey self, because she can use all the normalcy she can get.

After he leaves, Beth comes to visit and they lie in bed, listening to Dom’s playlist. April is feeling guilty, like she cheated on Dom with Leo, but Beth points out that THEY. WERE ON. A BREAK. and that they don’t even know if Dom is sticking around anyway. April gets sick, but not from worrying or guilt; the chemo is starting to kick in.

Brenna’s up next for a sleepover with April, but first she tries to chat with her mom and Uncle George. She’s about to warn Sara about the principal’s call, but before she can, Sara tells Brenna that she’s not a match for April’s bone marrow transplant. This shakes Brenna up and she doesn’t get around to telling her about Florida.

After Brenna leaves, George apologizes for kissing Sara, and she says it’s fine. They joke about how silly it would be if they got together and he became Uncle Doctor Dad in a way that makes it clear that he so wants to be Uncle Doctor Dad.

Brenna is in April’s room wearing pajamas she obviously stole from Aria Montgomery and asks how April is doing. April says she’s as good as she can be and forces Brenna to tell her what’s wrong and stop pussyfooting around her. Brenna admits that she’s in a lot of trouble at school, that she went to meet Natalie, that Natalie is the worst, and that Sara knew about Natalie. But right now the bigger concern is that Sara is going to freak the freak out when she finds out how much trouble Brenna is in.

April offers to step in and tell Sara for Brenna, but Brenna says she can take responsibility for her own actions. She says, “You don’t have to bail me out this time.” It’s a far cry from the Brenna we met earlier in the season, who almost needed to literally bail her out. Neither one of them sleep very well, and April wakes to a note that Brenna went to talk to their mom.

Sara is, understandably, furious. She’s mostly upset that Brenna wandered around in a city she’s never been in, away from the adults who were there to supervise her. There are stories all the time about girls disappearing on class trips. She thinks Brenna just wanted to go party with Greer (who she calls her girlfriend which is so sweet) but Brenna interrupts her mother’s rant to tell her that she met Natalie. Her sister. She went to meet her secret sister because she thought they might need her bone marrow, which now they might. She throws in a sad little “thanks to me” as if somehow not being a match to her sister is her fault and it’s a devastating, though subtle, moment. Sara sees the hurt in Brenna’s eyes and softens a bit, saying she just wishes Brenna had come to her before running off on her own.

At the hospital, April has a hallucination of her dad crying and saying it was hard to see her all cooped up and dying in a tiny sad room. This freaks her out so she detaches herself from her medicine tree and runs away. Leo finds her curled up in a tiny little ball in the chapel, and she begs him to help her escape. He points out that she’s not being held prisoner, that she can leave any time. But he then uses his still-always-unexpected insightful charm to convince her to stay and fight, and carries her back to her worried family.

April tells Leo that she’s afraid he’s going to die while she’s in the hospital, but he says she’s only scared he’ll die because it reminds her that she might die. She says it’s more than that, that she really does care about him, but he tells her that he’s the wrong horse to bet on. Dom watches from a distance, jealousy flaring in his eyes, because he can’t hear that what Leo is saying at that very moment is that April would be better off with Dom.

When she’s back in her room again, Dom comes to see her and says he was going to stay in town, but then he saw her with Leo and isn’t sure it’s worth it. April tries to explain the theory of cancer friends, but all Dom hears is that Leo will always have something that he can’t give her. He breaks up with her for real and for good because he “needs to take care of himself” aka needs to GTFO because he’s apparently the worst. WE WERE ROOTING FOR YOU, DOM. WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU.

Sara and Brenna go to the school to talk to the principal, and run into Greer and her parents in the hallway. Sara cheerily starts to introduce herself, but Greer’s parents are rude and snooty and say that the situation has been handled via a donated field house. Sara is kind of taken aback but asks if there’s anything she can do, and all that Greer’s parents ask is that the girls stop seeing each other. Brenna asks if it’s because she’s a girl, but her parents scoff at her. That’s not even close to the problem; they’re proud of their daughter for finding herself at such a young age. She just thinks Brenna is a bad influence on their daughter, even though Brenna has not made Greer do a single thing against her will. Sara sticks up for Brenna, saying that she’s perfectly intelligent, and maybe she’s made mistakes, but it’s going to make her one hell of an interesting woman one day. Greer’s parents try to make their faces into something they saw someone do once that they think might be called a smile and say that they would like Brenna to stay away from Greer until she’s done making those mistakes. They turn around and storm off, and Greer mouths that she’s sorry and follows sadly. Brenna apologizes to Sara, saying she had one perfect daughter and one-but Sara doesn’t even let her finish that sentence. She has two perfect daughters, dammit. It’s not Brenna’s fault she’s surrounded by horrible people!

April has another hallucination-dream and ends up in a room that looks like her Cancer Support Group room. Jackson is there, joking about having more hair in the afterlife, and she’s sad that this must mean he’s dead. The old man, Gerald, from the carrot stand shows up and says hi, saying she’s doing just fine, and that she’ll be a better person for having survived this. Her dad shows up last, saying he’s going to hold her to that promise she made in the very beginning of all this. She told him he was going to have to wait a while before they were together again, and she meant it.

She wakes up with a new lease on life. She opens the blinds, basks in the sun, smiles at the people. And, when Beth wakes up and says she’s blinding her, she smiles at Beth.

Beth says that April looks like she’s feeling better, and April says she is. She really is. The two set off for a walk around the ward, spirits as high as they can me in a chemo recovery room. While they’re walking, they find out that the old man neighbor is in remission. They also see Leo’s parents, which concerns April a little, and concerns her even more when she realizes she has a voicemail from Leo in which he says he has something really important to tell her. The way I see it, it could be one of two things: Either a heartfelt goodbye because he knows his time is near, or a heartfelt goodbye because he’s elected to have the surgery and he’s afraid he might not make it. Either way, I hope Leo pulls through. He’s grown on me so much over the course of the season and I’ve become rather fond of him.

At school, Brenna sese Ford and gives her a sad, angry, questioning look. Ford gives her one of those middle school shrugs and a face that says, “What? You’re looking at me like almost getting you suspended and sabotaging both of your relationships that weren’t with me is a BAD thing.” that makes you want to slap her. Brenna walks by and hopefully won’t ever look back.

What did you think of “Finding Chemo”? How have you enjoyed the season so far?

That’s all for the 1B of Chasing Life, but there will be a Christmas Special in December, and then 1B will start up again in 2015!

Here is one last batch of #ChasingLesbians tweets until then! Thanks for tweeting along!

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

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