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“Chasing Life” recap (2.11): To sleep, perchance to dream

Previously on Chasing Life, Leo started a camp for children before he died, April and Natalie found their dad’s true crime novel but Uncle George destroyed it, and George came clean about sort of kind of assisting in his brother’s suicide.

Enough time for a rich girl to fix her mom’s window has passed since the snowstorm, and April and Sara are still pretty bummed about the Big Reveal(s) from last episode. Brenna is fine though, and she’s beebopping around like nothing’s wrong.

She is, however, a little worried about Natalie, as no one has seen or heard from her since she stormed out of the confessional. Unlike her sister and mother, though, Brenna’s not worried that Natalie will spill George’s secrets to the wrong people.

Beth comes over to borrow April’s necklace, and since she was passed out drunk and didn’t see any of the Carver Family dirty laundry, they play dumb as to why her roommate up and left without so much as a rent check.

Beth notices the window is fixed but April says Dom wasn’t so lucky. His brand new house got the brunt of the storm and is now in ruins.

Ruthie, one of Leo’s coworkers, comes to visit while April is waving around her clinical trial steroid syringe, no longer feeling the need to hide in the bathroom to give herself her shots. Ruthie tells April Leo’s camp is about to open and she asks if April wants to come cut the ribbon. April knows it will be hard, but she’s in.

April stops by Sara’s group therapy, and Sara watches a wistful April out of the corner of one eye while listening to a guy talk about how weird it is when someone asks, “How are you?” and he wants to say, “Well my mom died right before my cancer went into remission but it could come back at any moment and the thought is a cement block looming over my head,” but instead he just says, “Fine.” April points out they all do it, because no one wants to know the truth, no one really wants to know the pain they’re feeling. This defeatist attitude breaks Sara’s damn heart.

At school, Finn fills Brenna in on Hamlet, because she was too busy living a Shakespearean drama of her own. When he starts to explain it’s about a man whose uncle kills his brother and gets with his wife, Brenna has heard quite enough and breaks her pencil trying not to freak out. When she gets up to sharpen it, she is bombarded by Happy McVision Board, who asks her to buy a raffle ticket. She’s trying to collect enough money to get Finn a blade-leg so he can get-wait for it-“back on track.”

Finn doesn’t love the pity party, and Brenna doesn’t love that McVisionBoard is doing this for the attention and the college apps and she kind of hates it.

Later, back at home, they touch base on Natalie, but the only clue they have is that she quit her job via email. Brenna still isn’t worried about her, but Sara knows that Natalie holds the fate of their whole family in her hands. Brenna also forgives George for what he did, and will tell him so when she lives with him, but Sara had thrown that plan out the broken window into the snowstorm.

Brenna looks at Sara with shock and disgust and says that she shouldn’t be surprised because every time something goes wrong, she has to change schools or cancel her summer plans.

Brenna storms off and Sara is worried but April says she understands why Brenna and their dad pushed people away when they were in the midst of their pain. Sara doesn’t want her daughters to shut her out like her husband did but April says her fear and pain are her own and not even her therapist mother can help her now.

April goes to visit Beth and hears her screaming. Luckily she’s not getting murdered; Beth’s boss had a line of clothes in a fashion show and it got destroyed by the critics-all except the one dress Beth was allowed to design.

Beth gets an email from her boss requesting a meeting and she’s worried she’s about to get fired for stealing the spotlight but Pharkas and April think she’s getting called up to the big leagues and they give her unsolicited advice about how to handle the meeting.

April leaves Beth’s for her own meeting with a literary agent because she’s been writing more lately. Including a 22 page book proposal. The agent loves her writing and her story, but asks her to turn the reporter voice down a little and get more personal. April takes these notes a little hard and looks around the office, realizing the man she’s talking to isn’t in any of the photos on the desk. The dude admits that he’s technically just his assistant and that his boss (named Valerie, thank you very much) let him use her office because if he gets a good author to sign on, he’ll get promoted. April gets mad she was duped and storms out. It’s hard to take criticism on something you feel like you poured your heart into.

April goes to hang out with Dom (disapprove) and tells him about Leo’s camp opening, and he offers to come with her and write about it for the newspaper. After she leaves, Danny gives him a hard time about it, because it’s freaking weird that he’s moving in so hard and fast on someone whose husband LITERALLY JUST DIED.

At Camp Hendrie, Ruthie gives April a quick tour. Everything was just like Leo dreamed it, including a replica of the Global Guts Aggro Crag. Also, I don’t remember-is this a camp for children diagnosed with a disease? I volunteered at a camp like that one summer, Camp Sunshine in Maine, and they truly are magical. The positive energy teeming about is palpable. Anyway, April addresses the crowd and says how glad she is that Leo’s dream came true and ends up stammering and calling him a “good guy”- the one thing she hated most of all right after he died.

April kicks herself afterwards for her choice of words, but she looked out at all these smiling faces and knew they didn’t want to know the truth of her pain. She didn’t want to spread her pain around like a disease. Dom says he wants to know her pain but she needs to be alone and also TOO SOON, DOMINIC.

At Casa Carver, Brenna is editing a video and ignoring her mother’s plea for attention.

Sara tries to show her other summer film programs but Brenna is determined to stick to her own plan. Sara says it’s okay to be mad at her dad for lying, but she’s not. She’s mad at Sara for missing the signs of ALS, for but not paying more attention. Sara is fine with taking the brunt of Brenna’s anger, but makes it clear that she would have supported her husband through his illness, but Thomas didn’t give her that chance.

At Camp Hendrie, while on her solo head-clearing walk, April finds a kid trying to push a row boat into the lake on his own. She helps him get the boat in the water and even offers to row for him. They talk about Leo, and April finds herself opening up to this precocious kid. She admits to trying to focus on the bad things about Leo to make missing him hurt less, but then she finds herself even missing his quirks. She feels so alone, but the kid reminds her that he’s still here. She’s not alone. And it’s exactly what April needed to hear.

Beth goes to her meeting with her boss where she offers her a job and jerks her around a bit before giving Beth a new contract to look over and sign. When Beth takes it back to Pharkas, though, he sees a few red flags and suggests some changes, and Beth is so happy that he cares that she lets him make them.

April leaves her new rowing buddy and finds Dom, saying that she realizes now that keeping secrets doesn’t help anyone. Leo believed in living your life out loud, so she’s going to try to do that, too. Speaking of which, she tells Dom to give it a go by performing in front of the camp. He sings what could either be a bff song or a love song depending on how much you want to like Dom and his guitar.

At school, Brenna overhears McVisionBoard chirping about the raffle again and decides she’s had enough.

Brenna tries to shove her pity down her throat but McVisionBoard says she’s known Finn for years and she genuinely cares about him; she’s not doing this to get the attention of colleges, she’s doing it to get Finn’s attention. Brenna is surprised by this news, and McVisionBoard asks Brenna if she’s jealous. Then McVisionBoad scoffs; she says, and I quote, “It makes sense you’d be into him. You’re probably into me, too. You’re like bi or something, right?” And then Brenna does what most of us have wanted to do to a biphobe at one point or another: She bookslaps her. Smacks her right upside the head with Hamlet. It was freaking brilliant. Especially since Shakespeare himself would have had the same reaction to biphobia, I imagine.

Unfortunately, Public School did not think it was brilliant, and she got hella suspended.

Beth’s boss storms into her apartment and argues about the changes. They start to negotiate, but soon Beth realizes that Jacqueline doesn’t appreciate her worth, and Beth is young enough that she can take risks with her career. She knows she’s talented, and she’s not going to sit back and let someone else take credit for her work. Pharkas is proud of her for taking a stand. I kind of wish she had done it without him there, but it’s nice she had a cheerleader to keep her brave.

April goes back to the non-agent with her book edits; she added more of her feelings to the chapters and the non-agent loves the changes. He asks for two more chapters by Monday so he can stop using my office and get one of his own.

April goes home, in a great mood, and finds her baby sister sulking in bed. She tries to cheer her up by making a bad Shakespeare joke (to beat or not to beat) but Brenna is not amused.

April tries to get Brenna to talk about what’s really going on, saying that she’ll really just listen, and Sara sneaks in to also listen-SERIOUSLY JUST LISTEN. Brenna sits up and tells them that at the end, she felt like it was just her and her dad. Sara and Thomas were fighting, April was off at college, but the two of them spent so much time just the two of them. Brenna was right by his side all that time-why didn’t he tell her he was sick?

And you guys this is borderline Now & Then “he’s all I have left and he lied” status emotional gut-punch for me. April tries to explain that he wanted to keep his suffering to himself; he wasn’t keeping it a secret to be cruel, he thought he was doing the right thing for the ones he loved. It’s the same with his suicide; when you’re in that dark place, you can’t see through the fog enough to realize how your actions would affect other people. All he could see was the fog, and he felt like he was forcing his family members into his fog; he thought the best thing to do to get rid of the fog was to end his life. He didn’t know that his family didn’t even notice the fog; that if they did, they would have helped him get through the fog, all of them together. They would have preferred him plus the fog than no him at all. But when you’re in the middle of it, when you don’t try to reach out through it, it’s really difficult to see on your own.

Brenna looks at her sister and mother with her big sad eyes and says that everything she loves gets taken away from her. The summer film program, Charton, Greer-and it all started with her father. She just wants something stable, something that will always be hers. Sara and April say that’s what they’re for; not matter what, they have each other, and they’ll learn from Thomas’s mistakes and always tell the truth.

In a scene that made me go from being teary-eyed to a rage blackout, Dom and Danny talk about his ruined house in a loaded metaphor about April and even soulless Danny sees through it and knows Dom is in love with April and knows that’s VERY MESSED UP.

Brenna goes over to Finn’s to get her homework and asks how McVisionBoard is. Turns out she’s just fine because the fight worked as backdoor guerilla marketing and she earned enough money to get Finn his running leg. Brenna apologizes for getting territorial and they giggle together until Brenna finally can’t stand it and kisses Finn right over his mask.

I won’t even lie to you-it’s freaking adorable. They’re just so smiley and giggly and happy and cute.

At Beth’s apartment, the phone rings and finally it’s Natalie. April takes the phone and Natalie explains that she’s fine and not being interviewed by Katie Couric or anything. April tells her sister that she cares about her, and Natalie says she just needs a break so she’ll be in Florida for a while. She promises she’ll be back if and when April needs her marrow.

Since Natalie is gone, Beth needs a roommate, and April happens to need a place to live. The Best Friend Dream Home is finally a reality.

After Natalie hangs up the phone, her mother joins her on the beach. Natalie mentions her dad’s manuscript, and her mother mentions having a copy-and implies she might have even more of the story.

What did you think of “First Person?”

Here are some of our favorite #ChasingLesbians tweets from this week:

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