This Sounds Like a "The Onion" Article, But It's Not...

(photo of the psycho)

Did the casseroles, smoothies and turtlenecks really keep her going? Really??

Dear Suzy Bass, You are an effing psycho bitch!

I have highlighted my favorite quotes.

This popular teacher told students and friends she was going to die. What no one knew: She'd feigned chemo nausea, shaved her own head and was never actually sick at all.

Courtesy of Glamour

Suzy Bass had less than a year to live. The Knoxville, Tennessee, high school math teacher was battling stage IV breast cancer, and it had spread to her shoulder and heel. Chemotherapy no longer worked; an experimental bone marrow therapy she'd tried as a last resort appeared futile. Her students and colleagues were devastated. Bass, then 41, was a popular newcomer to the picturesque private Webb School near the Smoky Mountains that fall of 2007. "Ms. Bass was the cool teacher," says Michaelan Moore, 18, who was a junior in Bass's Algebra II class. "Everyone just loved her immediately. We could tell her anything." Because Bass had recently moved to Knoxville and was single, two Webb staffers--Julieanne Pope, 43, and Terri Ward, 51--became her part-time caregivers. "I left my cell phone on my nightstand every night in case she needed anything," says Ward, the dean of faculty. "On bad days I'd tell her, 'We are going to attack this. We are going to fight.'" When Bass was too sick to teach, they'd cover her classes. And they kept a steady stream of casseroles and smoothies going to her condo. "We'd visit and she'd be shaking, pale and so sick," says Pope, Webb's technology coordinator. At school Bass would cover her head--bald from chemotherapy--with a knit cap, and limp from the tumor in her foot. In October Webb students and faculty put together a team for Komen Knoxville Race for the Cure to benefit the local breast cancer charity affiliate. "Suzy's Crew for the Cure," they called it. But when race day came, Bass was too weak to even walk. "She just met us at the finish line so she could cross it," says Pope. As Bass's condition worsened, she sent an e-mail to Pope thanking her for her support and friendship, and in an attached document, she outlined her last wishes. She asked that she be cremated, her ashes scattered in the Cayman Islands, with no tears: "I want whoever is sprinkling to be enjoying friends, family and loved ones, laughing and just having fun," she said. Inspired by Bass's brave battle, Webb's students dedicated their prom fund-raiser to her, raising money for Komen for the Cure by selling T-shirts bearing the charity's logo. The students planned to present a check to the director of Komen's Knoxville branch--with Bass by their side--during prom, and their efforts were covered by the local newspaper. A week before the big dance, though, the school received a series of troubling phone calls. The callers were intimately familiar with Bass's devastating saga. But they weren't upset about her deadly illness--they were furious.Bass, they said, was making the whole thing up. Staffers from a school in Dallas, Georgia--where Bass once taught--had contacted him to expose what they claimed was Bass's latest deception. An employee googled her former colleague to see what had become of her; she found the Knoxville News Sentinel article about the prom fund-raiser. Bass, the callers warned Hutchinson, had pretended to be a cancer patient during her tenure at their school--and at yet another one in Alabama. The school president--who couldn't imagine anyone, let alone one of his most beloved teachers, doing what these strangers alleged--called Bass to his office. "I told her, 'Find me a physician who's treating you for cancer, and I'll make this go away,' " Hutchinson says. After four days of stalling, Bass arranged for her doctor to call the school. But as the caller spoke with Rob Costante, an assistant head of Webb, it was clear that "he was a complete sham," says Costante. Heartsick, Hutchinson went to look for Bass--but she was already gone. Later that afternoon, Hutchinson got Bass on the phone and fired her.As news of Bass's betrayal hit the hallways, emotions ranged from shock and rage to confusion and embarrassment. "I couldn't help but think about the 'end of chemo' cake I'd baked her with a pink frosting ribbon," remembers Moore. "That made me feel a little silly." The entire Webb community had opened their hearts--and wallets--for Bass. Her freshman classes had even bought a refrigerator for her classroom where she kept Gatorade (hydration is key during chemotherapy). "I cried, I was mad, I had every emotion you could feel," Pope says. When she broke the news to her daughter, Macy, the 13-year-old threw a breast cancer awareness band Bass had given her on the floor. "I can't even look at this," she said through tears. Teacher Amanda Rowcliffe, 47, thought of the night when Bass had called her, sobbing. "She said she'd just had her chemo port put in and was distraught about going to school with the ugly bandage showing," Rowcliffe recalls. So she went out, bought and delivered a turtleneck to Bass's home. "I felt so betrayed," she says.A week after getting exposed, Bass pulled down her Facebook account (this bitch waited a whole WEEK???) , changed her phone number and disappeared. In her wake, she left a community of angry, bewildered people with many unanswered questions: How did she do it? How could we not have known? And the biggest, most puzzling one of all: Why?