Half Life Read online

  “That’s great! I’m glad you two are spending some time together. I know things have been…” She shrugs a shoulder.

  “Yeah.” I sit next to her and open the salad. “Hopefully, it’ll be fun.”

  * * *

  There’s a thud on the roof of my hiding spot. I slap a hand over my mouth, swallowing a squeal.

  Play Lava, they said. What, the game where you can’t touch the floor? The favorite of rowdy four-year-olds? Sure! Why not?

  This is not that game.

  Take the horror-movie scene I’m in right now. The squeak of shoe soles on the hollow plastic roof of my tiny turreted room. The clatter of swing chains. Muffled laughs drifting through the dark like fog. The echoing “hoot, hoot” of Aran taunting Bode—said roof dweller and current “It”—from across the playground.

  And me.

  Breathing shallowly, silently, through my nose with my mouth clamped shut lest Bode hear me, tag me out first, and make me the next “It.” I will do literally anything not to be “It.”

  The playground’s a maze. One of those wood-and-plastic-composite monstrosities; part cabin/part castle, with half a dozen slides, swings, a climbing wall, monkey bars, bridges, and a labyrinth of raised walkways and elevated rooms like the one I’m in. Floodlights cast erratic patterns of dark and light. A shadow moves across a walkway to my left. Bode shifts on the roof, his weight denting the plastic with a baritone thunk.

  He jumps.

  Off the roof, onto the platform outside my room, sprinting across a wobbly bridge in the direction of the shadow—Finn’s boyfriend, Matt, I think—who flees up a narrow staircase to a tall slide. I scoot across my little space to peer over the half wall in time to see Bode charge up the stairs after him while Matt runs down the slide, then leaps off the end toward a set of swings.

  He makes it. Grabbing the swing’s chains with outstretched hands, foot finding the swing’s seat. A few people cheer. And he keeps moving, from one swing to the next, aiming for the four-person teeter-totter at the end. Bode pauses atop the slide, ready to follow, when Aran starts hooting again.

  “You know I’m the best ‘It’!” he yells. I look out and see him, perched atop a crow’s nest and silhouetted by the white glow of the floodlight at his back.

  Bode climbs up onto the hard plastic awning above the slide, and hollers back, “Is that a challenge?”

  I don’t care that all of this is ridiculous; watching him, I feel my crush bloom in my gut like a flower. Oh my god I just referred to a portion of my anatomy as a flower. It’s the way he stands. Back straight—sue me, I like good posture—and hands in his pockets, the picture of nonchalance despite balancing on a bubble of plastic a solid fifteen feet off the ground. I mean, it’s not a skill, is it? Standing? Or, like, extreme standing. But, still, it’s sexy.

  Aran shouts back, “Of-fucking-course!”

  Bode laughs. “Fine!” He jumps off the slide’s awning and sprints back the way he came. As in, straight toward me.

  I panic.

  I will not, cannot, get tagged out first. I’ll cry. Seriously. Hot, pathetic stress tears. No wonder Cass never invited me before. I can’t handle it. Everyone depending on me, uptight, hyper-responsible, nonathletic me, for the fun part? Absolutely not.

  I look for an out, but he’s already coming. Charging across one walkway, then the next. And I go for the roof. He did it, right?

  I crouch on the half wall, gripping the underside of the pyramid-shaped plastic roof, then stand, warily. Even as Bode sprints toward the bridge.

  Now what? The roof’s slick plastic! And I’m just standing here. Waiting. In full freaking view while—

  Bode runs past.

  He clatters across the planks of the bridge and continues through the little room, straight past my legs, without missing a beat, traversing a sideways rope-ladder-thing between my room and the next walkway, where he pauses, looks back at me.

  And winks.

  I hide for the rest of the game. At least until after Bode chases Aran down, tagging him out first, Cass second, then, while chasing Finn, pauses in my tiny room to tag me out, too. This time without a glance.

  Which, as I wander over to the sidelines to watch the last of the game play out, makes me rethink the reality of a wink that might’ve just been an exaggerated blink. Which makes me second-guess my gut reaction that he’d not-tagged me out of kindness and instead skipped me out of a desire to pick a competent “It” and continue having actual fun.

  Welcome to my head.

  I feel like I’m in one of those scenes in a movie where the main character stands still while everything else moves around them. A blur of happy activity around that one, stagnant soul. Through each of the next few rounds, while the others maintain that one-step-shy-of-breaking-their-necks bar, I remain low-hanging fruit. Shitty at hiding. Easy to catch.

  Yet, I go out third or fourth every single time.

  Which I take as confirmation that Bode’s skipping me wasn’t kindness, but a tactic. A fact that settles in my gut. By the time we—they—finish the last round and congregate in a loose circle in the grass, it feels like a sour weight, pulling me down.

  “A-plus session, team,” Aran says, lying on his back next to Cass.

  I sit cross-legged beside her with Bode to my left and Finn, Matt, and Louise across from us. “Definitely,” Bode says. “Matt’s slide evasion was epic.”

  “Hey,” Cass says, “don’t forget how Lou hid inside the rock wall. Like a freaking spider.”

  Louise grins. “And how Luce just hid.”

  Matt boos quietly.

  “Yeah,” Bode says. “Boo, Lou.”

  Cass changes the subject. “Okay, but is anyone even going to mention my monkey-bar-balancing skills?”

  It’s September all over again. Me, feeling like Cass and I are still a package deal. Louise, taking jabs: Oh my god, she laughs!…Who knew you were capable, Luce?…Careful, Luce, or your face will freeze like that….Who asks for homework the first day? Any ideas, Luce? Cass, picking no one and thereby picking everyone but me. Me, adding an independent study and eating lunch in the library for the rest of the year.

  They move on, keep talking, but I stew in the awkward—Lucille Harper, Feels Like Her Skin Doesn’t Fit—until Bode and Aran get up to do skate tricks in the parking lot and Matt and Finn wander away. After a too-long beat of silence, Cass asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I look up from the plucked-grass pile I’ve been making on my legs. “Me?”

  She chews the end of one of her sweatshirt’s drawstrings. “Yeah, you.”

  “About what?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  I shake my head.

  She lets the string drop from her mouth. “Your parents, Luce. Why wouldn’t you tell me something like that?”

  I don’t know why I say it. Maybe because she didn’t back me up in front of Louise. Maybe because this whole night has felt like an exercise in proving I don’t belong here, and it’s left me feeling hurt and mean. Maybe the “why” doesn’t matter. “We don’t tell each other plenty of things.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Fair or not, it’s true.”

  “This isn’t like not waiting to watch the next episode of our favorite show together. It’s your parents’ divorce.” She shakes her head, huffing a breath out her nose. “My mom assumed you’d told me. Because why wouldn’t you? Except, you didn’t. So this afternoon, when I told her you were coming with us tonight, she goes, ‘That’s really good, Cassandra. I bet she needs it.’ And I was, like, ‘Needs what?’ And she said, ‘You. And to have some fun.’ And I had to ask my mom why my best friend needs me. It was…”

  “It was what?”

  “Embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing?”

  She shrugs and I f
ill my lungs with a slow breath. “So why didn’t you just tell her?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “That we aren’t…” I purse my lips, deflate.

  Between us, Louise is too still. Cass shifts up onto her knees, facing me, and says, “And whose fault is that? That we ‘aren’t’? My mom says your dad moved. And you didn’t tell me!”

  The knot’s so tight my chest burns. I want to tell her about it. The heat. The pressure. How perfect’s not really perfect, how all of my truths suddenly feel like lies, how every step she takes away from me leaves me even farther behind. And how ridiculous that makes me feel. To have what I have and still feel like I’ll never be enough.

  But even as I think them, the words go acrid and thin. Because while I know I should be thinking about My Little Pony birthday parties and sleepovers and bike rides and days at Elitch’s and Water World, thinking about all the good stuff that makes us us, all the stuff that should’ve made her the first person I told, all the stuff that should’ve made me feel guilty that she wasn’t, instead I think of Louise. Louise, who’s hated me from day zero. Who’s sitting right there. Listening. Like she’s part of this? Like there’s nothing that’s just Cass’s and mine anymore? Even our drama?

  Then, to the backing track of his and Bode’s laughs and clattering skateboards, I think about Aran.

  No, I’m riding the bus with Aran.

  Not tonight, Luce, Aran’s coming to dinner and it’s going to be weird enough.

  Sorry, that was a text from Aran, can I call you back later?

  Aran, Aran, Aran. Tugging my best friend away from me in stretches, one arm length, inside joke, coy smile, and shared secret at a time.

  So I don’t say anything, I just shrug.

  Cass’s jaw drops. “Really?”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’? Are you trying to hurt me?”

  “Hurt you? They’re my parents. It’s my life.”

  “Your parents, sure, Lucy.” She does it on purpose. “But I’m your best friend! And your mom and dad—” Her voice cracks and I look to find her crying. “They’re not just your mom and dad. They’re Nancy and Ryan. The people who’ve picked me up from school a thousand times, who took me to the hospital when Micah was born. They’re my family too!”

  I scoff. “Are they? You haven’t been to my house in months, Cassandra. Months. Since early March, to be exact.”

  “To be exact,” she mocks. “Of course you’d freaking know. I bet you know the date. I bet you know the hour. Do you make friendship study guides, too? ’Cause it’s not like there’ll be a fucking test.”

  Louise snorts.

  “Good,” I say. “Great. Make fun of the fact that I study. At least I give enough of a shit to keep track.”

  “I’m sorry, are you saying I don’t give a shit about you?” Dimly, I note that the sound of skateboards on the pavement has stopped. “You, my best friend of sixteen years.”

  “Stop calling me that,” I snap. “Your best friend. How can you still call yourself my best friend? Sure, I didn’t tell you. But it’s not like you tell me shit either. You’ve spent the last nine months—”

  “Of course!” Cass throws her hands up. “Bring up me and Aran.” She stands. “I’m guessing you know the date for that one too, right? Made a note in your calendar.” She mimics typing something into a phone. “Cass gets boyfriend and stops giving me her undivided attention.”

  “Right, ha ha. Look at Lucille, so ridiculous and uptight. Isn’t that hilarious.”

  “It’s not funny.” She wipes the tears from her cheeks. “It’s fucking sad.”

  I don’t know why she’s crying and I’m not. I guess I should be, but I don’t feel like crying. I feel like burning something down. “Yeah, it’ll be super sad when all my ridiculous uptightness gets me into Harvard. But, hey, you and Aran enjoy DU.”

  “God, Lucy!” she shouts. “No one cares that you want to go to Harvard or Yale or where-the-hell-ever! And what is wrong with D—” She shakes her head and holds her hands up. “You know what? Not worth it. It’s not worth it.”

  She walks away.

  Louise follows a pace behind.

  And I stare at the ground, letting my vision blur.

  I add some more grass to my pile. The sound of Bode’s and Aran’s skateboards—oh my god, they heard all of that—starts up again. I roll a wad of grass between my palms until it turns into a pulpy mess, then stand and wander into the playground.

  To find her? To apologize?

  I don’t know.

  I kick at the wood chips as I go, thinking, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

  “Screw her,” Louise says, loud enough that I know she doesn’t care who hears her. “She’s pathetic. And just jealous because she can’t get a boyfriend.”

  I stop.

  They’re around a corner of the castle/log-house structure from me. Through the gaps, I see them sitting on the edge of a short platform.

  “I mean,” Louise continues, “she’s had a crush on Bode forever, right? And he doesn’t give a single fuck about her.”

  My breath stalls.

  I spin on my heel and head for the parking lot to grab my phone off the backseat of Aran’s mom’s minivan. He and Bode are still doing skate tricks in the parking lot. Neither looks up. Mom answers on the first ring. “Luce?”

  “Can you come get me?”

  She doesn’t ask why, just where, then says she’s on her way.

  I walk down the street away from the park, stop two intersections down, send my mom a pin, and type out a text to Cass, thumb hovering over the send button.

  There’s a picture of us in the upstairs hallway, on the wall across from my room. We’re six, cheek to cheek, smiling with teeth stained purple from the overdyed icing on my My Little Pony birthday cake.

  I remember so much of that day. The table of presents. The plastic My Little Pony gift bags. Mixing bites of chocolate cake with strawberry ice cream, and how that purple icing—overly sweet and somehow greasy—felt in my mouth.

  Then, a few months ago, I dropped that memory into a conversation with my mom, like, “Hey, remember that My Little Pony birthday party I had?” And she crimped her brow and asked, “What?”

  Because it wasn’t my party.

  It was Cass’s.

  Tell yourself a lie enough times and it becomes your truth.

  I hit send and wait, forgiving her for the first five minutes, ten, fifteen even, because her phone’s probably in Aran’s mom’s car like mine was. But then my mom’s here. Then I’m home.

  The first thing I do is open my laptop, my email, then the trash folder. There are three of them in a row. Ten total, starting a week and a half ago. The newest is the only one I’ve opened, so I go back and start from the beginning.

  “Dear Lucille,” I read, brow tightening with every subsequent line. There are the buzz phrases, that “opportunity of a lifetime” plus “ideal candidate” and “free trial.” All signs pointing to click-the-link-get-a-healthy-dose-of-malware. Except, the more I read, the more real they sound.

  Conversational, direct, informed, signed by a “Dr. Thompson” who says they found me “through a targeted search for the most ambitious young people with the most promising prospects in the area,” based on my participation in a list of groups and programs included in the second email. All of which sounds ridiculous but apparently makes me a “highly desirable candidate” for some program that they swear—again and again—will be the “advent of a new human era thanks to unprecedented scientific breakthroughs.”

  I know what I should do. I know how I should feel. I should delete the whole lot of them, feel creeped out that they admit to snagging my email off the—likely not publicly accessible—business-class roster, block the address, empty the digital bi
n. I should laugh, close my laptop, and go to bed.

  But I don’t want to. Because it feels real. Like they want me. Like they know me. Like they need me. And maybe that’s a symptom. The fallout of my shitty night and feeling like everything’s falling apart. But I keep reading, and when my computer dings with a new message from Life2 right as I’m finishing the last one, it doesn’t feel like a warning, it feels like a sign.

  “Lucille,” it reads.

  This will be my last effort. While I’m confident that you are the perfect fit for this opportunity, time constraints and your silence have forced me to reach out to alternate candidates. I understand that within the context of our modern world, my approach may seem unbelievable or disconcerting, but as this is my only known contact for you, I’ve been forced to make do.

  Life2 sits at the precipice of the greatest advancement for humanity in modern history, and I would hate for you to lose out on an opportunity to be an integral part of that thanks to confusion about our intentions or misguided doubts about the company and our program. If anything I’ve said now or in previous messages piques your interest, do not hesitate to call, day or night. The position is yours until it’s claimed by another.

  I reread the message until I can recite it from memory, then stare at the banner logo, moving my cursor onto it and off again to watch the animation work, keeping the arrow equidistant between Do more and Be more, knowing that if I click through it’ll be like taking a running swan dive into the rabbit hole.

  Acres of red flags and a thousand questions…yet.

  Do more. Be more.

  Exactly what I want, what I need, served up on a shining, enigmatic platter.

  Lucille Harper, Overachiever. Lucille Harper, Pretending at Perfect. Lucille Harper, Insufficient Daughter. Lucille Harper, Left Behind. Lucille Harper, Pining Over a Guy Who Doesn’t Give a Single Fuck About Her. Lucille Harper, Checks Her Phone at 12:32 a.m. and There’s Still No Text from Cass Because She’s Not Even Missed.