Half Lives (24 page)

I woke up to Tate calling out that it was morning, but it could have been afternoon or evening. I was already losing track of time.

I didn’t feel like getting up. What was the point? I spotted the coverless copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
peeking out of my messenger bag. I’d nicked it from the supply room.
It was the only personal thing Chaske had had in his backpack. I wondered why. I turned it over and over in my hands. I wondered what the cover looked like and where it was.

You can’t judge a book by its cover.

That’s how my brain was functioning. Random thoughts kept popping into my mind like unwanted text messages from strangers. I had nothing to do but couldn’t concentrate on
anything.

Midnight curled up on my chest, tucking herself right under my chin. I raised the book higher and flicked through the pages. I could feel the thrum of her purrs. I stroked her and she made this
tiny squeaking sound. I felt the tiniest twinge of something.

Something. Something.

Whatever.

This was one of the books on the summer reading list in my sophomore year. My English teacher, Mrs Storms, told us that Harper Lee, the author of
To Kill a Mockingbird
, won some major
award and sold a bazillion copies and then never wrote another book. Had she said everything she needed to say? Or was putting yourself out there on paper like walking naked through school? Once
was more than enough.

I flipped to the last page. I wanted to see how this story ended. I didn’t understand it all. It was about some guy reading to a little girl, his daughter maybe. Someone had underlined the
line that said something about nothing being scary except in books.

I laughed out loud. Midnight dug her claws into my chest as she sprang off the bed, startled by the unnatural sound I’d just made. What did the narrator know about scary?

I kept reading. The characters were reading a book about someone who was accused of doing a bad thing. The dad character was saying that most people are nice once you finally see them. I
didn’t think he was right. All evidence I had was to the contrary. I bet those terrorist people who launched the bio-attack weren’t nice deep down. How could they be? And what about the
guy who’d pulled a gun on Tate? Was it just the situation that brought out the worst in people? Then I thought of Marissa, Tate and Chaske. We’d pitched in to help one another. They
were good, weren’t they?

I closed the book and clutched it to my chest, missing the warmth of Midnight. The book made me feel closer to Chaske. I felt guilty about taking the book. It must be special to him. I’d
put it back in the supply room later.

I studied the patterns in the uneven dirt ceiling. I was like a worm burrowed deep underground. The only time I ever saw worms was when it poured with rain. The pavement in front of my house
would be scattered with dead ones – like some battlefield of Worm War III.

Floods.

War.

Don’t think.

I felt as if a giant hand had reached into my chest and grabbed a fistful of my organs and was trying to jerk them out of my body.

Don’t think of end-of-the-world scenarios or anything from outside.

But that was impossible.

I leapt up. My head swam. I tottered as if I was on a cliff edge. I shut my eyes and pulled myself back.

Find Midnight, I told myself. If I could find her, then everything would be all right.

I smelled a hint of citrus and the eye-watering stench of gym socks. And then Marissa stopped right in front of me.

‘Hey, Ice!’ Her voice a bouncing ball.

‘Hey.’ I sounded like a gooey, underdone pancake.

‘Let’s do something. We can’t keep lying around all the time.’ She jogged in place. ‘I’ve finished my run. I’ve got to stay in shape, you know?
I’m getting bored. The four of us should do something together.’

I wasn’t in the mood for Marissa’s brand of extreme perky, but what excuse could I possibly give? I didn’t have any plans for the foreseeable future. ‘Sure.’

‘Let’s get the guys and, oh, I don’t know, play twenty questions.’

I felt as if I’d stepped into some strange combo episode of the old
Star Trek
and
Little House on the Prairie.
She led me straight to Chaske’s room.

Right before we reached his doorway, she stopped. ‘How do I look?’ she asked.

Um, really? Seriously?
Was she angling for the Miss Apocalypse crown?

I wanted to respond:
What does it matter
? But instead I gave her the elevator eyes like the freshman boys gave the girls in gym class. Her head had a hint of black stubble. Her eyes
were bordered by dark circles, as if she’d been punched. Her skin was more yellow than brown, from the lack of self-tanning product, I assumed. She hadn’t changed her clothes since
we’d met. She seemed like a recycled version of herself. Her sleeves were rolled up and scrunched past her elbows. She unbuttoned her pink shirt and flashed her hot-pink sports bra. She
knotted the shirt right under her breasts. The effect was better than a boob job for accentuating the positive.

‘You look good,’ I said and finally understood a little more about Marissa. It was all about the guy. Yeah, she shaved her head, but she couldn’t give up flirting. It was an
addiction. I’d had girl friends like Marissa before. They’d be your BFF until some boy came along. I felt a bit sorry for her that even in our disastrous situation she couldn’t
turn the flirt down, but I also felt a little sorry for myself because she was sort of abandoning me too.

I swear to the power of Victoria’s Secret that the girl sashayed into Chaske’s room. And I hoped my mum – a card-carrying member of the bra-burners’ society – would
forgive me, but I fluffed my dreadlocks, gave my pits a sniff – not too rank – and scratched at the flaky, beige spot that had crusted on my purple
Be Nice to Your Children –
They Choose Your Nursing Home
shirt.

When I walked, OK shuffled, into the room, Marissa was all ‘Oh, Chaske, this’ and ‘Ooo, Chaske, that’. She was all touchy-feely and he was like a kung fu master trying to
deflect her advances. Her vow to swear off boys was beyond broken. I guess Chaske was way more interesting than I was – seeing as I’d been comatose more than awake since we met.

‘You agree, don’t you, Ice?’ Marissa cooed in my direction.

‘Yeah, um, what?’ I had to shift my brain into conversation mode.

‘I was telling Chaske that we thought it might be fun to play a little twenty questions or truth or dare. You know, something to take our minds off . . .’

‘I’m not sure . . . maybe we could . . .’ I started to form a response but Marissa had slipped her arm through Chaske’s and was leading him out of his room.

I followed like a band groupie.

‘Tate!’ Marissa shouted with every ounce of her cheer-powered lungs. ‘Meeting up front!’

Tate came racing by and beat all of us up to the entryway. We sat in a circle, well, square. Midnight curled up by the door. She was giving herself a tongue-bath. Her big pink tongue looked
brighter against her black fur. I suddenly felt the layer of grit coating my skin.

‘OK,’ Marissa bounced. ‘Truth or dare?’ Her attitude, her smile, everything felt too forced. She was trying too hard to make this seem normal.

‘Truth,’ Tate said when no one responded.

‘Oh, OK,’ Marissa said and looked at the ceiling, thinking of a question. ‘What did you want to be when you grew up?’

Chaske and I twigged her verb choice – past tense – and glared at Marissa.

‘Um, I mean . . .’ She fake-giggled. It was screepy. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

Tate didn’t notice the shift in verb tense or in the atmosphere. He didn’t hesitate. ‘Rock star, of course.’ He played a little air guitar. ‘A guitarist like the
next Jimi Hendrix, or maybe a drummer like Neil Peart. My dad took me to a Rush concert and, man, could that guy wail. It was like . . .’ Tate flailed his arms like an octopus in heat,
banging on an imaginary drum set. ‘He was in like some three-sixty surround-sound drummer’s trance. It was wicked.’

‘All right,’ Marissa said, unimpressed.

‘I’m taking lessons, you know. I got mad skills,’ he said with a flourish of his imaginary ride cymbal.

My life had suddenly gone from black-and-white to 3-D. It was overwhelming to be around them, especially with Tate and Marissa being so wired. I was suddenly tired again.

‘OK, Chaske,’ Tate said. ‘Truth or dare?’ But he didn’t wait for Chaske to choose. ‘What were you out there? Why were you on the mountain? Where did you come
from?’

‘Whoa there, rock star,’ Chaske said, his face flushing.

‘It’s truth or dare, not twenty questions, Tate,’ I said on Chaske’s behalf. I needed them to chill.

‘It’s OK.’ Chaske placed his hand on my leg and just as swiftly moved it.

Marissa and Tate leaned in, eager to hear Chaske’s response and solve the mystery of this guy once and for all.

‘I’m nothing special. Just a guy who was at the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time, you know.’

‘Ah, come on, man. You’ve got to give us more than that,’ Tate said.

‘Your last name at least, or something,’ Marissa added.

‘Eastman,’ Chaske said flatly, abruptly ending the inquisition.

Awkward.

Tate started tapping his fingers in what I’m sure was the opening beats to ‘Wipe Out’. Marissa’s mouth twitched. I couldn’t figure out if it was a tic or if she
kept starting to say something. This was all getting a bit weird.

‘I was graduating in a few months and I had no clue what I wanted to be,’ I blurted, unable to take the silence any longer.

They stared at me as if I’d proclaimed myself radioactive.

‘I was probably going to be a doctor. Science comes really easy for me.’ Marissa shrugged. ‘Runs in the family. My mom’s a surgeon and my dad’s a shrink. What about
you, Chaske?’

‘Doesn’t matter any more, does it?’ Chaske said. ‘Everything’s changed. All we have is the here and now.’

That was a strangely comforting thought. My senior year was all about getting the best grades and figuring out what college to attend. Tristan was pressuring me to go all the way. None of that
mattered now. I needed to survive. I may not have got an offer from Harvard, but maybe I could survive one more day and then another and another.

‘I say from now on we forget the shit from outside,’ Chaske continued. ‘Start over.’ His hand went to his mouth and he chewed on the jagged edge of his thumbnail. I
hadn’t noticed before, but all his fingernails were bitten down to the quick. The skin around each nail was peeling and raw. When he realized what he was doing he shoved his hands under his
thighs.

He was right. It was too painful to remember everything I’d lost. I had to stop hoping that there would be some made-for-TV moment when we went outside and everything would be exactly as
we’d left it. I didn’t feel like the same person I’d been a few days ago.

‘I mean, we’re alive. We’re safe. That’s not too bad,’ Chaske said and absent-mindedly chewed one of his nails again. ‘Now I say we play some cards.’ He
pulled a pack of cards from his back pocket.

‘I can teach you Texas Hold ’em,’ Tate said.

‘Great,’ Chaske replied.

‘I’m in,’ Marissa said, bouncing a little.

‘Why not?’ I added.

Tate’s lips curled into a cheeky grin. ‘Strip poker?’

‘Not on your life,’ Marissa said, giving him a playful slap.

‘Nice try, man,’ Chaske said with the faintest hint of a smile.

‘I ain’t dead yet,’ Tate said.

I mentally shook off the cobwebs, slapped on a fake smile and said, ‘Quit yakking and deal.’

‘See everything as an opportunity for improvement.’

– Just Saying 129

BECKETT

H
e waits for Greta at the spot they hid away. How crupid he was to think he could keep Greta secret. It was never going to end any other way. Beckett
thinks he should be Saying to the Great I AM, but instead he’s begging and hoping to see Greta one more time.

And then she’s standing in front of him. He almost can’t believe it. He thanks the Great I AM. He kisses her with a passion that makes him tremble.

‘Beckett.’ She tries to pull away, but his lips are on hers again. He slips his hands in the space between her shirt and shorts and feels her warm, smooth skin. His
connection with the Great I AM is pure and spiritual, but this is physical and overwhelming.

He tears himself away. He scans every inch of her. She has a smear of dirt on her cheek. He goes to rub it off but instead he traces it with his finger.

Their lives are colliding in so many ways. He kisses her lips tenderly this time. He cups the back of her neck and holds her there, drinking in everything he will never have
again.

‘Greta . . .’ He can’t find the words. How can he explain in a way that won’t make her hate him?

‘I came to warn you,’ she blurts.

‘What?’ She’s warning him? It doesn’t make sense.