Half Lives (6 page)

Two snack-sized bags were thrust into my field of vision. ‘I always bring my own snacks. Cheesy or salty?’ my seatmate said and rattled the contents. ‘Or we could share.’
She ripped open both and set them on my tray table.

How could I be so hungry, yet feel as if I couldn’t eat a thing? The last morsel of food to cross my lips was a bag of Cheetos at lunch.

‘I usually like the sour cream and onion but that makes my breath reek,’ the girl said. ‘The last thing you need is someone polluting your air space. Am I right?’

I looked at her for the first time. She was bald, which for some strange reason made me avert my gaze. I tried not to stare but I had seen zero bald-headed girls in real life. I wanted to reach
out and touch her smooth scalp.

‘Want one?’ She pulled an orange squiggle from the bag marked Cheesoodles. The word made me think of my and Lola’s Ripples. Would I ever see Lola again? Tears threatened.

‘It’s not cheese and it’s not a noodle, yet it’s called a Cheesoodle,’ the girl said with a laugh. ‘Who comes up with this?’ A solitary tear leaked from
the corner of my eye. She must have noticed because she said, ‘Hey, hey. Don’t get upset. It’s only cheese – well, kind of sort of a cheese product.’ She popped it in
her mouth. The powdery orange from the Cheesoodle coated her lips and fingers. ‘Not so bad,’ she said, shoving a few more in her mouth. ‘Good for whatever’s bringing you
down and, if not, you’ll die a year earlier from all the preservatives. That’s win–win?’

Win–win. My mum said that all the time. I would see my mum again. Mum and Dad would meet me at the mountain. They just had to. I wiped away one tear, only to have another one replace it.
‘Sorry about . . .’ I indicated the blubbering mess which used to be a normal face.

‘No problem,’ she said, stuffing a few more Cheesoodles in her mouth.

She was Asian American and had the most amazing deep brown, almond-shaped eyes rimmed with jet-black eyeliner that drew to a point at the corner. Her lashes were thick and matted together,
giving her eyes a weight that made you forget her bare scalp. Countless earrings dotted each lobe as if providing a message in Braille. She wore a long-sleeved, button-down pink shirt that seemed
out of place with her faded, ripped jeans. The words ‘Cheer Captain’ were embroidered on the breast pocket of the shirt. She didn’t look or act like the wannabe-model-cheerleader
types at Capital Academy. Maybe she’d beaten up a cheerleader and stolen her shirt.

I forced myself to eat a potato chip. I ate another and then another. Before I knew it, the bag was empty. ‘Um, sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’

‘No problem. Food is the best medicine.’ She looked up as if there were something immensely fascinating about the ceiling. ‘Or, wait, is that laughter? Laughter is the best
medicine, right after these.’ She nudged the Cheesoodles closer to me. ‘You need them more than I do.’

‘Thanks.’ I was a real conversationalist. ‘Beyond horrendous day,’ I offered in way of explanation. I finished the rest of the Cheesoodles. ‘Are you from
Vegas?’ I asked when the carbs and artificial colourings had kicked in.

‘Nope. I live with my dad in La La Land, you know, LA. Los Angeles,’ she said. She fidgeted with the abnormally large pink watch on her wrist. The band was hot-pink rubber, and the
square watch face was rimmed with diamonds. I could hear the seconds tick, tick, ticking away. ‘But my mom lives near DC. I was supposed to meet my cheer squad at a national competition
there,’ she said finally. ‘State champs two years running. I got a message from the coach that the competition has been cancelled.’

‘Weird.’

‘Mom and Dad had some fight over the phone about what to do with me. Mom was supposed to be dropping me off at the cheer competition hotel and then she was going to some convention. Dad
wasn’t expecting me home. I think he was having a slumber party with his new girlfriend. Mom bought me a ticket on the next plane – but she couldn’t get a direct flight.
I’ve got a two-hour layover before I get to ruin my dad’s weekend. Fantastic, huh?’ She gulped the rest of her Diet Coke. ‘I’m Marissa,’ she said, a cheerleader
perkiness springing into her voice. I almost expected her to spell it with a double clap between each letter.

‘I’m Isis, but everyone calls me Icie,’ I said, realizing for the bazillionth time how ridiculous both sounded.

‘Suits you. The white hair. Dreadlocks. Blue eyes. I get it.’ She nodded her approval. ‘Or is it because you’re like a mega-bitch from hell?’

‘Not a
mega
-bitch,’ I joked.

We kept our conversation light and I almost forgot that something huge and horrible might be about to happen. I told her about being dumped after I’d already found the perfect dress for
the prom. Shimmering, silky lavender – sexy but not slutty. She shared her string of bad boyfriends. She caught one kissing another cheerleader. The next only had one thing on his mind: it
was the traditional male preoccupation but with quite a pervy twist. The final in her string of break-ups was the guy she thought was ‘the one’, until she’d found out that he
already had not one but two kids by different ‘ones’.

‘That’s when I shaved my head.’ She raked her fist across her scalp as if she had the electric razor in her hand. ‘I thought it was getting in the way. All guys saw was
the long black hair and these.’ She gestured to what must have been size quadruple G breasts. ‘Can’t do much about the rack, so I decided to simplify my life. Now I focus on my
sport.’

I liked this girl who was all gang diva on the outside but cheerleader on the inside.

The captain’s voice came over the plane’s intercom. Our flight was being diverted to Phoenix. The rest of his message was lost in the excited utterances of my fellow passengers.

The gods were giving me a cosmic smack-down. I’d almost begun to believe that my parents had been mistaken, but diverting planes couldn’t be good. Mum had said attacks were planned
for big cities and Vegas was one of the biggest. All the panic from earlier came flooding back. I looked out of my window. It was pitch black. Anything could be happening down there. I gripped the
armrests because now real, raw fear took hold. The other passengers weren’t happy but they weren’t terrified like I was. Knowledge can
definitely
suck. Oh, to still be
blissfully ignorant about what was really happening.

If it was a virus, then any of these people could be infected. What if Mum was wrong about the timing? What if some deadly virus was being re-circulated right now in the plane’s stale air?
I held my breath like that might actually do some good. I held it for as long as I could before exhaling in one burst.

‘You OK?’ Marissa looked at me as if I were an escaped mental patient.

‘Yeah’ was all I could say. I moved as far away from her as my seatbelt would allow. I decided right then that I wanted as little contact with other people as possible, not only
because they might be infecting me but also because I had a secret and I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it.

Marissa was clueless. Maybe I should warn her, tell everybody, but who would believe me? I didn’t want to be carted away in a straitjacket. My parents had risked everything to give me a
fighting chance of survival. I didn’t want to blow it. I also couldn’t risk getting them into more trouble.

‘What are you going to do when we land?’ Marissa asked.

I shrugged. I had no idea but I couldn’t have her tagging along or asking any more questions.

‘They’re probably re-booking everyone on flights to Vegas. Maybe we could try to get the same flight,’ she said.

On any other day, I would have ‘friended’ Marissa on Facebook and probably made us squeeze together for a photo that I could post and tag.

‘They can probably get you a direct flight to LA and I don’t want to hold you up.’ I was speaking to the headrest in front of me more than to her.

She gave me this hurt-puppy look and twisted away from me. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

As soon as we landed and the seatbelt light dinged, she bolted down the aisle. I waited for everyone to exit the aircraft. The more distance between me and all potential virus carriers the
better.

I followed the signs to check-in. I struggled under the weight of whatever was in my backpack. I didn’t have the time, energy or privacy to find out what my parents had packed in there
now. All I needed was another flight to Vegas.

I decided to pretend I was in some teen version of
The Amazing Race
. If I thought of it as reality TV, instead of just plain reality, then my head and gut wouldn’t go all
supernova.

I’d made it as far as the food court with the typical McDonald’s, Starbucks, something Mexican, something Chinese and a potato place, when an announcement rang out. The speakers
crackled. The voice was garbled, like someone speaking while eating popcorn. I couldn’t understand a word. After the announcement ended, everyone seemed to stop – as if suspended in
jelly.

‘What did it say?’ I asked a man in a blue, pin-striped suit who was standing near me. When he didn’t respond, I asked a lady in a floral sundress and floppy hat. ‘What
did they say?’

Before she could answer, everyone started talking at the same time. Tension in the airport increased by a factor of a bazillion. A plump-ish, normal-looking mom snatched the ice cream cone from
her son’s hand, dumped it in a trash can and dragged him in the direction of check-in. Everyone moved in a pack, slowly and orderly at first, and then a few people started to do this
race-walk thing. I was swept away like an extra in
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
. I didn’t resist. I needed to find another flight.

‘What did the announcement say?’ I asked an elderly couple. They were on a mission and I had a difficult time keeping pace with them.

‘All flights are grounded until further notice,’ the white-haired man shouted without slowing down. At least that’s what I thought he’d said as he raced away.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

9/11
. The date popped spontaneously into my brain. Mum and I had watched some documentary about 9/11. One of the first things the government did was ground all the aeroplanes. Had the
attack begun already? I shoved that thought into the dark recesses of my grey matter and covered it with a healthy dose of Dad’s platitudes: ‘it’s never as bad as you
think’, ‘what you fear the most never happens’.

Then my mum kicked in: ‘worrying doesn’t do shit’, ‘control what you can control’.

I did what I always did in times of extreme distress: I reached for my iPhone. Surely there was an app for being stranded in a strange airport after being kicked out of your home under some
mysterious national security threat. But my pocket was empty and I grieved for that missing hand-held extension of me.

Someone ploughed into me from behind and I fell to my hands and knees. Another guy leapt over me as if I were a hurdle instead of a human. He misjudged my height – or I might have
accidentally
arched my back at the precise moment he jumped. He knocked me to the floor, but at least I took him with me.

‘Watch what you’re doing!’ the guy screamed as he staggered to his feet and hurried away. I was airport roadkill. My knees and palms stung. A woman with a bawling toddler in a
stroller ran over my fingers and didn’t even pause. I tried to stand but my backpack made me top-heavy, so I wobbled back on my butt. People huffed or muttered as they swerved around me. No
one stopped.

If people were reacting this way already, what would happen when they learned the awful truth? I needed to keep my head down and my mouth shut and get to the bunker as fast as I could.

Finally the corridor cleared. Only I, and some surfer-looking guy on crutches, remained. I regained my balance and stood. I tugged the hem of my shirt, brushed the dusty patches on my knees, and
followed in the wake of the stampede.

By the time I reached the main check-in area, queues snaked into a spaghetti bowl of humanity. Airport staff in bright yellow vests tried to corral people, but they looked as sweaty and nervous
as the rest of us. General announcements rang out that might as well have said ‘abandon hope all ye who are stranded here’. Skirmishes erupted over positions in line. The airline staff
shrugged and waved their hands. Nothing they could do. People exited the airport in droves. Marooned visitors staked out territory. A herd of college-age kids in matching orange T-shirts circled
their Samsonite suitcases near the information booth. A gaggle in business suits huddled near the ticketing kiosks. Lone travellers rotated like those gooey hunks of meat in kebab shops, watching
the arrivals and departures being cancelled one by one. Alliances were forged. Battle lines drawn. Some surrendered. Others appeared all too eager to fight.

I weaved through the crowd, trying not to make eye contact or get too close to anyone. I was sure they could tell I had a better chance of surviving all this. I had a map to a top-secret bunker
and money strapped to me like a bulletproof vest. I couldn’t tell if they were infected with some bio-sickness or if their pained expressions were just fear.

I decided to try another mode of transportation. I had to get out of here. By the time I hiked out to Avis and Hertz, their parking lots were empty. I meandered back via the parking garage. I
heard people bartering to be the sixth man in a Ford Fiesta bound for Flagstaff.

Back in the terminal, I told myself to think short-term, not long-term. It was the opposite of what my mum was always trying to convince me to do. I couldn’t sit here and wait for the
airport to re-open. I was itching to be on the road – away from all these people who now felt like nothing more than conduits of disease and death.

I focused on what I needed to do and not on what was going on all around me. It was a gift. The Isis Ann Murray action figure came with built-in blinkers. I’d refused to see the impending
break-up with Tristan, even when Lola had told me she’d seen him kissing Molly ‘Ho’ Andersen. I wouldn’t consider that my parents might divorce even though they’d had
separate bedrooms for nearly a year. But it was hard, even for me, to overlook the fact that something ginormously horrific was going on.