Half Lives
HALF
LIVES
Sara Grant
Indigo
To the memory of Margaret Carey – writer, artist and friend – your inspiration lives on . . .
Half-life:
1) the time required for half of something to undergo a process: as
a. the time required for half of the atoms of a radioactive substance to become disintegrated
b. the time required for half the amount of a substance (as a drug, radioactive tracer, or pesticide) in or introduced into a living system or ecosystem to be eliminated or
disintegrated by natural processes
2) a period of usefulness or popularity preceding decline or obsolescence
– By permission. From
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, 11th Edition ©
2012 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated (
www.Merriam-Webster.com
)
I
f you’d asked me that day whether I could lie, cheat, steal and kill, I would have said ab-so-lutely not. I’ve told little white lies
to my parents to stay out of trouble. And, sure, I borrowed a few answers off Lola on that one chemistry test. (Who cares that U stands for uranium or that it’s number ninety-two on the
Periodic Table of Elements?) I shoplifted a Kit-Kat when I was seven on a dare, but I’d never kill.
Not possible.
I relocate spiders rather than squash them. (And I hate those
beasties!)
But now I’ve knowingly and wilfully committed all those acts on the Richter scale of freaking horrible – from lying to killing. I’m not proud of it. I learned that surviving
isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. If you survive, you’ve got to live with the guilt, and that’s more difficult than looking someone in the eye and pulling the trigger. Trust
me. I’ve done both. Killing takes a twitch of the finger. Absolution takes several lifetimes.
When the final bell rang on that last normal day of my life, I found Lola reclining next to our open locker, applying my Candy Corn Crush lip gloss with her little finger. Even
in the Friday afternoon stampede, students and teachers steered clear of Lola as if she projected her own force field. With her combat boots and torn fishnets, the whole military-Goth thing she had
going on could be kind of intimidating. But she was like a Tootsie Pop – hard on the outside but sweet and weirdly awesome on the inside.
‘That bad, huh?’ Lola asked the moment she spotted me.
‘Bad would be an improvement,’ I replied, and stuffed my books in our locker.
On a scale of one to ten where one equals ‘dumped by your boyfriend of three-and-a-quarter months via text two weeks before senior prom’ and ten equals ‘winning a reality TV
show and being insta-famous’, my day was a big ginormous one.
Literally. Yep. Tristan ended our romance with a text: I WAN 2 BRK UP. That’s what he wrote. Didn’t even bother with real words.
In my seventeen years, I’d learned that, no matter how heinous you think your life is, stay tuned for a
Psycho
-style surprise before the credits roll. And whatever higher power
you worship – God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Zeus or Lady Gaga – can’t save you from the dull, rusty knife.
‘So . . .’ Lola looked me up and down, admiring my standard uniform of smart-ass T-shirt (today’s: a smiley face with
Have a Mediocre Day
written underneath), cargo
pants and flip-flops. ‘You need a diversion. What should we do?’
I draped my messenger bag across my torso, tugging my dreadlocks free from the strap. ‘Starbucks?’
She shook her head. ‘Already shot-gunned two Red Bulls to get through English.’
‘Movie? That theatre down by that one place is showing Hitchcock—’
She raised her hand to interrupt. ‘Um, that’s one of those black-and-white ones, right?’
I nodded.
She waved the idea away. ‘That’s like playing a board game when you’ve got a Wii.’
‘But the man knows freepy.’
‘Freepy. I like that – freaking creepy.’ She fished the phone out of her faux-military jacket and immediately started tweeting. ‘You have a gift,’ she said. Lo and
I liked to create what we called ‘the Ripple’ – not as in raspberry or caramel fudge – but a ripple of words.
Someone had been the first to utter
whatever
or
crupid
. My dad still periodically, and completely cringeworthily, said
dude
. It was Lola’s and my mission to take
our linguistic influence global. We’d come close with
borriffic
– terrifically boring. I’d proclaimed Mr Kramer’s third lecture on World War II
borriffic
.
The next day I heard a freshman using it in the cafeteria and three weeks later one of Lola’s friend’s friends used the word on Facebook.
‘I give it two days before it’s Wikipedia bound.’ Lola’s fingers feverishly tapped her phone.
‘Monument?’ I suggested after she’d tweeted our newest Ripple. I loved Washington DC’s morbid décor. I could barely flip my dreads without swatting some monument
to dead people. We sometimes picked a DC landmark and saw how many tourists’ snaps we could sneak into, or we would pretend to be tour guides and feed visitors false info:
Many people
don’t know this, but the Washington Monument is named for President George Washington’s father and shaped like his unnaturally pointy head.
‘Nah. Too much effort.’ Lola looped her arm through mine and practically dragged me off school premises. ‘Mall,’ she decided. Our mecca. ‘You need a little retail
therapy.’
Once we’d outpaced all the other Capital Academy refugees, I confessed, ‘Tristan dumped me.’ Saying it was like reliving the dumpage all over again. He was my first serious
boyfriend and what Lola and I called the trifecta of Gs – gorgeous, geek and giggle. He was equal parts good looks, smarts and sense of humour, and that was a next-to-impossible combo. I
hadn’t been planning to marry him or anything, but I’d thought we might at least make it to graduation.
She wrapped me in a too-tight hug. ‘Icie, I’m soooooo sorry.’
This was probably the worst thing that had ever happened to me, but I didn’t want to be one of those blubbery broken-hearted girls. If we kept talking about it, however, I was going to
lose it. I wiggled free. ‘What a . . .’ My throat clenched to stifle a sob. ‘I mean he’s a total . . .’
Lola squinted and puckered her lips as if she was thinking, then a wicked smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘Totass.’
It took me a second to dissect the word. ‘Jerzilla.’
‘Dumboid.’ She laughed and then glanced at me to make sure it was OK to laugh when my heart had been pulverized like a grande coffee Frappuccino hold-the-whip-topping.
I smiled. ‘Fridiot.’
‘Yep, Tristan is the biggest fridiot in DC.’
‘America.’
‘The world.’
‘Universe.’
‘Galaxy.’
We exploded with laughter. We leaned on each other to steady ourselves. Tears streamed down my cheeks. My sides ached. Our laughter dwindled to sighs. My attitude shifted a smidge. With Lola as
my life support, I no longer felt like I was going to die.
As we walked, Lola lit the cigarette she kept stashed in her bra. Even though she turned away to exhale, the cigarette smoke seemed to curl around me. I moved away to find fresh air and wished
that ditching Tristan’s toxicity would be as easy. But his rejection clung to me like smoke. Why did he break up with me? Was I so . . . so . . . but I couldn’t find the right combo
– ugly and disgusting? Stupid and revolting?
Lola paused and ground her cigarette into the pavement. She shifted all her weight onto the ball of her foot and shredded the stub.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ I nodded towards the cigarette confetti on the ground.
She started walking. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you.’
‘What?’ I grabbed her arm and forced her to stop. I felt a hiccup of panic.
The worst thing was not knowing, right?
‘The fridiot already posted your break-up on Facebook with one of those winking smiley faces.’ She patted herself down, searching for another emergency cig. ‘Teek saw it and
told Will, who told Tawn, who told me.’
Complete and utter humiliation! My gooey sadness from the dumpage solidified into anger.
The gossip Ripple was way more powerful than the word Ripple.
Social death by Facebook. I take it back. Knowledge can suck.
I started walking, stomping really, in the general direction of the Metro. My life at Capital Academy was over. I fished out my phone from my cargo pants pocket. I tapped the FB app. My profile
picture of Tristan and me stared back. It was taken on our seventh-and-a-half date. (Our first date only counted as a half because he didn’t
take
me to the dance, but we left
together.) The picture was snapped after we’d seen a double feature of
American Psycho
and the original Hitchcock
Psycho
. He’s pretending to stab me in the back with
an imaginary knife and I’m mock-screaming in horror. A bit prophetic.
I changed my Facebook status to ‘single’ and switched my picture to one of Lo and me last summer. We’d been trying on three-hundred-dollar sunglasses in this snooty boutique,
right before the saleslady with the awful orange fake tan kicked us out. I was trying to think of the perfect snarky thing to post about Tristan when Lola caught up with me.