Half Life

by Lillian Clark

  I fill my own tray, and we pay. “Sure, no muscles, but gland secretions are okay?”

  Walking a pace in front of me, weaving between the tables full of students eating, he glances back and smiles wide. “Chocolate gland secretions.”

  My stomach flips.

  A crush. A real one, right? Not some residual imprint.

  Cass, Aran, Louise, Finn, and Matt are already crowded around their table, eating and talking and laughing. Bode walks up with me, and they stop. Like in a movie. A cartoon where the characters blink with the accompanying blink, blink sound.

  Cass says, “Hey!” And Aran grins, but with uncertain context. Louise’s eyes go skeptically wide. Finn grins, takes a sip of their drink. Matt waves.

  And I…stand there.

  There’s only one empty seat, Bode’s, between Louise and Matt. But he sets his tray down, grabs a chair from a nearby table, and shoves it in next to his (on the Matt side), forcing everyone to shift over to make room.

  “Hey, Lucille,” Aran says.

  I smile. “Hey.”

  “Long time no see,” Finn says.

  “Yeah. Long time.”

  Sitting across the round lunch table from me, Cass asks, “How was your summer?”

  “Good.” What else am I supposed to say? It was awesome. Spent most of it piecemeal, growing in a series of high-tech pods before being assembled and gifted with life last month. “Yours?”

  “Same,” she answers. “Good. Short.”

  “What happened to your face?” Aran asks.

  “What?” Brain matter oozing out my nose, cheekbones shifting, skull going concave.

  “The cut on your temple.”

  I reach to touch it, though I know what he means. The still-pink scar to mimic Lucille’s. Cass narrows her eyes. “Isn’t that from…”

  “Bike wreck,” I finish.

  She keeps looking at me (don’t notice, don’t see, don’t don’t doooo—), then shakes her head. Aran shifts his focus to Bode, asking if he wants to go skate after school, and the mood settles. Cass takes her phone off the table, stares at it in her lap, then meets my eye with a small, significant grin. I look back and shrug a shoulder. She checks her lap again, frowns, sets her phone back on the table, and the moment’s gone. Then Bode teases Matt for eating “ground-up moist cadaver,” aka a hamburger, and lunch devolves into a gross-out contest with Aran winning by a landslide by bringing up the origins of “artificial vanilla flavoring,” aka beaver anal glands.

  Louise makes a face. “That can’t be true.”

  “What I want to know,” Cass says, “is where they get it all. Beaver farms?”

  “No one google that,” I say.

  “Please,” Bode adds. “For the love of ever having an appetite again. Don’t.”

  “I’m doing it.” Cass picks up her phone and taps in a search. “It’s called castoreum. From the castor sacs of North American and European beavers.” She reads for a few seconds and paraphrases, “The sacs are located by their anuses, and they use it to mark their territory and such. And”—she holds up a finger and quotes—“ ‘Though it’s been used by humans in perfumes and foods for more than eighty years, it is too expensive and difficult to obtain to be found in many foods today.’ ” She sets her phone down. “There you have it, fools. Put your fears of eating beaver-butt discharge to rest. Though the article said you can buy it on Etsy if you’re so inclined.”

  “I’m buying some,” Aran announces.

  “No,” Bode and I intone. We smile at each other, and it feels like a real-life Moment. With the clicking and the sparks.

  Then he turns to Aran. “Actually, do it. I dare you.”

  “Dude,” Aran says, looking at his phone. “It’s like twenty-five bucks for five milliliters. Before shipping.”

  “A steal!” I cheer. “For genuine beaver castor gland secretions?”

  “Except also,” Bode says, turning back to me, “a whole beaver probably died for it.”

  “As opposed to half a beaver.”

  The warning bell rings and we move. “Could you kill half a beaver while keeping the other half alive?” he asks.

  “Jesus Christ, you guys are morbid,” Louise complains.

  I grin, half to myself, and say to Bode, “Sure you could. Scientists have started growing human organs for transplant. Seems like they’d be able to keep half a beaver alive, no problem.”

  The others file toward the trash cans and the door. Bode hangs back with me. “The front half or the back half?”

  “Either?”

  He laughs. We walk side by side, shoulder to shoulder. I dump my trash, then he dumps his. “Is that for real? The organ thing?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s…”

  “Gross,” Finn says while Matt says, “Incredible.”

  We hover by the doors. “Like, using the recipient’s DNA?” Cass asks.

  “Yeah. Removes the threat of rejection.”

  Matt nods. “Like I said, incredible.”

  “Or a slippery slope,” Bode says.

  I frown. “Toward?”

  Aran leans in and whispers theatrically, “Clones.” Then laughs.

  (Kidneys, lungs, liver, femur, skull, jaw, muscle, muscle, skin, skin, skin…Pod after pod. Full of them. Full of it. Full of me.)

  “Okay, shut up,” Cass says, and waves her phone around at us. “First-day-of-junior-year group selfie!” She turns her back to us and crowds in between Aran and me. Aran wraps his arm around her shoulder and crouches down to fit in the frame. Bode shifts closer to me. Matt, Finn, and Louise mash in around us. Cass holds her phone up and says, “Smile!”

  LUCILLE

  “This is making my organizational heart very happy,” I say, watching Marco lay out the intended contents of his pack on the floor in his room. The twins—school doesn’t start for them and Marco until next week—are downstairs watching TV.

  “In that case, you can be in charge of checking things off the list. Call it foreplay.”

  “Ha!”

  Smiling, he turns from his project and loops his arms around my waist. “The PG-13 kind?”

  I tip my chin up to meet his eye, arch one brow—all cute and coquettish and who is this new Lucille, I like her—and say, “That would be acceptable.”

  He leans down to kiss me. “Okay.”

  Downstairs, the volume of Teen Titans creeps up a dozen decibels. Marco pulls back, rolling his eyes. “Sam!” he shouts toward the hall. “Turn it down!” The volume quiets. He turns back to me right as my phone dings.

  “It’s a conspiracy!” he wails, melodramatic.

  I laugh, reaching for my phone on his desk because, well, my clone’s at school pretending to be me, and it could be any—

  It’s a text from Cass.

  Cass, who I haven’t talked to since I ran into her at Target the day before the Mimeo, saying, It’s really good to see you. We should hang out. Catch up.

  My first instinct is to text back, and I tap the message bar to bring up the keypad, undoubtedly summoning the pulsing ellipsis on her end, before I realize what the text means.

  I swipe down, close out of messages, and check the time. Lunch. Smack dab in the middle of it. The knot yanks tight in my chest. But why? Jealousy? Of my clone, of myself? This is what we’re supposed to be doing. This is what I want to be doing. But the thought of her spending time with Cass stings.

  “Hey.”

  I look back.

  Marco stands with his head tilted and brow curved with concern. “Everything okay?”

  “Sorry, yeah.” I smooth my expression, realizing I’d been glaring at my phone like I was trying to divine my future in a cup of tea leaves. “All’s well.” I put my phone faced
own on his desk and join him in the center of the room.

  A boy’s room. With posters for movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer—clearly, I am clairvoyant—Scream, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers on his walls. With a hastily made bed, pile of dirty clothes in one corner, and a cheap bookcase against one wall filled with worn Vonnegut and Atwood paperbacks.

  A boy whose taste I’ve become familiar with. Whose hands feel welcome resting on my hips. Whose chest I lean into, pushing him back, step by step, until we’re on his bed and I choose to forget about everything but lips and hands and him, him, him….

  The volume of Teen Titans balloons to eardrum-bursting levels again. We’ve rolled over so he’s on top of me, his hips against my hips, my shirt inched up, exposing my waist to the bottom of my ribs. Propped up on his elbows above me, Marco groans, then drops his head into the space between my shoulder and neck, mashing his face into my hair. “Turds,” he grumbles.

  I laugh.

  He kisses my neck three times, fast, then rolls off me and his bed. Standing, he takes an exaggerated deep breath, pulls his shirt—twisted and bunched up around his chest—straight, then runs his hands through his hair. I sit up, and he smiles at me like I’m the sun.

  I give him the same smile back before he turns and stomps down the stairs, yelling, “Sam! I told you to turn that down!”

  Downstairs, the volume quiets. I can hear murmuring, Sam and Ari arguing about something, Marco patiently mediating. I take my time combing my fingers through my hair, smoothing out the tangles, thinking about Marco. Sweet, funny Marco, who can list every way Jason Voorhees has died in all twelve Friday the 13th movies, in order. Marco, who is so unabashedly himself. Confident but not arrogant. Considerate but not self-conscious. Marco, who likes me, who wants me, even though when I think of myself, it’s with a prevailing sense of fear.

  Fear of inadequacy, of looking foolish, of being too much or too little. Fear of not doing something, anything, everything right.

  I resent it. That omnipresent sense of judgment. Feeling like I could do it all “right” yet still be wrong. Be ambitious, but don’t try too hard. Be capable, but not intimidating. Be attentive, but not clingy. Be aloof, but not unattainable. Be feminine, but not too girly. Be “one of the boys,” but not better. Fast, but not faster. Smart, but not smarter. Funny, but not funniest. Be cute. Be sexy. Be fun. Be likeable.

  Be needed. Be wanted. Be desired. Like how Life2 needs me, how they chose me. And how Marco wants me.

  That’s the answer. Two of me now, here and there. Two of us to fill up one space. There should be more than enough. We should overflow. Lucy, there, fixing a friendship, keeping up with classes, my parents, and everything else I’ll get to step back into. Me, here. All of it, knitting together. Yet when I tried to spend time with her this weekend, keep her company when we were home alone after my mom got called in, she claimed exhaustion and turned me away at the studio’s door.

  My phone dings again.

  I get off of Marco’s bed to grab it from his desk. Not a text this time, a notification from Instagram. Telling me that @KickassCass tagged me in a photo. I open it and see Lucy.

  Lucy, standing with Cass, Aran, Finn, Matt, Bode, and Louise in the cafeteria. Lucy, smiling next to Cass, who’s got her arm outstretched to snap the selfie. Lucy, scrunched up next to Bode, who isn’t looking at Cass’s phone but at me, at her, in a way that’s only a few shades off from how Marco looks at me.

  LUCY

  “Things must be pretty serious with Marco if you’re willing to go camping with him,” I say. “And not even camping. Backpacking.”

  “Yeah.” She smiles, folding a third pair of shorts and adding them to her pile. She’s deep in it, preparing, daydreaming, prying herself free from her life like it was a parasite. So deep she didn’t even bother to ask me about my second day on Official Lucille Duty. “I mean, I think so. We haven’t talked about it.”

  I’m guessing you haven’t talked about a lot. But I don’t say it. What good would that do? I’m temporary. All of this is temporary. Her month to do more, be more, while I keep her life warm.

  “Sharing a tent in the middle of cell-serviceless nowhere seems pretty official.”

  Her smile widens. “I know, right?”

  I spin on the bar stool at the kitchenette’s counter, pushing myself back and forth as far as the springs will let me go in either direction. Left: Lucille, packing her frame backpack, dug out of Dad’s old stuff in the crawl space. Right: the dry-erase calendar, purple for the rest of the week, from tonight on, updated after Marco asked her along on this trek last week. Middle: I let my eyes blur.

  “What time should I head in?” I ask.

  “Mom said she’d be home by six, so…”

  “Okay.”

  Then quiet again. The light sounds of her packing. The buzz of a text on her phone. The lift of her lips as she reads it and smiles. So much smiling. Cool, so happy for you, must be nice. To have your whole smile-filled future ahead of you instead of, like, twenty-five days.

  I wonder if she realizes that I know almost all of her thoughts. The fizzy sort of glee she gets knowing she’s been invited to something. Twisting anticipation about being alone with Marco. Lingering jealousy from when she saw that picture of me with Cass and her friends on Monday. The stinging undercurrent of worry that we’ll get caught, though that dulls with each passing day.

  I wonder if she realizes (or cares) how little she knows of my thoughts.

  Her phone buzzes again. “Mom’s coming home early. You should probably head down.”

  “Okay.”

  I get up to go, grabbing the messenger bag off the back of the other stool.

  “Lucy?” she calls when I’m at the door. I turn back. She watches me, brow creased, head tipped. I fight an urge to mimic her. Then she inhales, shakes her head a bit, and says, “I’ll leave a note about where we’re going on the counter. And my phone. Since it’d be weird if Mom and Dad couldn’t get in touch with you. Me. Whatever.”

  “You won’t need it?”

  “I’ll tell Marco I forgot it and use his. No service anyway, remember?”

  I nod. Turn away. Pause. Turn back. “Have fun.”

  “Thanks,” she says, and I leave.

  LUCILLE

  Marco texts that they’re here at 6:02 the next morning. Dressed and waiting, I text back a winking kiss, then set my phone on the counter next to a printout of the directions for where we’re going—just in case—grab my pack, and go, creeping down the stairs, out the garage’s side door, and across the lawn to where Taylor’s parked her older-model Toyota Highlander at the curb.

  When I step onto the sidewalk, Marco opens the rear passenger door and climbs out to meet me. “Check you out,” he says, smiling. “A regular mountain woman.”

  “Right?” I say, gripping my pack’s straps. “Minus the coat made of animal pelts.”

  “And the smell.”

  “Plus Gore-Tex.”

  “So, really,” he says, opening the SUV’s hatch and taking my pack to stack it on the other three in the back, “just a young woman going backpacking and looking impossibly hot in her hiking gear.” He closes the hatch and pulls me in close. “Oh, and you smell really nice too. Not at all like tanned animal hides.”

  “I like that you find hiking gear hot. Feels like a low bar to beat.”

  He smiles. “You’d be hot in a Snuggie.”

  “A Snuggie?”

  “Yes, a Snuggie.” He leans down and kisses me.

  “Dear obnoxious couple!” Taylor calls out the driver’s window. “Get your nauseating asses in the car.”

  Marco kisses me again, longer, deeper, until Taylor yells, “I’m counting to three, then laying on the horn!”

  We climb in the car, both in the back
. Taylor pulls away from the curb and Remi turns around in the passenger seat to offer me his hand. “Nice to finally meet you, Lucille.”

  We shake hands. “Nice to meet you too, Remi.”

  He lets go of my hand and rests his head against the side of his seat. “Marco hasn’t shut up about you since your first day at Reach the Sky. It’d be cute if it wasn’t the conversational equivalent of eating a five-gallon bucket of cotton candy. Packed cotton candy.” He mimes it. “Really mashed down.”

  “So, like, a five-gallon bucket of hard blue sugar?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s…gross.”

  Marco snorts. “You love cotton candy. Even that packaged garbage they sell at gas stations.”

  Turning around, Remi laughs. It’s one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard, bubbling and contagious. “That’s true,” he says. “I do love it.”

  Taylor does a rolling stop at the end of my block before heading west, and I glance back at my house through the rear window. I imagine my mom’s alarm going off, the five-minute gap, then her soft knock on my door to wake me—her—up.

  Her, Lucy. In my bed. Being me. While I’m…

  I face forward again, and Marco reaches for my hand across the middle seat. Remi scrolls through XM radio stations. Taylor dances in her seat to the snippets of songs as he flips past them. I smile at Marco in the dim.

  I’m being me too.

  LUCY

  I wake in her bed.

  Hers. Not mine. I don’t even have a flicker of doubt. It all looks and feels familiar, but “familiar” in the way a Starbucks is because they’re all the same design.

  Mom knocks and calls for me to wake up. I call back that I already am and listen to her footsteps, followed by Boris’s, continuing down the hall. Downstairs, the sliding glass door opens and a second later Boris is barking in the backyard.

  I sit up, and let my (her) memories filter through reality. Her room. Her bed. Her closet. Her clothes. Her desk.

  I left the flash drive next to Lucille’s laptop last night after trying and failing again to summon the courage to open it. Six days with it, and it’s begun to pulse in my periphery. An incessant irritation, like ringing in my ears. I both desperately want and do not want to know what’s on it, and I have no clue how to reconcile the two.