“That’s really not the point,” I say.
“Then…” She slumps down in her seat dramatically and groans. “What is?”
“That you told Louise. That she…” I swallow it. I could break something. I’m stuck in this rancid swamp of Lucille’s making, and I’m tasked with defending her? Except, that’s pretty perfect, isn’t it. I don’t just exist because of her. I exist for her. “Can we not do this right now?”
“Do what?”
My throat constricts. Not doing it now pretty much means not doing this ever. Not for me. I’ll never get to know her. Sixteen years, a thousand memories, but I’ll never actually know her.
And she’ll never know me.
“Have this pseudo heart-to-heart.”
“Pseudo?”
I stare out the windshield at the tiny universe lit up by the car’s headlights. I can feel her attention on me.
“What the hell happened to you this summer?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me. I’ve known you your whole life.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe I’m not the Lucille you think you know.”
LUCILLE
I wake with a start, like I’m rising from the dead, which is fitting since that’s how I feel.
I’m in my bed. At home.
Oh, shit.
I’m home. In my bed.
Where’s Lucy?
I search for my phone. Not on the bedside table. Not on the floor. There. Wadded up in my comforter. God, is that smell me? Beer on my shirt. Smoke in my hair.
Clean yourself up.
Mom said that. At least, I think she did. Clean yourself up. Then she left to call Dad. I check my call log. It shows me calling Lucy at 12:58 a.m. The record says it was thirty-six seconds long. Did she get out?
I make myself still. The house is quiet. There’re no sirens or shouting or…I don’t even know. What the hell happens when you get caught having a clone? What’s the precedent for that?
It’s early. Six-thirty. The sun’s still rising. I get up, creep to the door, crack it open, and listen hard. Boris snores downstairs on the cool tile floor of the entryway. The refrigerator kicks on in the kitchen. And…nothing.
I tiptoe down the hall, the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the garage. My car isn’t here, at least. I make my way up the stairs to the apartment, following the X’s, and ease open the door.
I cover my mouth to mute my relief. She’s there. Asleep in the bed, our shared long brown hair fanned out over her pillow.
I pull the door shut with a quiet click and sit on the landing, my throbbing head in my hands.
Lucille Harper, Off the Deep End.
Lucille Harper, In Over Her Head.
Lucille Harper, A Metaphor for Drowning.
I take long, slow breaths—in, one, two, three, out, one, two, three—but it doesn’t help. With the panic, or the nausea. What am I doing? I hold my hands out, like I’ll be able to see them. All of my problems cradled in my palms. But all I can see are the lines. All those lines. Thousands of them. While hers, except for the ones from SemblanceSync, are perfectly smooth.
When my stomach finally settles, I get up to go deal with the only one of my problems I might actually be able to solve.
LUCY
My buzzing phone wakes me up. I grab it off the nightstand. Gone to see Marco. Drank too much last night and screwed everything up. Mom’s pissed. There’s a pause followed by a second buzz: I’m sorry.
I stare at the ceiling, counting breaths until I’m calm enough to keep from smashing the phone against the wall. It takes me fifty-two.
“Lucille!” Mom shouts from the kitchen. She must’ve already checked Lucille’s room. I consider not answering. What do I really owe her? What (else) goes wrong for me if Mom finds me up here? If she finds out I’m not Lucille?
They’ll send me back.
The thought’s like swallowing sour milk. She won’t want me. I’m not her daughter. They’ll send me back, and that’ll be it for me. No more anything, not even this partial, stand-in, semblance of a life.
I hurry down the stairs, pausing on the landing before stepping into the garage, listening for Mom, who calls for Lucille again, but it’s so muffled she must be downstairs.
I hurry inside, aiming for the stairway, walk halfway up, then turn around back toward the kitchen and call, “Mom?”
We meet in the empty space between the kitchen and the stairs.
“Where were you?” she asks. Arms crossed, jaw tight, one brow arched. Still supremely pissed. I wonder if she slept at all.
“Bathroom,” I say.
“I checked your bathroom.”
“Guest bath—”
She shakes her head. “Never mind. I don’t care.” She points to the kitchen. “Sit your ass down. I’m ready to yell.”
I sit through it, staring at the color variations in the island’s marble countertop, veins of gray twisting through the white. The yelling isn’t what gets to me. She doesn’t even shout that much. A few variations of How could you? and What were you thinking? Then her voice lowers. She switches to bewildered disappointment.
And that’s what sours my guts.
I didn’t earn this. Her “loss of trust” or the look in her eye while she says it. As though I’m a stranger. Which I am. I’m not her daughter. (I’m not. I am. I’m not. I am. I’m…)
She pauses, waiting for the apology she deserves. But I don’t give it. Because I’m not sorry.
“Nothing?” she says. “You don’t have anything to say?”
I glare at the countertop and shake my head.
She scoffs. “Fine. You’re grounded for the next two weeks.”
“Great,” I say.
“Yeah. Great.”
I get up, push past Boris (who’s hovering, anxious, since he hates it when any of us fight), and am halfway up the stairs when she calls, “Who is he? The boy who brought you home.”
I pause on the fourth step. “Probably Marco.”
“Probably? What the hell does that—”
But I’m done having this conversation. I run up the rest of the stairs and close myself in Lucille’s room. Half an hour later, Mom knocks and says through the door that she’s been called in to work. Ten minutes after she leaves, I start walking toward the bus stop.
LUCILLE
I call, text, call again while I ride the bus into the city, but he doesn’t answer. When I knock on his door, Ariana answers with her eyes narrowed. “Marco missed curfew last night because of you. Mom’s still mad this morning.”
“I’m sorry. Is he here?”
“No.”
“Work?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“So I can go grovel for his forgiveness in person?”
Arching one brow like a pro, she considers me. If only missing curfew was all I needed to ask forgiveness for. Finally, she sighs and cocks her hip like she’s bored with me and says, “Yeah, he’s at work.”
“Great. Thanks, Ari.” And she shuts the door.
I walk to the coffee shop—a dozen-plus blocks from his house—take ten deep breaths outside the door, then go in.
Behind the register, he looks up when the door’s bells jingle, sees me, and frowns. I wait a handful of paces back, unsure if I should order or wait or what, but he finishes with the customer at the counter and turns to his coworker. I hear him ask her to cover while he takes a break, then he comes out from behind the counter, pulling his apron off over his head and holding it, wadded up in his fist.
He walks past me, out the door.
I follow.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Do. Not. Cry.
Outside, around th
e corner from the entrance, he stops and leans back against the brick, arms crossed.
“Hi,” I say.
He won’t look at me. When he swallows, I watch his Adam’s apple bob. “She didn’t even know who I was.”
“What?”
“Your mom had no clue who I was. Did she even know we went backpacking?”
“I—”
“Don’t lie,” he says. “Please.”
My throat aches. I have to push the word past it. “No.”
He nods, still staring at the sidewalk. “Also, turns out my friend Grant’s cousin goes to a school in the same district as Lakewood, and last night when I got back to drop off Taylor’s car, when people were asking about my girlfriend and what the hell was going on with you, he mentioned that his cousin started classes last week, so.”
“So.”
“So you just skipped your first week of school?”
“Not exactly.”
“Jesus, ‘not exactly’? What the hell does that even mean?”
“I don’t know what—”
“Save it. I thought—” He stops himself, clears his throat. “I thought we were…” He shakes his head. His eyes are wet. “I thought we were real.”
“We are, Marco. We are!”
“How am I supposed to believe you, Lucille? What the fuck was that last night? What is any of this? It’s like—”
“Like what?” I whisper.
“Like you’re ashamed of me. Like you don’t even want me in your life. Like I’m just one more of your lies!”
“What?”
“Oh, come on.” He glares at me, then lifts a hand and wipes his eyes. “I’ve never been inside your house. Every time I picked you up you told me to park down the fucking street. You won’t let me meet your parents, your friends. I’ve never even met your dog.”
“That’s not— It’s not y—”
“It’s not you, it’s me? Are you kidding?”
“No, that’s not what— I mean, it is me. But it’s…complicated.”
He pushes off the wall and moves to leave.
I grab his arm. “Please. Wait. That’s not what I…”
We’re only six inches apart. Touching. But the distance is brutal. “Did it, did Friday, us, even matter to you?”
“Of course.” I keep my hand on his arm, and I have to believe it means something that he lets me.
“I don’t know how to believe anything you say.”
“I’m not lying about that. I would never lie about that!”
“Except, that’s what you do, right? Lie. All the time.”
“Not about us. Not about how I feel about you,” I say. I’m losing it. My tears brim, then fall. “I swear. You have to believe me.”
“Then tell me,” he says. “The truth. Promise.”
“Tell you what?”
“If your mom doesn’t know you went backpacking with me, where did she think you were?”
I purse my lips. “She didn’t know I was gone.”
He stares at me. And slowly removes his arm from my grip.
“I’m not lying,” I say. “That’s not a lie.”
He coughs a laugh. “Now you’re lying about lying.”
“Please, Marco. I want to tell you the truth! I am telling you the truth. My mom didn’t know. I just can’t tell you the rest of it. Okay? I can’t. I’m not allowed to tell you.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I—” I’m desperate, flailing. The current’s raging, my head’s submerged, and I don’t even know what the expectations are anymore, what I’m trying to do, who I’m trying to be. No matter what I say now, if I give in, tell him, violate the NDA and risk that “shitstorm,” even the truth sounds like a lie.
“I’m going to go,” he whispers, moving around me. “I need to go.”
And he does.
I watch his back, but I don’t follow.
I slide down the wall, brick snagging on my shirt, and sit on the sidewalk. I was supposed to be done failing, done coming up short. With two of me, there wasn’t supposed to be any question. Do more. Be more. Both, everything, all of it. Perfect girlfriend, perfect daughter, perfect student, perfect friend. This was my way to be perfect. And yet. How can there be two of me, and I’m still not enough?
My trek home feels mechanical. Walk, bus, transfer, bus, walk.
I call Lucy when I’m at the end of our block. She answers on the first ring. “Yeah?”
“Is Mom home?”
“No.”
Boris greets me when I come through the front door. I push past him and find Lucy waiting for me in the kitchen, leaning against the counter.
With shoulder-length pink hair.
LUCY
Her jaw drops.
I strike a pose. “You like it?”
She makes an incoherent sound in her throat. Boris noses at her hand, but she ignores him. He plods over to me, sitting by my feet and leaning his heavy body into my leg. I rub his head absent-mindedly. Lucille’s attention flicks from him to my hair again, and I say, “You don’t have to do it too, you know.”
“How would that work? You stay in the studio for the next eighteen days?”
“Or you send me back early.” It’s a bluff. Or self-destruction. I honestly don’t know. When I went to the salon, I knew this would be something. A way to shove us off the teeter-totter. It was reckless and terrifying, and I’d do it again and again. Because while I want those eighteen days, I need her to see me. Not her reflection, me.
For the first time, I can’t tell what she’s thinking, feeling. There’s an emptiness to her expression. Shock, maybe. Then her eyes go glassy. She pulls out her phone, closes the gap between us, snaps a few photos of my hair, and turns back toward the door.
“Don’t forget to go by Dad’s and get the car,” I call after her. “And I left your history homework in your room. You have a quiz tomorrow.” She doesn’t look back, but I hear a quiet “Thanks” before she slips out the door.
I wait for a count of five (For what? In case she comes back in and asks me to keep her company? For her to change her mind and say, “Forget it! Let’s come clean!”), then head to the studio. The garage is hot and smells like dog food and dust. My hair feels light around my shoulders. But when the loose curls bounce in rhythm with my steps as I climb the stairs, when I close the apartment door behind me and they float, so obvious and pink, into my vision, I can’t even feel satisfied.
I just feel alone.
LUCILLE
“Cute,” the stylist says, looking at my phone. She runs her fingers through my hair. “Your hair’s so healthy and long. When was that?”
I huff a laugh. “That’s not me.”
“Oh. So a twin?”
“Something like that.”
Send her back. That’s the easy answer, right? It’s not even like we failed. But the thought makes me sick to my stomach, not in small part because I’m realizing it should’ve made me sick all along.
Mom finds me in my room when she gets home from work. “What the fuck, Lucille?”
I have no explanations, so I just say, “Sorry,” and close the history book I had open—reading and rereading the same three paragraphs—on my lap.
She shakes her head and lifts her hands in a helpless gesture. “What is this about? Some delayed reaction to the divorce?”
“No.”
“That boy who dropped you off last night?”
I bite the inside of my cheek—hard—to keep my expression empty. “No.”
She stares at me like she’s trying to read the real answers on my face. I shift my gaze to the cover of my history book, letting my eyes go unfocused and refusing to blink until they start to sting
. “You used to tell me things,” she says.
“You mean I used to be easy.”
“No, Lucille. I mean that you used to let me be there for you. You’ve always been so practical and efficient. I never thought you’d use those traits to shut me out.”
I say nothing.
“Damn it, Lucille! Talk to me.”
I open my mouth. But I can’t. I won’t. She didn’t do this, I did. I can’t ask her to fix it. How would we even fix it? I signed an NDA, the contract. Sure, it’s void since I lied about my age with the fake ID, but all that does—I looked it up on the way to the salon—is make it fraud. And since I’m a minor, that means Life2 wouldn’t come after me, they’d come after my parents. I had a company make a person. And if I come clean, that same company could turn on my family. How am I supposed to drop that on her?
So I reopen my book.
“Really?” she says.
I don’t look up.
“Fine. You’re grounded for an extra week. Like you’ll respect it, but here we are.”
The next morning, we sit at the counter eating cereal in silence. She glances at me sidelong, narrowing her eyes at me like I’m a stranger. No, worse. Like I’m altered. Like however she meant to make me, shape me, I came out in a way she didn’t expect and isn’t sure she wants.
LUCY
I sit at the counter and eat my cereal in silence, listening for the sound of them leaving. When I hear the garage door open, I walk over to the window (following the X’s like a good little secret) and watch through the crack as first Lucille, then Mom, backs out and drives away. Ten deep breaths later (in, one, two, three, out, one, two, three, helps with the panic), I head inside.
Half Life Page 19