Half Life

by Lillian Clark

  Was that enough? Fifteen thousand passes through my self-aware heart?

  “I suppose I feel…” I’d taken a deliberate breath. “Anxious? That she’ll be able to tell I’m not”—I couldn’t help it. A pause. But, a small one—“her daughter.”

  A Rage Against the Machine song comes on the radio and, eyes closed, I whisper along with Zack de la Rocha.

  Lucille breathes a laugh. “Who’d have thought that, of everything, the lyrics to ‘Bulls on Parade’ would stick.”

  Her (my) voice still sounds so odd outside my head. “Right?”

  “I remember Mom getting pissed that Dad listened to it with me in the car when I was little.”

  Me too. “Probably why we remember,” I say, then open my eyes and meet hers for the briefest second before she looks back out at the road.

  She swallows thickly. I watch her throat move, identical to mine, then turn to the window. Car, car, car, truck, car, truck, truck, semi, semi-my-my-my…“My head hurts,” I admit. “Admit.” What a loaded word. Like telling a secret, confessing a crime or weakness instead of answering a direct question.

  “Right now?” Kim asks.

  “Yes.” I’d have nodded, but this is day two and I can’t do that reliably yet.

  “How much? Scale of one to ten.”

  “I don’t know. A three?”

  And the whole room relaxes.

  “What?” I ask. “Would an eight mean my brain is melting back into goo-ooooooooo—”

  Stress. That’s what this is. Overstimulation making me slip, making me relapse, making my thoughts skip-skip-skipskipskiiiiiiip.

  White floors, ceilings, and halls. Smooth, slick, unblemished.

  Ironic, maybe, thinking of Life2, but it works. My pulse slows. My head stills. The sound of the radio fades back in.

  We exit the interstate, and it’s like looking through layers of tracing paper. A flip-book of inconsequential memories, of the hundreds of times Lucille has followed these streets, rounded these turns, all laminating together, one after the other, beneath this. Now.

  I fight the urge to close my eyes again. Not because I don’t want to see. But because seeing all of this (again) for the first time…hurts. The gas station we (they: Lucille, Mom, Dad) always go to. The turn to the hospital, the one for school. The giant lilac bush eight blocks from the house that Lucille loves to cut blooms from when she walks Boris. The spot two streets over where she flipped over the handlebars of her purple-and-white bike when its tires lost traction in the gravel.

  I reach up and touch the healing (still pink, still new) scar on my temple where one of the doctors used a scalpel to carve Lucille’s imperfection into my perfect (still pink, still new) skin.

  Mine, but not mine.

  All of it.

  All of me.

  You are the sum of your purpose.

  Lucille slows and flicks on her blinker to turn toward home. I can feel it. Lifting my hand to flip on the blinker. Moving my foot to press the brake. My muscles twitch, nerves alit, ready to go through the motions even though my limbs don’t move and I’ve never actually driven a car.

  She turns into the driveway and hits the button to open the garage door, pulls into the stall, turns off the engine, and clicks the button to close the door behind us. It’s too quiet. No music, no engine, just us.

  Us.

  We turn to look at each other, at the same time, sitting in the same positions. Each leaning an elbow on our door’s armrest, hands in our laps. I didn’t even do it on purpose. Only our expressions don’t match. Hers is…

  Curious. Beatific. And mine?

  LUCILLE

  She’s…Clear. Appraising. Present. There’s a brightness in her—my—eyes that’s freaking invigorating. Sitting here—in a quiet interrupted only by our breathing and the muted clicks of my car’s cooling engine—I feel ready.

  “Want to go meet Boris?”

  Her brow tightens for the barest blink, obvious thanks to her otherwise impassive expression. Then she opens the door and climbs out of the car.

  I go first, walking into the kitchen to the sound track of Boris’s delighted oh-my-god-you’re-home dance. He whines, picking up his front feet and wiggling his massive body. I pet his head, rub his ears. Then he sees her. He barks, loud and authoritative, and lunges.

  I grab for him, missing his collar.

  She brings her hands up and says, “It’s okay, Bobo.” In my voice.

  And he stops, a pace back, whining again but different, tail tucked and anxious. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay.” Again and again, soft and calm, approaching him slowly, one hand out. He sniffs her. She steps closer, leans down. I hear her murmuring as she rubs the space between his eyes. He calms.

  “Let’s hope it all goes that well, right?”

  She glances up at me, then focuses back on Boris. “He thought I was a stranger at first.”

  “True.” I purse my lips. “Do you want to see the garage apartment?”

  We cross back through the garage. “The tape’s where the stairs don’t creak,” I say as we climb, pointing at the blue painter’s tape X’s marking half the stairs. “In case you don’t remember. I know it’s been a while since you’ve—since I’d been up here. Probably should’ve done this before the Mimeo.” I laugh a little. She doesn’t.

  I push open the door—silent on freshly greased hinges—at the top. “Same in here.” More X’s dot the floor, randomly and in paths from the door to the kitchenette, kitchenette to the bathroom, bathroom to the bed, bed to the love seat. “So you can move around when Mom’s home.”

  I watch her study the floor, the room. Her face reveals nothing.

  “I tested the volume of the TV.” I wave at the note taped to it. “Don’t turn it up past twelve and you should be fine. Well, I wrote it all down.” I cross to the counter, where I left the instructions I wrote out on a piece of paper. “They’re in the notebook, too, but better safe than caught, right?”

  Nothing.

  I clear my throat. “Anyway. Only shower and flush the toilet when Mom’s gone. Leave the drapes on the driveway side closed at all times, but the ones on this wall”—I gesture to the windows framing the bed, both open to let fresh air in with the drapes pulled back—“are fine, at least while the tree’s…”

  She looks to me, noticing my pause. “While the tree’s full?”

  “Yeah.”

  We both know she won’t be here when the leaves change and fall.

  I turn toward the bathroom, opening the door to the closet that separates it from the kitchenette. “Clothes in here.” I close the door. “Shampoo, toothbrush, makeup, et cetera in the bathroom.”

  “Sheets on the bed?” she asks.

  “Yeah, of—” I catch her expression and breathe a laugh. “Sorry.”

  “This is weird.”

  I laugh again. “Really weird.”

  She smiles. Not an Isobel Smile™ but one that’s quick and real—I think—then sets the notebook and phone on the counter. She walks into the apartment, going slowly, stepping from one taped X to the next, testing a blank space of floor and listening to the creak.

  I move to the front door, and watch, wishing I could hear what she’s thinking.

  Is she remembering the last time I was in this room before the Mimeo? Or something else? The last time Grandma visited? The times Cass and I had sleepovers up here, pretending we were grown-up, moved out, and living on our own? Eating ice cream, watching the first halves of scary movies before freaking ourselves out and swapping them for comedies. Gossiping about crushes. Wondering what it feels like to kiss. “Spit is not sexy,” Cass said one night while we were watching The Vampire Diaries.

  A phone dings. Not mine, hers, on the counter atop the noteb
ook. I hesitate. It’s hers, but does that mean it’s also mine? Is there such a thing as privacy between an Original and their Facsimile? I pick it up and read the text: Elevated BP 12:42 p.m., LH2010.2 pls respond.

  At 12:42 we would’ve still been in the car.

  “Life Squared texted you,” I say, and Lucy turns from the window. She walks toward me and I hold out the phone.

  So many things I’ve never thought of. Never thought to think of. Like my shoulders. I never bothered to really consider my shoulders before. But now I see how they swoop up a bit. And the mole on her neck, the way it moves when she swallows.

  She takes the phone. Her hand brushes mine. Skin on skin. And I flinch.

  Our eyes meet.

  I grin, embarrassed.

  She reads the message, types out a reply, then sets the phone back on the counter.

  “Are you…okay?”

  The faintest crease appears in her brow. “Yes. Traffic,” she says. “Must’ve made me nervous.”

  I nod, and she smooths her expression. “What now?”

  I turn to the whiteboard calendar hung on the wall by the door. She joins me, echoing my posture—arms crossed, weight shifted to our left hips—and I honestly can’t tell if she’s doing it on purpose or not.

  “So,” I say. “This is the plan.”

  Silently she studies it, the legend denoting her purple and me blue, the color-coded blocks of time dividing a single life between two selves. I stare at her neck, just visible with her hair behind her ear. There are no scars from the BAN and GPS chips, though Thompson said they’re both implanted in the back of her neck….

  Not “implanted.” Incorporated. That’s the word she used. “The chips were incorporated into the back of her neck at the base of her skull.” Built-in.

  “Dinner with Mom,” Lucy reads in the purple section for tomorrow night. She looks at me. “Where will you be?”

  I can’t help it. My smile. My blush. “My first date with Marco.”

  LUCY

  She wants me to ask about it, I can tell. She wants someone to share this news with. She wants (she wants, she wants, she wants) what she promised herself she’d get at the end of this countdown: to be more, enough, no longer alone.

  But it’s partial. She wants me to want to ask about Marco. She wants anyone to share this news with. But he isn’t in the notebook, which means she doesn’t care to actually share him, this, what she really feels, with me. It’s conditional. I am conditional. The sum of my purpose.

  So after an awkward beat I say, “I’m tired.”

  And she says, “Right. Of course.” Then smiles, tells me to text her if I need anything, and leaves.

  I stand in the same spot, as the sun moves and the apartment dims, for as long as I can, waiting. Finally, I hear her SUV in the driveway, the mechanism opening the garage door. And she’s here. A murmur through the walls and hollows, a dozen yards away.

  Mom.

  Moving up to press my ear to the apartment door, I feel my mouth go dry. On the counter, the Life2 phone buzzes. I ignore it. Follow the blue X’s into the kitchenette and open the mini-fridge’s door. Careful! Don’t slam! reads the hot-pink note taped to the handle. She’s even removed all the condiments from the door so the bottles can’t rattle. I grab the Nalgene (full of water since I’m not allowed to use the faucet while Mom’s home), unscrew the lid, and take a long drink.

  Even after, my tongue feels fat, my spit-it-it-it-it…“is not sexy,” Cass says. “That’s why TV treats it like going to the bathroom or brushing your teeth. It’s there but not there.” On the show, Elena gets out of bed, leaves the hotel room, and ends up making out with Damon outside.

  “Assumed hygiene.”

  She laughs. “Right? No one has bad breath on TV.”

  “Nope. Everyone tastes like mint or a cool mountain breeze.”

  Blink, inhale, shake my head.

  Staring at the love seat in the dim (no lights on after dark in case the neighbors notice), I can picture their heads above the back.

  I could text her. I know her number. I wonder if Lucille’s talked to her at all since that day in Target. If she has, it isn’t in the notebook.

  The truth is that I wouldn’t know what to say. Missing someone you’ve never met is the strangest feeling. Mom, Dad, Cass. They’re mine but not mine, same as my body, my memories. My everything. So, I don’t call. Instead, I sit at the counter, text Life2 back, then download Instagram, Snapchat, and the rest onto the phone, log into all of Lucille’s accounts, and delete the “log-in from a new device” notifications from her email.

  LUCILLE

  “What do you think?” I ask, twirling so the skirt of my new dress flares.

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, Lucy watches, expression blank. “It’s nice.”

  I turn away to face the full-length mirror mounted on my closet door. I’m honestly not sure what I want from her. Enthusiasm? Interest? A cure for the brittle vacuum. A brand-new color. But while I can feel her behind me, warm and alive and—me?—taking up space, she’s…Not vacant. It isn’t emptiness, it’s distance.

  Which is antithetical, right? My body, my memories…yet. I thought it’d be like having my diary brought to life, one with an answer key in the back. Lucille Harper, Decoded. Maybe we just need time.

  Or maybe this is all she is.

  I smooth my hands down my dress. Hair curled, makeup done, kaleidoscope of butterflies in my stomach. Looking myself in the eye in the mirror, and I can still barely believe this is real. No more compromising. No more picking one or the other. I get to be a good, present daughter and go on my first date. I get to pick my mom and myself. I get to be both.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and glimpse Lucy in the mirror. She looks up from the floor in the same moment, and meets my eye. I roll my shoulders back and lift my chin, uncurling, realizing I’ve hunched in on myself like I’m bracing against a gust of wind. “Mom’s on her way,” I say to our reflections. “Said she’s bringing Thai for dinner.”

  Lucy nods. I “like” Mom’s message, then grab my stuff and head toward the door. “Have fun?” My voice tips up, turning it into a question. One that drips with nerves and doubt.

  “Yeah,” she says. “You too.”

  I hesitate in the doorway. “Should I—”

  She arches a brow.

  “Should I wait? Make sure…”

  “She doesn’t notice I’m not you and attack me with a kitchen knife?”

  Do I laugh? Is that a joke? Then she smiles and says, “It’ll be fine. Enjoy your date.” So I go.

  I wait by the garage outside, bag with blanket and snacks on my arm. After ten minutes, Mom pulls up. I hold my breath, waiting. But, nothing. No screams. No panic. Five more minutes and Marco’s here, rolling to a stop at the curb instead of pulling into the driveway like I told him to. I hurry down the lawn and climb in the passenger side before he can cut the engine. “Hi,” I say, sliding in.

  He jumps. “Uh, hi.” He recovers with a wide smile. “You look ridiculous.”

  “Eyelashes ridiculous?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, you too.” Nice jeans, button-up shirt, and a tie. “What is that?”

  “This?” He lifts his tie, printed with a blurry, sepia-toned image of a supremely creepy guy holding a chain saw. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t know who this is?”

  I glance out the window, up the sloping drive to the front door.

  “I do not. Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Very funny.”

  I give him a toothy grin.

  “You don’t want to introduce me to your mom? Promise I won’t embarrass you.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Oh, then who’s…” He
ducks down to look through the passenger window.

  I turn my body to block his view. “Next time.”

  He shrugs and shifts the car into drive. I look out the back window as he pulls into the street and does a U-turn.

  Standing at the window beside the front door, Lucy lifts a hand and waves.

  LUCY

  I watch her go. Boris’s nails click on the tile as he plods up to join me at the window. Upstairs, Mom’s shower turns off.

  I haven’t seen her yet. I stayed in Lucille’s room when she got home, yelled, “Hi! I’m a mess! Food’s on the counter!” at the door, and hurried into the master.

  I didn’t answer.

  I’m honestly not sure what I thought this would be like. Being here, in (not) my house. Living (not) my life. Knowing every second that ticks by is another grain of sand through the hourglass. It’s like living inside a perpetual moment of déjà vu. Except it wasn’t me who sat on that couch while Mom and Dad said they were getting a divorce. It wasn’t me who helped Boris learn to climb the stairs when he was a puppy. Wasn’t me who camped out in the backyard with Cass every summer till this one.

  “Hey. What’re you looking at?”

  She comes up behind me, closer, closer. Leaning down to rest her chin on my shoulder and gaze out the window with me. With her warmth at my back and her wet hair cool against my cheek, temple, neck, I let go a slow breath and relax. Truly. For the width of a moment, my bones feel less fake. I lean into it. Into her.

  “Nothing.”

  LUCILLE

  “It’s relative,” I say. “Your truth isn’t necessarily mine, or, like, that guy’s.” I wave at a guy in the next lane over—stuck in the same Friday-evening traffic we are, his window almost even with mine—eating a massive meatball sandwich with both hands.