Half Lives (2 page)

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Some things are just not meant to be.’

Yeah, but how did you know? What if Tristan and I
were
meant to be? Or maybe there was no such thing as meant to be, only shit happens and you make the best of it.

We stopped at the Metro entrance to consult our phones before we went underground. I scrolled through Twitter. Lola had like a thousand followers. #Freepy was already multiplying.

I checked Facebook again. Molly ‘Ho’ Andersen had just ‘liked’ Tristan’s break-up post. She was such a . . . As my mind strained for the perfect combo word, my
phone buzzed and my dad’s photo flashed on the screen. I’d programmed his ring tone to be the screeching noise from the shower scene in
Psycho
. I ignored it. I needed a proper
sulk. I wasn’t ready for Dad’s platitudes: ‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘see it as an opportunity’. I didn’t want to ‘make the best of
it’ yet.

Before I could put my phone away, the ominous notes from the movie
Jaws
played over and over. A text from Mum. I didn’t need the ‘suck it up, you’re a Murray’
lecture. ‘Stiff upper lip’. ‘Brave face’. ‘Chin up’. ‘Keep calm and carry on’. All that stoic British crap. I’d been dumped and I was entitled
to feel like mouldy gum on the bottom of last season’s stilettos. I shoved the phone into my cargo pants pocket, double-checking that it wasn’t the one with the hole. I’d lost
about twenty dollars that way. But the telephonic harassment didn’t relent. My pants sounded like a horror-movie soundtrack. I dug the phone out and flicked to the text messages. They all
said the same thing: 911. COME HOME ASAP.

Yeah, we’d come up with that oh-so-difficult-to-decipher code; 911 before any message meant an emergency for real. What family had a secret emergency code? Answer: a family whose mum
worked for the federal government and whose dad was a nuclear physicist. We got one of those Barbie-posed, all-purpose holiday cards from the White House, and the president actually signed
ours.

Mum and Dad were always getting threats from some activists who were a few crayons short of a sixty-four-pack – if you know what I mean. Mum assured me the threats were no big deal, but
we’d still come up with our top-secret code.

When I saw the 911 texts, my stomach dropped like it did when I rode the Mega Coaster Rama at Flying Flags America. I’d only had one 911 from my parents ever, when Dad had his car
accident. That message said, 911 DC MERCY HOSPITAL.

‘I gotta go,’ I said to Lola. Suddenly, being dumped by fridiot Tristan didn’t matter as much.

Lola paused her texting. ‘Seriously, Icie?’

‘Sorry, Lo,’ I said with a shrug. ‘My parents have invoked the code. I’ll call you later.’

‘It’s going to be OK,’ Lola said, hugging me goodbye. ‘We will either get you another date for prom or you can stay home with me and we’ll watch classic horror
movies and eat tubes of chocolate-chip cookie dough until we vomit.’

‘Can I wear my prom dress and killer purple shoes?’ I tried to joke. If I could make a joke, then things couldn’t be that bad.

‘Definitely.’

‘Later!’ I called as I waved down a yellow taxi and texted my parents that I was ON MY WAY!

By the time the taxi pulled up in front of our three-storey townhouse, I’d talked myself down from the ledge of worry my parents’ texts had pushed me towards.
Everything looked normal. Flames weren’t shooting from our bedroom windows. The street was ambulance- and police-free. I relaxed a little. It couldn’t be too terrible if the sun was
still filtering through the trees that lined our street and flashing on the tinted windows of the BMWs, Jaguars and Lexuses parked in a neat row. The nannies for the Smith-Wellses and the
Pattersons chatted over strollers containing sleeping toddlers. Mrs Neusbaum, in wedge heels that matched her helmet of snow-white hair, clip-clopped after her pug, Sir Milo Winterbottom.

I stuffed twenty dollars through the taxi’s payment slot and told the driver to keep the change. I climbed the steps to my house two at a time. The door swung open before I reached the
top, and Mum pushed past me.

‘Wait! Stop!’ she shouted at the taxi.

Dad was slumped against the banister in the entryway.

‘Dad, what’s going on?’ I asked, and stepped inside. He didn’t answer.

The backpack my parents had bought for my one and only camping trip was resting at his feet. My
Save the Planet, Rock the World
badge was fastened to the front pocket. The last I
remembered, my backpack had been stuffed under my bed, and my parents adhered to the progressive parents’ handbook and never, ever trespassed in my bedroom.

I scanned from my backpack, past Dad’s wrinkled khakis and polo to his face. His eyes were red and puffy and his normally carefully brushed hair looked like he’d had a mishap with
hair wax and a pack of wildcats.

‘Dad?’ I asked him a bazillion questions with that one word. He didn’t respond. He wouldn’t look at me. I had never, ever seen my dad like this. My pinprick of worry was
now a full-on jugular artery gush.

‘Dad, what is it? What’s the matter?’ I asked. My legs turned to rubber. I had to steady myself on the hall table, which caused a vase of white roses to wobble and a pile of
mail to avalanche to our recently refinished mahogany floor. Neither Dad nor I made a move to stop the cascade of papers. The slick glossy cover of Mum’s
Modern Politics
mixed
uneasily with the dull recycled pages of Dad’s
Nuclear Energy Digest
.

Mum burst in. ‘OK, the cab’s sorted.’ She shut the door behind her. ‘Have you told her, Jack?’ She looked from Dad to me and back again, tennis-match style.
‘No, clearly not.’

This was the first time I’d seen my parents in the same room in about a month. Dad was a morning person so he made me homemade granola with fresh blueberries every day for breakfast
– because it was my favourite. Mum was the queen of the night so she checked my homework after the ten o’clock news with a reward of Ben & Jerry’s and whatever film was on the
Horror Channel. We used to cross paths at dinner, but for the last few months our daily family time had slipped.

‘Icie.’ Mum paused and it was like watching the battery drain from a toy robot. Her voice and posture softened. ‘We need to leave DC.’

Dad handed me my backpack. I pushed it away. What was she saying? I didn’t understand what was happening. ‘Now?’

‘Yes.’ She pressed an imaginary wrinkle from her skirt. I noticed the transfer of sweat from her palms to the black silk. ‘Please give me your phone.’ She held out her
hand.

I protectively covered my cargo pants pocket. ‘But I need it to—’ Mum flashed ‘Talk to the hand’ before I could prioritize why I so desperately needed my iPhone:
(1) to update Facebook, (2) to text Lola, (3) to listen to the playlists Lola and I had created, with titles like ‘Wake Up ’n’ Smell the Urine’, ‘Songs to Slit Your
Wrists By’ and ‘Make-out Mix’ (subtitled ‘Virginity Blues’).

The look on her face told me that none of that was important. I handed her my phone. She switched it off and laid it on the hall table. She smoothed a lock of hair that had escaped from the
blonde uni-curl she called a bob. ‘This is serious, Icie. We need to go somewhere safe,’ Mum continued as if she hadn’t just unplugged me from my life.

‘What’s going on, Mum?’ I asked again. ‘You’re scaring me.’

‘We need to get moving,’ Mum sort of barked.

‘Mum, just because you’re British doesn’t make you, like, Jasmine Bond.’ I laughed nervously. They didn’t.

‘Jack, give her the money belt,’ Mum said, indicating the three-inch-wide beige cloth that lay coiled on the stairs. Dad didn’t move. He stood there hugging my backpack.
‘Bloody hell!’ Mum grabbed the belt. ‘There’s ten thousand dollars in here.’

Was it a ransom? A bribe? She lifted my T-shirt and wrapped the money belt around me. I was having a total out-of-body experience. Had I hit my head? Travelled to a parallel universe? Eaten some
bad Cheetos?

‘What’s this for?’ I stood, arms raised, like a two-year-old letting Mummy dress her. She fastened the belt at my spine. The cloth was cool and stiff. She pulled my shirt down
and tugged the hem to straighten my smiley face iron-on. The bricks of cash cinched my waist like a corset.

I couldn’t take their evasiveness any more. They were ignoring my questions. ‘Someone tell me what the hell is going on!’ I demanded, and backed away, knocking the hall table
again. The white roses toppled off. The vase shattered and water splashed on my cargo pants.

Mum took a deep breath. ‘You’ve got to trust us. We need to get out of here.’

‘We’ll get through this, Isis,’ Dad said, squeezing me and my backpack together.

Mum pulled him off. ‘God, Jack, we agreed. Get a grip.’

My brain didn’t know how to process this. There was no combo word for what I was feeling.

Mum glanced out the window as if she’d heard someone coming up the street, which made me look, too. But the scene hadn’t changed from a few minutes ago.

‘You and your dad get into the taxi and I’ll get our bags,’ Mum said. That’s when I noticed a second backpack and Mum’s big Prada overnight bag by the door.

‘Come on, Dad,’ I said, shouldering my backpack. ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I don’t know why I said it. It clearly didn’t feel true, but it’s what you
say, isn’t it? When your life is falling apart, you utter stupid platitudes to make yourself believe it’s not so bad. I broke my arm when I was six, falling off the slide at the park,
and Dad repeated the same phrase all the way to the hospital.

Now he looked at me with incredibly sad eyes. ‘You are so brave.’

It was easy to be brave-ish when I didn’t know what I should be afraid of.

Our home phone rang, making the three of us jump. We turned towards the phone on the hall table but none of us made a move to answer it. Mum shuffled through the pile of papers on the floor and
pulled out a slightly soggy piece of white paper, spraying drops of water and shattered glass from the vase. She fanned it for a few seconds, drying the wet patches. She studied the now-smudged
lines and dots on the page. It looked like some sort of hand-drawn map. She crammed it into the front netting of my backpack.

Mum’s volume increased to be heard over the ringing phone. ‘Let’s go.’ She slung Dad’s backpack over one shoulder and clutched her handbag and matching luggage in
the other. She looked around as if she had forgotten something.

The phone thankfully stopped ringing. But Dad’s cell phone buzzed. He took it from the case clipped to his belt and checked the screen. He and Mum exchanged a coded look. They both
switched off their phones and placed them next to mine. What was going on? Mum and Dad without cell phones was like Batman and Robin abandoning their utility belts.

And then we all heard it: the sound of sirens in the distance.

Mum opened the door and charged towards the taxi. Dad regained enough composure to snatch his navy blazer from the coat-rack and follow me out the front door. We piled into the backseat of the
taxi, luggage and all.

‘Dulles Airport,’ Mum told the taxi driver and slammed the car door. The taxi did a U-turn in the middle of the street.

The sirens were getting closer. Mum and Dad slumped low in the seat.

I opened my mouth to ask the questions that were drilling holes in my sanity, but Mum shook her head. I understood from the pleading look in her eyes that she needed me to keep quiet and trust
her. I pushed back into the seat, wedged between my parents.

The sirens were deafening now. Two black SUVs with blue lights on the dashboard blasted past us. I checked the rear-view mirror. The SUVs screeched to a stop in front of our house. The taxi
driver didn’t seem to notice as he aggressively manoeuvred around the growing afternoon traffic. What had my parents done? Were we felons fleeing the law?

Mum slipped her hand into mine, and I pried Dad’s from his backpack. The sweat from our palms sealed our hands together. They couldn’t have committed a crime. This was all some
misunderstanding, or the best opening ever to a hidden-camera TV show.

The world looked the same. There was no alien spaceship hovering over the Washington Monument. No mushroom cloud emanating from the direction of the White House. The sky was bright blue, not
even a wispy cloud in sight. But everything normal had faded away. My life switched from
Glee
to
Drag Me to Hell
in one afternoon.