Half Lives by Sara Grant Read Free Book Online Page A

traditional male preoccupation but with quite a pervy twist. The final in her string of break-ups was the guy she thought was ‘the one’, until she’d found out that he
already had not one but two kids by different ‘ones’.
    ‘That’s when I shaved my head.’ She raked her fist across her scalp as if she had the electric razor in her hand. ‘I thought it was getting in the way. All guys saw was
the long black hair and these.’ She gestured to what must have been size quadruple G breasts. ‘Can’t do much about the rack, so I decided to simplify my life. Now I focus on my
sport.’
    I liked this girl who was all gang diva on the outside but cheerleader on the inside.
    The captain’s voice came over the plane’s intercom. Our flight was being diverted to Phoenix. The rest of his message was lost in the excited utterances of my fellow passengers.
    The gods were giving me a cosmic smack-down. I’d almost begun to believe that my parents had been mistaken, but diverting planes couldn’t be good. Mum had said attacks were planned
for big cities and Vegas was one of the biggest. All the panic from earlier came flooding back. I looked out of my window. It was pitch black. Anything could be happening down there. I gripped the
armrests because now real, raw fear took hold. The other passengers weren’t happy but they weren’t terrified like I was. Knowledge can
definitely
suck. Oh, to still be
blissfully ignorant about what was really happening.
    If it was a virus, then any of these people could be infected. What if Mum was wrong about the timing? What if some deadly virus was being re-circulated right now in the plane’s stale air?
I held my breath like that might actually do some good. I held it for as long as I could before exhaling in one burst.
    ‘You OK?’ Marissa looked at me as if I were an escaped mental patient.
    ‘Yeah’ was all I could say. I moved as far away from her as my seatbelt would allow. I decided right then that I wanted as little contact with other people as possible, not only
because they might be infecting me but also because I had a secret and I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it.
    Marissa was clueless. Maybe I should warn her, tell everybody, but who would believe me? I didn’t want to be carted away in a straitjacket. My parents had risked everything to give me a
fighting chance of survival. I didn’t want to blow it. I also couldn’t risk getting them into more trouble.
    ‘What are you going to do when we land?’ Marissa asked.
    I shrugged. I had no idea but I couldn’t have her tagging along or asking any more questions.
    ‘They’re probably re-booking everyone on flights to Vegas. Maybe we could try to get the same flight,’ she said.
    On any other day, I would have ‘friended’ Marissa on Facebook and probably made us squeeze together for a photo that I could post and tag.
    ‘They can probably get you a direct flight to LA and I don’t want to hold you up.’ I was speaking to the headrest in front of me more than to her.
    She gave me this hurt-puppy look and twisted away from me. ‘Yeah, whatever.’
    As soon as we landed and the seatbelt light dinged, she bolted down the aisle. I waited for everyone to exit the aircraft. The more distance between me and all potential virus carriers the
better.
    I followed the signs to check-in. I struggled under the weight of whatever was in my backpack. I didn’t have the time, energy or privacy to find out what my parents had packed in there
now. All I needed was another flight to Vegas.
    I decided to pretend I was in some teen version of
The Amazing Race
. If I thought of it as reality TV, instead of just plain reality, then my head and gut wouldn’t go all
supernova.
    I’d made it as far as the food court with the typical McDonald’s, Starbucks, something Mexican, something Chinese and a potato place, when an announcement rang out. The speakers
crackled. The voice was garbled, like someone speaking while