The Half-Life of Planets (4 page)

Liana tugs on my arm and suddenly we're walking down the hall. “Liana!” some lady I assume is her mom calls from down the hall. “Will you come here for a minute?”

“I'll be right there,” she calls, but then to me says, “Which room?”

“Right up here on the left.”

“Great. You can say we're classmates who just bumped into each other. Where do you go to school?”

“Melville West,” I tell her.

“Oh. I go to East, but they're both big schools.” She shrugs and her T-shirt rises just a little, riding up to reveal a little piece of her lower back. I check for a tattoo at the base of her spine and see none. Chase refers to tattoos in that spot as “tramp stamps” and has told me that I should always check for the tramp stamp, so I do, though I suppose it means different things to us. I assume that a girl with the tramp stamp would like Chase and is therefore inappropriate for me.

She smiles at me, and we walk into the room. Nurse Patti is gone. Mom still hasn't come back from the bathroom. I wonder if she fell in. That's what she always used to say to us when we took a long time in the bathroom. “Hey,” I say to Chase.

“Hey Sq—Hank, my man!” Chase says, smiling at Liana. He flicks his hand through his hair and shifts to the side so his bandaged leg is fully visible from where we're standing. “Who's your friend?”

“This, uh, this is Liana. We have science class together.”

“I had to hide from my mom,” Liana says. “And when Hank told me you went to Carville, I had to ask—Oh, how's the knee by the way?”

“Piece of cake,” Chase says. His eyes roam over her. His expression is one I can't identify.

“Anyway,” Liana continues, looking at Chase, “I'm starting to think about college, you know. I'm applying this fall…and I know Carville has a fantastic observatory. I'm just wondering if you know anything about the astronomy program or the—”

“It's an awesome facility. It's really—I mean, for me it's a thrill just to be able to see Dr. Borneaz on campus. You know? I'm like, here's this guy who's a giant in his field, and there he is eating a breakfast burrito two tables away from me.”

“Wow,” Liana says. I know from her plan that she is faking her surprise or enthusiasm. I can't help staring at Chase. I would be surprised if he could name all nine planets, or eight now since Pluto got demoted.

“You should definitely visit. On a clear night you can see Uranus.”

Liana laughs. “Well, listen, I've gotta go. Come on, Hank, you promised you'd buy me a cup of coffee.”

“No, I bought you the M&M's, remembe—Ow!” She stomps on my foot. And I still don't get it.

Chase says, “Hank. Come here for a minute.”

I lean over his bed, and he whispers in my ear, “She wants you to go with her. Don't be an idiot! Go, stud!”

“Oh. Thank you!” I say.

“Just looking out for you,” Chase says to me, but smiles at Liana.

“Okay,” I say to her. “Let's get you that cup of coffee.” We begin walking out of the room as Mother comes bustling back in.

“Oh. Hello!” Mother says.

“Hi, Mother,” I say.

Mother rolls her eyes and sighs. “Most people call me Helen,” Mother says to Liana. “Hank, introduce me to your friend.”

“Oh, sorry. Mother, this is Liana. We go to school together.” Mother smiles and stares. It looks like tears are beginning to form in her eyes. “And we have to go get coffee.”

“Nice to meet you,” Liana says, and this time I'm the one who's pulling her out of the room.

“So there's the universe, right?”
I sip my iced coffee and chew on the straw, looking not just at Hank but at all the people scattered around us in the hospital cafeteria.

Hank nods. “And there's Universal Records, which at one point was the—”

“Hank?” I've known the guy all of an hour—if you count the bathroom as the first point of knowing—and already I can tell he's about to spew info about music. But not really about songs, exactly. More like background details. I imagine he's got buckets of CDs at home, an iPod full of songs he can expose me to.

“Oh.” He fiddles with the wooden stirrer, making it into a mini guitar. “Was I about to barge in on your part of the conversation?”

I nod and check my watch. “I have to go but…I was talking about my project?” I shrug. Soon enough I'll be submerged in the lab, lulled by the whir of A.C. and meticulous note-taking. Notes. Not the kind of notes you randomly shove into someone's locker, which make them wonder about their place in the universe. More the kind you hand in for extra credit. “I'm not exactly sure what the report will end up being. For now I'm more like scratching the surface.”

“Of space?” Hank continues to strum the lilliputian guitar, doing chords and everything.

“Are you playing a real song?” I point to his fretwork. I attempted, for all of four classes, to play the guitar, but gave up. Maybe I didn't even want to play. I love music, but at the time I mainly was following this guy Simon, who played acoustic funk at Espresso Love, this coffee place on Ocean Boulevard in our thriving metropolis of downtown Melville. Espresso Love was the highlight of knowing Simon. Turns out people who play funk aren't necessarily funky.

Hank looks up from his guitar and makes eye contact with me for the first time. “It's ‘Satellite of Love'—Lou Reed. It just seemed appropriate—you know, because of your project.”

“I don't know that song,” I tell him. He looks truly surprised. No one else in the cafeteria seems to notice we are two virtual strangers having coffee on the last day of school. Or the first day of summer vacation, depending on how you look at it. One of the basic tools I learned way back in Earth Science was the art of predicting. Predictions are crucial for experiments in the lab, but in life they don't always make sense. For example: how the hell would I be able to predict meeting Hank?

“It's a good song. Not really great, but twangy and, not that I know you or anything, but you'd probably like it. If you like Squeeze, which you probably do because you're wearing…” His voice trails off, and we both look at my shirt. Or maybe I look at my shirt and he checks out what's under my shirt. But I don't care. Because of the note. Because I know I disagree with what the note says. And because we're in a hospital and because Hank isn't like a regular person. Or maybe I just think he's not like the people I normally hang out with. He's more pensive. Or more something. “Do you want to hear it sometime?”

I shrug and look in his eyes. “Yeah.” They're really light green. Sea-glass color. “So I was telling you about the explosions. In the universe. One's short—like only several seconds. And the other's even shorter—maybe just a fraction of a second.” I take my straw out of the plastic cup and flick coffee on my shirt by accident, then try and wipe it off with my hand. “Anyway, astronomers had no idea where the bursts came from. And you have to know the source…”

One table over, an old man suddenly starts sobbing. He's just sitting there crying, in front of the nurses with their frozen yogurts and the doctors in their water-blue scrubs and the various visitors like us. My stomach churns. He's so sad. Maybe his wife is sick. Or he is. Or something else I can't guess. I look at Hank. He doesn't seem to notice.

“Liana? Explosions?” Hank nudges me with a flick of his fake guitar.

This spring I got the idea for a project that would basically try to make sense of why stars twinkle, which sounds too dumb to say, but sounds a bit better when I think about the other issues, the explosions, the unknowns in space. Or things we think we know. So my job is to study refracting light and stars and shifts in moon phases and try to write about it in a coherent way, which is harder than it sounded in my mind when I first came up with the idea. I sigh and try to explain to Hank. “Right. Explosions. Now this famous scientist has shown that the explosions—short-duration bursts they call them—are caused by collisions of two really dense objects. Like neutron stars or a black hole or something.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“It is.” I collect my coffee debris; straw and sugar packet wrapper. “This coffee sucks.” Hank nods.

“Espresso Love's is way better. They play decent music, and on Thursdays, or if it's really slow, I'm sometimes able to DJ there.”

He likes Espresso Love. More points in his favor. “With records and everything?”

Hank blushes as though I caught him lying. “No. Not like that. I just meant…I have a solid two weeks' worth of music on my hard drive, plus another probably week and a half on an external hard drive. And I'll burn things and bring them there and play whatever I want—like a soundtrack.” He stands up, following me to the trash can to chuck out his own coffee, which wasn't iced because it turns out even though it's summer, he doesn't like ice in any of his drinks. He asked if I thought that was weird, but I told him I didn't because of my own root beer issues, and he was more than happy to hear about how I only really like soda from a glass bottle. One thing that's nice about meeting someone random like this, I guess, is that you can just say stuff like that and not care how it sounds.

“So you can control the atmosphere,” I say as we slide through the corridor past the pathetic gift shop with its newborn outfits in pink and blue, the overdyed carnations, the get-well cards, and junky books sold to help people pass the time. “Like the moon pulls the tides.”

“Yeah, I guess. I never thought of it that way.”

“How
did
you think about it?” I ask him when we're near room 202. My parents are probably analyzing every bit of information from the doctors, obsessing over cholesterol numbers and the like. “Because that's how I would. You get to choose the songs and make people feel a certain way while they're just sitting there, innocently ordering their lattes.” I grin at him.

He shakes his head, his unkempt hair momentarily covering his eyes. His brother's hair is surfer blond, tousled, but in a very planned way. Hank's is less studied. Unstudied, in fact, and darker blond. The kind of hair that threatens to turn blond if you live on the beach, but not if you work at Planet Guitar. “I just play what I want. If I feel like hearing Big Audio Dynamite, then I'll play it. And if right after that I segue into an English Beat song, that's just because I can. Not because I'm, like, wanting to make the audience swoon.” He cracks up with the last part, affecting an Elvis stance as he says it.

“But if you play, say, ‘The End of the Party,' which is one of my favorite Beat songs, by the way, then it fills the room with a certain energy. Electrodes or currents or just…” I think of that song. Of hearing it in my own room and hearing it, too, in my head at a certain party this spring when I found out, finally, what it was like to kiss Pren Stevens, the lead singer.

“‘
Say it now, you know there's never a next time
,'” Hank says, his voice monotone. We're paused directly in front of 202.

“Great line. Of course, then they contradict themselves later in the song by saying there's always a next time. But…” I falter, standing in my uncomfortable jeans, not because I want to get rid of Hank, but because I don't want to. Not for any reason I can pinpoint, but hanging with him beats having to deal with my parents before I get on with the rest of my summer.

My mother chooses this exact moment to stick her head out, ostrich-style, of the room. Her whole face yells perky even though her voice stays totally calm. “Daddy's fine,” she tells me, and casts a glance over at Hank.

“My dad's fine,” I tell Hank just so I'm not standing there saying nothing and feeling weird.

Hank nods and looks over his left shoulder toward the room where his brother is getting stitched or snapped into place.

Chase
is
fine, I think, though not in the health-related way. I recall his rather buff physique, his sly smile. Total player. I stick my hands in my pockets so I don't seem too jittery from the caffeine buzz. My fingers toy with the note. The entire note is only one word. When I think about it, this whole moment, the hospital corridor and Hank and my mother recede. It's like even though I'm not the sick one, I somehow have the diagnosis in my pocket.

One word. When I first looked at it near my locker, I actually flipped it over thinking that there'd be more to it. Like whoever'd sent it had more to say. Or wanted to elaborate.

Slut
.

First I thought this was proof the sender lacked brain power. Was less than stellar in the creativity department. Now I think they might win the Most Succinct award. Slut. Slut. The word is any part of speech—noun, adjective, and hey, if you believe the rumors, a verb. She sluts around. Doing what, exactly? Use your imagination, folks.

“Honey?” My mother beckons me back into the room.

I rejoin the waking world here in the corridor, and erase thoughts of Hank's brother's hotness.

“So…” I turn to Hank, who pushes the sleeve of his T-shirt up and bobs in place, probably desperate to leave. I think about saying ‘See you later,' but I probably won't, so I don't. “I guess…”

Hank takes no cue from me because right before he darts off, he says, “There
is
a next time, though, right? Like the song. So you don't have to say whatever it is you were going to say. ‘Say Say Say'—terrible song. Definitely Paul McCartney sinking to new lows, even by Wings standards.”

“Hank?” I rub my eyes, wired from the coffee, tired from the day. It's been fun having this random interaction, but now it's starting to feel like work. Or maybe he's easy and the rest of life is hard. I can't tell right now.

Hank stops jabbering—finally—but can't stop his eyes from swiveling down and up, sort of like he's trying to follow a fly. “So you're going?” I nod and move toward my mother, who is watching but pretending not to. “I'll see you Thursday, then,” he says. I raise my eyebrows to ask why, but he does me the favor of rambling on. “At Espresso Love.”

“The soundtrack?” I cross my arms so I'm sort of hugging myself. What is my prediction here? That we will meet at Espresso Love. Have coffee and never speak again? That I won't even show up? That we will ride off into the proverbial smoggy sunset? That someone will see us together and assume that he's just one of the many, that I'm up to my usual tricks, whatever people think those are, and we'll lock lips and then nothing? I bite my top lip and listen to the blips and bleeps coming from my father's room. You cannot predict anything.

He nods. “The soundtrack session. You'll meet me, okay?” He pauses. “Hey—now that's a great title, isn't it? For an album.
The Soundtrack Sessions
.”

It is a good title, but I can't tell him now. Now is me turning away from Hank, who is leaving. Now is me going over and hugging my dad and having him cry—not hard like the old man in the cafeteria; just a few quiet tears.

“I'm so relieved,” he says. My mother nods, patting his shoulder as he hugs me. The hospital gown is scratchy against my face.

What gets me is that they don't talk about the pattern. They don't acknowledge the fact that we were here four months ago with his potential appendicitis-or-is-it-liver-cancer scare. If I confronted my mother, she and I would end up like those explosions in the universe, only not as short-acting. My mother behaves as though holding a grudge is an Olympic sport. She still hasn't gotten over the kissing-in-the-basement incident. Only, her reaction is to not react. To avoid confrontation and discussion altogether.

My dad holds my hands in his, relieved. “What a day, huh?”

Wake up, people! I want to yell. He's fine! He will always be fine! It's something else that's the problem. But I can't scream this. And I can't even point to what exactly the other thing is that is the problem. I have my suspicions, though.

On the day of the soundtrack sessions I'm in the lab. When I'm there I feel the way some people must feel in church. The whole cavernous room is filled with all this mystery. Why are we here? How did we get here? Why does sunlight matter? What happens to water when it vaporizes? It's sacred somehow. The cool concrete walls tower over me, a safe and calm room with rows of soapstone tables, small sinks, and industrial shelves filled with Bunsen burners, textbooks, and model solar systems.

I take notes, jotting them in my looping scrawl onto the pages of my speckled green-and-white notebook, while studying the picture in front of me. It's an artist's rendition of a black hole devouring a neutron star. Mr. Pitkin, a.k.a. resident science guru, has left a question for me in my notebook and I have to answer it, or at least try to. He wants me to combine a whole ton of data from published star census reports in the hopes that mine will fit in there somewhere. That's where I get the academic credit. Stars and planets, those are my real interest. In his immaculate printing he has written:
Condensation theory says that the planets developed through coagulation of dust grains in a disk of gas and dust. Do you have evidence to support this?
This is some people's idea of hell, spending a perfectly decent summer day answering, “Asteroids and comets all hold clues from the original solar system formation. A lot are traceable right to the origin of the solar system.” I pause. What else…I jot “Plausible tracers from the early solar system are C-type asteroids and carbonaceous meteoroids,” because this will show him I actually paid attention to his tutorial over winter break despite the fact that I was hung up on yet another musician. “Characterization includes very high carbon content…something like 4.4–4.6 BILLION years old. This is determined from radioactive dating.” I stop there. He probably wouldn't mind this, the minimum effort. But I add a bit more. “Since the solar system is posited to have condensed about 4.6 billion years ago, these objects hold the most direct clues to that origin—based on their age.” That's the amazing thing about objects: they have a life of their own and tell more, sometimes without a voice, than people.