If You Lived Here You'd Be Famous by Now by Via Bleidner

Author:Via Bleidner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

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As it turns out, the interesting stuff happening somewhere else isn’t a fatal car accident, but the faculty’s secret preparation for Every Fifteen Minutes. It’s a biennial drunk driving program, designed to traumatize teenagers into navigating the roads very carefully for approximately one week before everyone forgets and re-enables Snapchat push notifications. It takes a dated statistic extremely literally: every fifteen minutes, the principal makes a somber announcement that another student has died as a result of drunk or distracted driving. And for the rest of the day, the chosen student mopes around campus in zombie makeup, not allowed to speak to anyone. When first period lets out, the quad is quieter than usual, a sudden melancholy dropped over an otherwise sunny day. It could be because campus socialite Parker Judge and her on-again, off-again boyfriend are splitsville once again. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because we’ve all been forced into a method acting experiment that involves the mourning of our fake-dead peers. Idk.

On the second day of the event we’re led to the parking lot. There’s a huge black curtain rigged in front of four or five bleachers, and a substantial portion of Mulholland Highway is cordoned off. Police cars line the street. When we settle down, the curtain drops and an audio recording of a major crash screeches through the speaker system. Laid out before us, like a sixth-grader’s diorama, is a car wreck. A girl I recognize from my history class hangs limp like a rag doll through a windshield, her legs mangled and bloodied. We sit in a shocked silence, less so at the unfolding melodrama and special-effects makeup and more so in disbelief that this program is allowed to happen. I lock eyes with an open fracture. “BestGore,” someone behind me murmurs. A girl stands and sprints to the bathroom; I’ll later learn that she’d lost members of her family in a traffic collision.

An ambulance whirrs down the street, escorted by more cop cars. A paramedic pulls a boy from the wreckage with the Jaws of Life. Principal Stack makes her way to the front of the scene and collapses to her knees, wailing: “Oh God, oh God. My students. My poor, poor students.” It’s over the top. It’s twisted. It’s so deeply Calabasas.

Students selected to participate in the program are expected to keep it a secret, even though it’s a tempting brag; it’s considered a high honor to be chosen—everyone wants to play dead, to see how their friends would react if they died in an immediate and tragic way. Teachers nominate their students with the intention to create a valid sample size from all corners of the student body. They then meet in the early hours of the morning for educational workshops and rehearsals. I’ve been nagging Eli about this for months, trying to garner a confession out of him. But he’s pled innocence every time. My suspicions are far from irrational, given his status not only as head theater kid but also as a bit of a heartthrob.

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