“Why are they all in black and white?” Mateo asks.
“I got the account a few days after I moved in to the foster home. My boy Malcolm took this one photo of me, look . . .” I scoot closer to him and scroll down to my first wave of photos, self-conscious about my dirty fingernail for half a second before no longer giving a shit. I click the photo of me sitting on my bed at Pluto with my face in my hands. Malcolm is the credited photographer. “It was my third or fourth night there. We were playing board games and I was freaking out in my head because I was feeling guilty for having a decent time—nah, kill that. I was having mad fun, that’s what made it worse. I walked away without a word and Malcolm hunted me down because I was taking too long and he captured my breakdown.”
“Why?” Mateo asks.
“He said he liked tracking a person’s growth and not just physically. He’s hard on himself, but he’s smart as hell.” But for real, I kicked Malcolm in his giant knee when he first showed me that photo weeks later. Creep. “I keep my photos in black and white because my life lost color after they died.”
“And you’re living your life but not forgetting theirs?” Mateo asks.
“Exactly.”
“I thought people got on Instagram just to be on Instagram.”
I shrug. “Old school.”
“Your photos look old school,” Mateo says. He shifts, looking at me with wide eyes. He smiles at me for the first time and yo, this is not the face you see on a Decker. “You don’t need the CountDowners app, you can post everything here. You can create a hashtag or whatever, too. But I think you should post your life in color. . . . Let that be how the Plutos remember you.” The smile goes away because that’s the nature of today. “Forget it. That’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” I say. “I actually really like this. The Plutos can revisit the times I lived with them in black and white, like a cooler history book, and my End Day will have its own unfiltered contrast. Can you take a pic of me sitting here? In case it’s my last post, I want everyone to see me alive.”
Mateo smiles again, like he’s the one posing for the photo.
He gets up and points the camera my way.
I don’t pose. I just sit here with my back against the wall, in the spot where I convinced my Last Friend to keep adventuring and where he gave me the idea to add some life to my profile. I don’t even smile. I’ve never been a smiler and starting now feels off. I don’t want them to see a stranger.
“Got it,” Mateo says. He hands me the phone. “I can take another if you hate it.”
I don’t care about photo approval, I’m not that into myself. The photo is surprisingly dope though. Mateo caught me looking sad and proud all at once, like my parents looked the day Olivia graduated high school. And the front wheel of my bike makes a cameo too. “Thanks, dude.”
I upload the picture, unfiltered. I consider captioning it with #EndDay, but I don’t need fake sympathetic “oh no, R.I.P!!!!” comments or trolls telling me to “Rest in Pieces!!!!” The people who matter the most to me know.
And I hope they remember me as I was and not as the guy who punched in someone’s face earlier for no real good reason.
PATRICK “PECK” GAVIN
7:08 a.m.
Death-Cast did not call Patrick “Peck” Gavin because he’s not dying today, though he was expecting the alert before his attacker received the call himself.
He’s home now, pressing a frozen hamburger patty against his bruises. It smells, but the migraine is fading away.
Peck shouldn’t have left Aimee in the street, but she didn’t want to see him and he’s not exactly happy with her either. He used his old phone and called Aimee up, but the arguing only lasted so long before she began passing out from exhaustion, and it was so hard not to hang up on her when she said she wanted to make an effort to see Rufus again, to be with him on his End Day.
Peck used to operate by a code with people like Rufus.
A code that goes into play when someone tries to walk all over you.
Peck has a lot to sleep on. But things aren’t looking good for Rufus if he’s still around when Peck wakes up.
RUFUS
7:12 a.m.
My phone vibrates and I’m counting on it being the Plutos, but that hope gets squashed once a chime follows. Mateo checks his phone and gets the same notification—another message we both got today: Make-A-Moment location nearby: 1.2 miles.
I suck my teeth. “What the hell is this?”
“You never heard of it?” Mateo asks. “They launched last fall.”
“Nope.” I keep it moving down the block, half-listening, half-wondering why the Plutos haven’t hit me back yet.
“It’s sort of like the Make-A-Wish Foundation,” Mateo says. “But any Decker can go, it’s not just for kids. They have these low-grade virtual reality stations designed to give you the same thrills as crazy experiences like skydiving and racecar driving and other extreme risks Deckers can’t safely experience on their End Day.”
“So it’s a straight rip-off, watered-down version of the Make-A-Wish Foundation?”
“I don’t think it’s all that bad,” Mateo says.
I check my phone again to see if I’ve missed any messages. As I step off the curb Mateo’s arm bangs into my chest.
I look right. He looks right. I look left. He looks left.
There are no cars. The street is dead quiet.
“I know how to cross the street,” I say. “I’ve sort of been walking my entire life.”
“You were on your phone,” Mateo says.
“I knew no cars were coming,” I say. Crossing the street is pretty instinctive at this point. If there are no cars, you go. If there are cars coming toward you, you don’t go—or you go really quickly.
“I’m sorry,” Mateo says. “I want this day to last.”
He’s on edge, I know. But he needs to step off at some point.
“I get it. But walking? I got this.”
I look both ways again before crossing the empty street. If anyone should be nervous, it’s the guy who watched his family drown in a sinking car. I didn’t exactly beat my grief to the point where I would’ve ever seen myself comfortably getting in a car over the next few years, but then there’s Malcolm, who digs fireplaces even though he lost his parents to a house fire. I don’t have that in me. But I’m also not looking right to left, left to right, like Mateo is until we make it to the opposite curb, like there’s a ninety-nine percent chance a car will pop out of nowhere and run us down in point-five seconds.
Mateo’s phone rings.
“Make-A-Moment people making house calls?” I ask.
Mateo shakes his head. “Lidia is calling from her grandmother’s phone. Should I . . .” He puts his phone back in his pocket and doesn’t answer.
“Well played on her end,” I say. “At least she’s reaching out. Haven’t heard shit from my friends.”
“Keep trying.”
Why not? I park my bike against the wall and FaceTime Malcolm and Tagoe. Both are no-gos. I FaceTime Aimee, and right when I’m about to hang up and send all the Plutos a picture of me flipping them off, Aimee answers, breathing quickly, her eyes strained, her hair sticking to her forehead. She’s home.
“I was knocked out!” Aimee shakes her head. “What time is . . . You’re alive. You . . .” She loses my eyes for a second; she’s staring at one half of Mateo’s face. She leans over like the phone’s camera is a window she can stick her head out of for a closer look. It’s like when I was thirteen and flipping through magazines, I’d scout for pictures of girls in skirts and dudes in shorts and would tilt the page to see what was underneath. “Who’s that?”
“This is Mateo,” I say. “He’s my Last Friend.” Mateo waves. “And this is my friend Aimee.” I don’t add that she’s the girl who body-slammed my heart, because I’m not trying to make everyone uncomfortable here. “I’ve been calling you.”
“I’m sorry. Everything got crazy after
you left,” Aimee says, rubbing her eyes with her fist. “I got home a couple hours ago and my phone was dead and I set it to charge but fell asleep before it came back on.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Malcolm and Tagoe got arrested,” Aimee says. “They wouldn’t stop mouthing off and Peck threw them under the bus since they were with you.”
I storm away from Mateo, telling him to stay put. He looks pretty frightened; so much for taking any suspicion of me being a shitty person to the grave. “Are they okay? Which station?”
“I don’t know, Roof, but you shouldn’t go looking around for them unless you want to spend your last day in a holding cell where who-knows-what will happen to you.”
“This is bullshit. They didn’t do anything!” I raise my fist to punch in this car window, but that’s not me, I swear it’s not, I don’t go around hitting things and hitting people. I slipped up with Peck, that’s that. “And what’s good with Peck?”
“He followed me home, but I didn’t want to talk to him.”
“You ended things with him, right?”
She doesn’t answer.
If we were chatting on the phone instead of over video, I wouldn’t have to be disappointed by the face she’s giving me. I could pretend she’s nodding her head, getting ready to break up with him if she hadn’t already. But that’s not what I’m seeing.
“It’s complicated,” Aimee says.
“You know, Ames, it didn’t seem complicated or confusing when you broke up with me. That legit sucks, but there isn’t a bigger kick to the nuts than you turning your back on the Plutos for the punk-ass kid who got them locked up. We’re supposed to be tight and I’m gonna be out the picture soon enough and you’re actually gonna tell me to my face that you’re keeping that motherfucker in your life?” Screw body-slamming my heart, this girl ripped her own out mad long ago. “They were innocent.”
“Rufus, they weren’t totally innocent, you know that, right?”
“Yeah, bye. I gotta get back to my real friend.”
Aimee begs me not to hang up and I hang the hell up anyway. I can’t believe my boys are in jail for my stupidity and I can’t believe she didn’t tell me sooner.
I turn around to tell Mateo everything but he’s gone.
AIMEE DUBOIS
7:18 a.m.
Aimee gives up calling Rufus. There are three possible explanations for why Rufus isn’t picking up, ranked from greatest hope to biggest fear:
1. He’s ignoring her but will call her back.
2. He’s blocked her number and has no interest in reaching out.
3. He’s dead.
Aimee goes on Rufus’s Instagram, leaving comments on his pictures asking him to call her back. She charges her phone, raises the volume, and changes into an old T-shirt of Rufus’s and her shorts.
Aimee has really gotten into exercise ever since becoming a Pluto. When she originally snuck into her foster parents’ room, looking for something to steal from Francis, who gave her the weakest welcome, she spotted Jenn Lori’s bedside dumbbells and gave lifting a shot. Her own parents, locked up for robbing a family-owned movie theater, inspired her kleptomaniac urges, but Aimee discovered working on herself made her feel more powerful than stealing from others.
Aimee already misses going on runs with Rufus while he rides his bike.
And she’ll always think back to the time when she taught him to do a proper push-up.
And she has no idea what comes next.
MATEO
7:22 a.m.
I keep running down the block, far away from Rufus.
I’m Last Friend–less, but maybe dying alone is an okay End Day for someone who lived his life pretty alone.
I don’t know what Rufus was involved in that led to his friends being arrested. Maybe he was hoping to use me as some alibi. But now I’m gone.
I stop to catch my breath. I sit on the stoop of this daycare and press my palm against my aching rib cage.
Maybe I should go back home and play some video games. Write more letters. I even wish I was still in high school and attending one of Mr. Kalampoukas’s classes because he always made me feel seen. Though sharing a chemistry lab with kids who were always texting while mixing chemicals was terrifying, even last fall when it wasn’t my End Day.
“MATEO!”
Rufus is riding his bike down the block, his helmet swinging from the handlebars. I get up and keep moving, but it’s no use. Rufus pulls up next to me, swinging his left leg behind the seat, and then hops off his bike. The bike falls to the ground as Rufus catches me by my arm. He looks me in the eyes, and when I realize he isn’t pissed, but instead frightened, I’m absolutely certain he isn’t how I end.
“Are you crazy?” Rufus asks. “We’re not supposed to split up.”
“And you’re not supposed to be a total stranger,” I say. We’ve been together for several hours now. I sat down with him at his favorite diner, where he told me who he wanted to be if he had years ahead of him. “But you’re apparently running from the cops and you never mentioned that once.”
“I don’t know if the cops are actually looking for me,” Rufus says. “They gotta know I’m a Decker, and it’s not like I robbed a bank, so they’re not gonna send the entire force looking for me.”
“What did you do?”
Rufus lets go of me and looks around. “Let’s go somewhere and talk. I’ll give you the full story. The accident that killed my family and the stupid thing I did last night. No more secrets.”
“Follow me.”
I’m choosing the place. I mostly trust him, but until I know everything, I don’t want to be completely alone with him again.
We walk in silence into Central Park, passing early risers as we do. There are enough cyclists and joggers around that I feel comfortable, especially since Rufus is keeping his distance by staying on the grass, where a young golden retriever is chasing its owner around. The dog reminds me of the CountDowners story I was following when I received my alert, though I’m sure this dog and that one aren’t one and the same.
I maintain the silence at first because I wanted us to settle in before Rufus explains himself, but the deeper we go into the park, the quieter I get because of pure wonder, especially as we stumble onto a bronze sculpture of characters from Alice in Wonderland. Dark green leaves crush under my feet as I approach Alice and the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter.
“How long has this been here?” I’m embarrassed to ask. I’m sure it’s not new.
“I don’t know. Probably forever,” Rufus says. “You never seen it?”
“No.” I look up at Alice, who’s sitting on a gigantic mushroom.
“Wow. You’re like a tourist in your own city,” Rufus says.
“Except tourists know more about my own city than I do,” I say. This is a completely unexpected find. Dad and I prefer Althea Park, but we’ve spent a lot of time in Central Park too. He loves Shakespeare in the Park. Plays aren’t really my thing, but I went with him to one, and it was fun for me because the theater reminded me of coliseums in my favorite fantasy novels and gladiator matches in Rome from movies. I wish I’d discovered this piece of Wonderland as a kid so I could’ve climbed on top of the mushrooms with Alice and imagined adventures of my own.
“You found it today,” Rufus says. “That’s a win.”
“You’re right.” I’m still stunned this has been here all along, because when you think of parks, you think of trees and fountains and ponds and playgrounds. It’s sort of beautiful how a park can surprise me, and it gives me hope that I can surprise the world too.
But not all surprises are welcome.
I sit down on the mushroom beside the White Rabbit. Rufus sits next to the Mad Hatter. His silence is an awkward one, like those times in history class when we reviewed monumental events from the BDC days. My teacher, Mr. Poland, would tell us “how good we got it” for having Death-Cast’s services. He’d assign us reports where we reimagined periods of sig
nificant deaths—the plague, the world wars, 9/11, et cetera—and how people would’ve behaved had Death-Cast been around to deliver the warning. The assignments, quite honestly, made me feel guilty for growing up in a time with a life-changing advancement, sort of like how we have medicine to cure common diseases that killed others in the past.
“You didn’t murder anyone, right?” I finally ask. There’s only one answer here that will get me to stay. The other will get me to call the police so he can be detained before killing anyone else.
“Of course not.”
I’ve set the bar so high it should be easy enough for him to stay under. “Then what?”
“I jumped someone,” Rufus says. He’s staring straight ahead at his bike, parked by the pathway. “Aimee’s new boyfriend. He was mouthing off about me and I was pissed because it felt like my life was ending in a lot of ways. I felt unwanted, frustrated, lost, and I needed to take it out on someone. But that’s not me. It was a glitch.”
I believe him. He’s not monstrous. Monsters don’t come to your home to help you live; they trap you in your bed and eat you alive. “People make mistakes,” I say.
“And my friends are the ones being punished,” Rufus says. “Their last memory of me will be running out the back door from my own funeral because the cops were coming for me. I left them behind. . . . I’ve spent the past four months feeling abandoned by my family dying, and in a split second I did the same damn thing to my new family.”
“You don’t have to tell me more about the accident if you don’t want,” I say. He feels guilty enough as it is, and just like I wouldn’t ever push a homeless person into sharing their story so I can determine whether or not they deserve my charity, I don’t need Rufus to jump through any more hoops to keep my trust.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Rufus says. “But I have to.”