“Only because you have something I want,” Orion says, glancing at me before turning away again. “That’s what I wanted to ask about, actually. Does Scarlett know about all the heart stuff?”
“Not yet. The End Day was enough to chew on for starters. As a fellow registered organ donor, she’s going to be supportive. My heart not being in my corpse isn’t the thing that’s going to make her feel like her life is incomplete.”
I groan as a horrible image comes to mind.
“What’s wrong?” Orion asks.
“Thinking about all this organ stuff . . . I just pictured Scarlett dying in a plane crash and knowing her organs can’t be donated like she wanted.”
I can’t shake it out of my head. The screams, the chaos, the fire, the smoke.
Orion sits up, resting his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about that. The plane doesn’t take off for another few minutes, so unless Death-Cast is about to call all those passengers, Scarlett is going to be okay.”
Scarlett Prince
12:59 a.m. （Mountain Standard Time）
Death-Cast has not called Scarlett Prince to tell her whether she is going to die today, but as she’s entering this last possible hour for them to do so, Scarlett is white-knuckling her phone, unsure if she wants to share an End Day with her brother or face life without him.
Scarlett is no stranger to this anxiety, having almost died in May.
While she miraculously hasn’t been traumatized by cars, even when driving down the very freeway where that careless man crashed into her, there is an undeniable pain that has remained with her since the accident. It wasn’t the blood rushing to her head while upside down in her overturned MINI Cooper, or the tightness of the seat belt against her chest, or even the shards of glass that pierced her skin from the shattered passenger’s window, leaving some light scarring across her cheek and neck and arm. What hurt the most was the misery of how she was about to die alone, even though that’s not how she started her life.
That heartbreak still chokes her whenever she recalls that pain, a pain that her brother won’t ever know because she will be right by his side, even if it means witnessing a horrible death that he doesn’t deserve.
“I had a thought before blacking out,” Scarlett had told Valentino while recovering the morning after the accident. “That since I was the last one to enter this world, I would be the first one out. It’s like life got too crowded so people had to be fired.”
“You’re making death sound more poetic than it is,” Valentino had said.
“That’s the artist in me. Happy to be wrong.”
Scarlett was no longer happy to be wrong.
Valentino was the first one in and will be the first one out.
Unless they depart together, like a plane off to its destination, one-way.
Scarlett glances up to find everyone else in her row on their own phones, as if they’re all waiting to see if today will be their last. Then she has a horrible vision of a collective ringing throughout the entire plane, damning everyone even though they haven’t taken off yet. She doesn’t want to give that thought power, but it doesn’t help when she hears bells.
The Death-Cast ringtone.
They’re calling someone aboard this flight.
Scarlett’s phone is quiet and dark, and she’s immediately consumed by solving the mystery of the unlucky Decker. From her seat in the seventh row, Scarlett can hear the bells chiming from up ahead, possibly someone in first class. But everyone in that section is facing forward, staring up at the front cabin.
The pilot of this plane is going to die today.
What does that mean for everyone else?