“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.