“Oh what?”
“Nothing. Honestly.”
“Can I ask you something?” Let’s get this over with.
“Did you ever come out to your parents?” Mateo asks.
Avoiding a question with another question. Classic. “On our last day together, yeah. I couldn’t put it off any longer.” My parents had never hugged me like they did on their End Day. I’m really proud I spoke up to get that moment out of them. “My mom got really sad because she’d never get a chance to meet her future daughter-or son-in-law. I was still a little uncomfortable, so I just laughed and asked Olivia if there was anything she wanted us all to do, hoping she’d hate me a little less. My parents wanted to ditch me.”
“They were just looking out for you, right?”
“Yeah, but I wanted every possible minute with them, even if it meant being left with the memory of watching them all die in front of me,” I say. “I didn’t know any better.” That idiocy died too.
“Then what happened?” Mateo asks.
“You don’t have to have the details,” I say. “You might be better off without them.”
“If you have to carry this around, I will too.”
“You asked for it.”
I tell him everything: how Olivia wanted to go up one last time to this cabin near Albany where we always went for her birthday. The roads were slippery on our way upstate and our car flew into the Hudson River. I’d sat shotgun because I thought it bettered our chances of surviving a head-on car crash if both of my parents weren’t in the front. It didn’t matter. “Same song, different verse,” I tell Mateo before going on about the screeching tires, the way we busted through the road’s safety rail and tumbled into the river. . . .
“I sometimes forget their voices,” I say. It’s only been four months, but that’s fact. “They blend with the voices of people around me, but I could recognize their screams anywhere.” I’m getting goose bumps up my arms thinking about it.
“You don’t have to go on, Rufus. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have encouraged you to keep talking about it.”
Mateo knows how this ends, but there’s more to it. I stop because he has the basics and I’m crying a little and need to keep my shit together so he doesn’t freak out. He places a hand on my shoulder and pats my back, and it reminds me of all the other seniors who tried comforting me over texts and Facebook but didn’t know what to say or do because they’d never lost someone the way I had.
“You’re okay,” he adds. “Let’s talk about something else, like . . .” Mateo scans the area around us. “Birds and beat-up buildings and—”
I straighten up. “That was pretty much it anyway. I ended up with Malcolm, Tagoe, and Aimee. We became the Plutos and that was exactly the kind of company I needed—we were all lost and okay with not being found for a while.” I dry my eyes with my fist and shift toward Mateo. “And now you’re stuck with me until the end. Don’t run away again or you might get kidnapped and find yourself the inspiration for some shitty thriller movie.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mateo says. He has a kind smile. “What’s next?”
“Game for whatever.”
“Should we go make a moment?”
“I thought we were already making moments, but why not.”
MATEO
8:32 a.m.
On the way to the Make-A-Moment station, Rufus stops in front of a sporting goods store. In the window there are posters of a man cycling, a woman in ski gear, and a man and woman running side by side, with celebrity smiles and zero sweat.
Rufus points at the woman in ski gear. “I always sent Olivia photos of people skiing. We went skiing every year, up at Windham. You’re gonna think we were stupid for always going back. My pops broke his nose on the first trip by smashing it against a rock; we were really shocked he didn’t die, even though Death-Cast hadn’t called. My mom sprained her ankle on the next trip. Two years ago I got a concussion after skiing downhill. I suck at braking and almost ran down some kid, so I switched left at the last second and slammed into a tree like some fucking cartoon character.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I have no idea why you kept going back.”
“Olivia put her foot down after I was admitted to the hospital. But we continued driving up to Windham whenever we could because we loved the mountains, the snow, and playing games by our fireplace in the cabin.” Rufus keeps it moving. “I’m hoping this spot is as safe and fun as that was.”