LIDIA VARGAS
9:14 a.m.
Death-Cast did not call Lidia Vargas because she isn’t dying today. But if she were, she would’ve told all her loved ones, unlike her best friend, who didn’t come out and tell her he’s dying.
Lidia figured it out. The clues were laid out for her to backtrack and piece everything together: Mateo coming over super early; the kind but out-of-the-blue words he’d said about her being an awesome mother; the envelope with four hundred dollars on her kitchen counter; blocking her number, which she’d taught him how to do.
In the first few minutes after Mateo pulled his disappearing act, Lidia freaked out, called her abuelita, and begged her to come home from the pharmacy where she works. Instead of fielding all of Abuelita’s questions, she took her phone and called Mateo, but he still didn’t respond. She’s praying it’s because he has Abuelita’s number stored in his contacts list, and not because he’s gone.
She’s not thinking that way. Mateo won’t live a long life, which is bullshit because he’s the greatest soul in this universe, but he’ll live a long day. He can die at 11:59 p.m., but not a minute before.
Penny is crying and Abuelita can’t figure out what’s wrong. Lidia knows all of Penny’s cries and how to calm her down. If Penny has a fever, Lidia sits Penny in her lap, singing into her ear. If Penny falls, Lidia scoops her up and hands her a toy with blinking lights or one that jingles; some toys do both, unfortunately. If Penny is hungry or needs a new diaper, the next steps are easy. Penny misses her uncle Mateo. But Lidia can’t FaceTime Mateo to say hi over and over because, again, he blocked her number.
Lidia logs on to Facebook. She used to use this account to keep up with friends from high school, but now she uploads photos of Penny for Christian’s family without having to text his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or that one cousin who’s always asking for dating advice.
Lidia visits Mateo’s page, which is a wasteland of nineteen mutual friends, two gorgeous pictures of sunrises in Brooklyn from a “Good Morning, New York!” fan page, an article about some instrument NASA created that allows you to hear what outer space sounds like, and a status from months ago that didn’t receive nearly enough love about being accepted to his online college of choice. Mateo has never been good about sharing his own stuff, obviously, but you can always count on him to comment on your photo or show love to your status. If it matters to you, it matters to him.
Lidia hates that Mateo is out there by himself. This isn’t the early 2000s, when people were dying without warning. Death-Cast is here to prepare Deckers and their loved ones, not for the Decker to turn their back on their loved ones. She wishes Mateo had let her into his life, every last minute of it.
She goes through Mateo’s photos, starting from the most recent: Mateo and Penny napping on the same couch Lidia is sitting on now; Mateo carrying Penny through the reptile room at the zoo, where they were both scared of snakes escaping; Mateo and his dad in Lidia’s kitchen, where his dad was teaching them how to make pegao; Mateo hanging streamers for Penny’s first birthday party; Mateo, Lidia, and Penny smiling in the backseat of Abuelita’s car; Mateo in his graduation cap and gown, hugging Lidia, who brought him flowers and balloons. Lidia clicks out of the photos. Memory lane is too painful when she knows he’s still out there, alive. She stares at his profile picture, a photo she took of him in his bedroom where he was looking out the window, waiting for the mailman to deliver his Xbox Infinity.
This time tomorrow, Lidia will put up a status about her best friend passing. People will reach out to her and offer their condolences, much like they did when Christian passed. And after everyone remembers Mateo, whether as the boy in their homeroom or at their lunch table, they’ll rush over to his page and leave comments like a digital memorial. How they hope he rests in peace. How he was too young to go. How they wish they’d taken the time to talk to him while he was alive.
Lidia will never know how Mateo is spending his End Day, but she hopes her best friend finds whatever he’s looking for.
RUFUS
9:41 a.m.
We stumble across seven abandoned pay phones in some ditch, underneath a highway leading north toward the Queensboro Bridge.
“We gotta go in there.”
Mateo is about to protest, but I hold up my finger, shutting that down real fast.
I drop my bike on the ground, and we crawl through an opening in the chain-link fence. There are rusty pipes, stuffed garbage bags that smell like old food and shit, and trails of blackened gum snaking around the pay phones. There’s graffiti of a Pepsi bottle beating the crap out of a Coca-Cola bottle; I take a picture, upload it to Instagram, and tag Malcolm so he knows he was with me on my End Day.