I was forced to wait in the back of an ambulance with a towel that smelled like bleach around me as a team pulled their car out of the river.
“This was never your fault.” Mateo’s head is hanging low. “I’m going to give you a minute alone, but I’ll be waiting for you. I hope that’s what you want.” He walks off, taking my bike with him, before I can answer.
I don’t think a minute is enough—until I give in, crying harder than I have in weeks, and I hammer at the railing with the bottom of my fist. I keep going and going, hitting the railing because my family is dead, hitting it because my best friends are locked up, hitting it because my ex-girlfriend did us dirty, hitting it because I made a new dope friend and we don’t even have a full day together. I stop, out of breath, like I just won a fight against ten dudes. I don’t even want a picture of the Hudson, so I turn around and keep it behind, walking toward Mateo, who’s wheeling my bike in pointless circles.
“You win,” I say. “That was a good idea.” He doesn’t gloat like Malcolm would or taunt me like Aimee did whenever she won at Battleship. “My bad for snapping.”
“You needed to snap.”
He continues moving in his circle. I’m a little dizzy watching him.
“Truth.”
“If you need to snap again, I’m here. Last Friends for life.”
DELILAH GREY
12:52 p.m.
Delilah rushes to the only bookstore in the city that miraculously carries Howie Maldonado’s science fiction novel, The Lost Twin of Bone Bay.
Delilah speeds toward the store, staying far away from the curb, ignoring the catcall from a balding man with a large gym bag, and rushing past two boys with one bike.
She’s praying Howie Maldonado doesn’t move up the interview before she can get there when she remembers there are greater stakes at play in Howie’s dying life.
VIN PEARCE
12:55 p.m.
Death-Cast called Vin Pearce at 12:02 a.m. to tell him he’s going to die today, which isn’t that surprising.
Vin is pissed the beautiful woman with the colorful hair ignored him, pissed he never got married, pissed he was rejected by every woman on Necro this morning, pissed at his former coach who got in the way of his dreams, pissed at these two boys with a bike who are getting in the way of the destruction he’s going to leave behind. The boy in the biker gear is so slow, taking up sidewalk space with the bike he’s walking beside—bikes are meant to be ridden! Not carted around like a stroller. Vin barrels forward, no consequences in mind, bumping the boy’s shoulder with his own.
The boy sucks his teeth, but his friend grabs his arm, holding him back.
Vin likes to be feared. He loves it in the outside world, but he loved it most in the wrestling ring. Four months ago, Vin began experiencing muscle pains, but refused to acknowledge his weaknesses. Lifting weights was a struggle with poor results; sets of twenty pull-ups became sets of four, on good days; and his coach pulled him out of the ring indefinitely because fighting would be impossible. Illnesses have always run through his family—his father died years ago after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, his aunt died from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, and so on—but Vin believed he was better, stronger. He was destined for greatness, he was sure of it, like world championships and unbelievable riches. But chronic muscle disease pinned him down and he lost it all.
Vin walks inside the gym where he spent the past seven years training to become the next world heavyweight champion, the smell of sweat and dirty sneakers bringing back countless memories. The only memory that matters now is the one where his coach made him pack up his locker and suggested a new career route, like being a ringside commentator or becoming a coach himself.
Insulting.
Vin sneaks down to the generator room and pulls a homemade bomb out of his gym bag.
Vin is going to die where he was made. And he’s not dying alone.
MATEO
12:58 p.m.
We pass a shop window with classic novels and new books sitting in children’s chairs, like the books are hanging out in a waiting room, ready to be bought and read. I could use some lightness after the threatening grill of that man with the gym bag.
Rufus takes a picture of the window. “We can go in.”
“I won’t be longer than twenty minutes,” I promise.
We go inside the Open Bookstore. I love how the store name is hopeful.
This is the best worst idea ever. I have no time to actually read any of these books. But I’ve never been in this store before because I usually have my books shipped to me or I borrow them from the school library. Maybe a bookshelf will topple over and that’s how I go out—painful, but there are worse ways to die.