I bump into a waist-high table while eyeing an antique clock on top of a bookshelf, knocking over their display copies of back-to-school books. I apologize to the bookseller—Joel, according to his name tag—and he tells me not to worry and assists me.
Rufus leaves his bike in the front of the store and follows me as I tour the aisles. I read the staff recommendations, all different genres praised in different handwriting, some more legible than others. I try avoiding the grief section, but two books catch my eye. One is Hello, Deborah, My Old Friend, the biography by Katherine Everett-Hasting that caused some controversy. The other is that bestselling guide no one shuts up about, Talking About Death When You’re Unexpectedly Dying, written by some man who’s still alive. I don’t get it.
They have a lot of my favorites in the thriller and young adult sections.
I pause in front of the romance section, where they have a dozen books wrapped in brown paper stamped “Blind Date with a Book.” There are little clues on what the book is to catch your interest, like the profile of someone you meet online. Like my Last Friend.
“Have you ever dated anyone?” Rufus asks.
The answer feels obvious. He’s nice for giving me the benefit of the doubt. “Nope.” I’ve only had crushes, but it’s embarrassing to admit they were characters in books and TV shows. “I missed out. Maybe in the next life.”
“Maybe,” Rufus says.
I sense there’s something more he wants to say; maybe he wants to crack a joke about how I should sign up for Necro so I don’t die a virgin, as if sex and love are the same thing. But he says nothing.
I could be totally wrong.
“Was Aimee your first girlfriend?” I ask. I grab the paper-wrapped book with an illustration of a criminal running away, holding an oversized playing card, a heart: “Heart Stealer.”
“First relationship,” Rufus says, playing with this spinner of New York City–themed postcards. “But I had things for other classmates in my old school. They never went anywhere, but I tried. Did you ever get close to someone?” He slides a postcard of the Brooklyn Bridge out the spinner. “You can send them a postcard.”
Postcards.
I smile as I grab one, two, four, six, twelve.
“You had a lot of crushes,” Rufus says.
I move for the cash register, where Joel assists me again. “We should send postcards to people, you know?” I keep it vague because I don’t want to break the news to this bookseller that the customers he’s ringing up are dying at seventeen and eighteen. I’m not going to ruin his day. “The Plutos, any classmates . . .”
“I don’t have their addresses,” Rufus says.
“Send it to the school. They’ll have the address for anyone you graduated with.”
It’s what I want to do. I buy the mystery book and the postcards, thank Joel for his help, and we leave. Rufus said the key to his relationships was speaking up. I can do this with the postcards, but I have to use my voice, too.
“I was nine when I bothered my dad about love,” I say, looking through the postcards again at places in my own city I never visited. “I wanted to know if it was under the couch or high up in the closet where I couldn’t reach yet. He didn’t say that ‘love is within’ or ‘love is all around you.’”
Rufus wheels his bike beside me as we pass this gym. “I’m hooked. What did he say?”
“That love is a superpower we all have, but it’s not always a superpower I’d be able to control. Especially as I get older. Sometimes it’ll go crazy and I shouldn’t be scared if my power hits someone I’m not expecting it to.” My face is warm, and I wish I had the superpower of common sense because this isn’t something I should’ve ever said out loud. “That was stupid. Sorry.”
Rufus stops and smiles. “Nah, I liked that. Thanks for that story, Super Mateo.”
“It’s actually Mega Master Mateo Man. Get it right, sidekick.” I look up from the postcards. I really like his eyes. Brown, and tired even though he got some rest. “How do you know when love is love?”
“I—”
Glass shatters and we’re suddenly thrown backward through the air as fire reaches out toward a screaming crowd. This is it. I slam against the driver’s side of a car, my shoulder banging into the rearview mirror. My vision fades—darkness, fire, darkness, fire. My neck creaks when I turn and Rufus is beside me, his beautiful brown eyes closed; he’s surrounded by my postcards of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Union Square, and the Empire State Building. I crawl toward him and tense as I reach out to him. His heart is pounding against my wrist; his heart, like mine, desperately doesn’t want to stop beating, especially not in chaos like this. Our breaths are erratic, disturbed and frightened. I have no idea what happened, just that Rufus is struggling to open his eyes and others are screaming. But not everyone. There are bodies on the ground, faces kissing cement, and beside one woman with very colorful hair who’s struggling to get up is another, except her eyes are skyward and her blood is staining a rain puddle.