RUFUS
1:14 p.m.
Yo. A little over twelve hours ago that Death-Cast dude hit me up telling me I’m a goner today. I’m sitting on a street curb, hugging my knees like I did in the back of the ambulance when my family died, straight shaken now over that explosion, the kind you only see in summer blockbusters. Police and ambulance sirens are blasting, and the firefighters are handling business on the burning gym, but it’s too late for mad people. Deckers need to start wearing special collars or jackets, something that’ll clue us in on not flocking in one place. That could’ve been me and Mateo if we were a minute or two slower. Maybe, maybe not. But I know this: a little over twelve hours ago, I got a phone call telling me I’m gonna die today, and I thought I made my peace with that, but I’ve never been more scared in my life of what’s gonna go down later.
MATEO
1:28 p.m.
The fire has been put out.
My stomach has been screaming at me for the past twenty minutes to feed it, as if I can call time-out on my End Day to have another meal without wasting valuable time, and as if Rufus and I weren’t almost just killed in an explosion that claimed other Deckers.
Witnesses are speaking to the cops and I don’t know what they could possibly be saying. The explosion that destroyed the gym came out of nowhere.
I sit beside Rufus, his bike, and my bookstore bag. The postcards are scattered all around us and they can stay there on the ground. I don’t have it in me to write anything when there are Deckers who’ve now found themselves in body bags, on the way to the morgue.
I can’t trust this day.
RUFUS
1:46 p.m.
I gotta keep it moving.
I want more than anything to sit across from the Plutos and talk about nothing, but the next best thing to break me out of this mood is a bike ride. It’s what I did after my parents and Olivia died, and when Aimee broke up with me, and this morning after beating down Peck and getting the alert. Once we’re away from the chaos I get on the bike, flexing the brakes. Mateo dodges my gaze. “Please get on,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve spoken since being thrown in the air like a wrestler.
“No,” Mateo says. “I’m sorry. It’s not safe.”
“Mateo.”
“Rufus.”
“Mateo.”
“Rufus.”
“Please, Mateo. I gotta ride after what went down and I don’t wanna leave you behind. We’re supposed to be living, period. We know how this ends for both of us, but I don’t wanna look back on any moment thinking we straight wasted it. This isn’t some dream and we won’t wake up from this.”
I don’t know what else I can do. Get on my knees and beg? It’s not my style, but I’ll give it a go if it gets him to come with me.
Mateo looks seasick. “Promise to go slow, okay? Avoid going down any hills and through puddles.”
“Promise.”
I hand him the helmet, which he’s refusing, but there’s no way in hell I’m more at risk than he is. He straps the helmet on, hangs the bookstore bag from the handlebar, climbs on the rear pegs, and grips my shoulders.
“Is this too tight? I just don’t want to fall, helmet or not.”
“No, you’re fine.”
“Cool.”
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
I pedal, slowly, feeling the burn in my calves as I carry two people forward; it’s like running up a hill. I find a good rhythm and put the police and corpses and destroyed gym behind us.
DEIRDRE CLAYTON
1:50 p.m.
Death-Cast did not call Deirdre Clayton because she isn’t dying today, but she’s going to prove them wrong.
Deirdre is on the ledge of her apartment building roof, eight stories high. There are two deliverymen watching her, either interested in catching her with the couch they’re moving into the building or else placing bets on if she’s a Decker or not. The blood and broken bones on the pavement will settle their wager.
This isn’t the first time Deirdre has found herself higher than the world. Seven years ago, back when she was in high school and months after Death-Cast’s services became available to the public, Deirdre was challenged to a fight after school, and when Charlotte Simmons and instigators and other students who only knew Deirdre as “that lesbian with the dead parents” arrived at what was supposed to be the battlefield, Deirdre was on the roof instead. She never understood how the way she loves could drag such hatred out of others, and she refused to stick around to find the love everyone hated her for. Except back then she had her childhood best friend to talk her down.