“Meet me at home. Just . . . get to me. Bye, Aimee.”
I hang up before she can protest. I get my bike, climbing on it as she calls nonstop.
“What’s the plan?” Malcolm asks.
“We’re going back to Pluto,” I tell them. “You guys are gonna throw me a funeral.”
I check the time: 1:30.
There’s still time for the other Plutos to get the alert. I’m not wishing it on them, but maybe I won’t have to die alone.
Or maybe that’s how it has to be.
MATEO
1:32 a.m.
Scrolling through CountDowners is a very serious downer. But I can’t look away because every registered Decker has a story they want to share. When someone puts their journey out there for you to watch, you pay attention—even if you know they’ll die at the end.
If I’m not going outside, I can be online for others.
There are five tabs on the site—Popular, New, Local, Promoted, Random—and I browse through Local searches first, as usual, to make sure I don’t recognize anyone. . . . No one; good.
It could’ve been nice to have some company today, I guess.
I randomly select a Decker. Username: Geoff_Nevada88. Geoff received his call four minutes after midnight and is already out in the world, heading to his favorite bar, where he hopes he doesn’t get carded because he’s a twenty-year-old who recently lost his fake ID. I’m sure he’ll get through okay. I pin his feed and will receive a chime next time he updates.
I switch to another feed. Username: WebMavenMarc. Marc is a former social media manager for a soda company, which he’s mentioned twice in his profile, and he isn’t sure if his daughter will reach him in time. It’s almost as if this Decker is right in front of me, snapping his fingers in my face.
I have to visit Dad, even if he’s unconscious. He has to know I made my way to him before I died.
I put down my laptop, ignoring the chimes from the couple accounts I’ve pinned, and go straight to Dad’s bedroom. His bed was unmade the morning he left for work, but I’ve made it for him since then, making sure to tuck the comforter completely under the pillows, as he prefers it. I sit on his side of the bed—the right side, since my mother apparently always favored the left, and even with her gone he still lives his life in two sides, never writing her out—and I pick up the framed photo of Dad helping me blow out the candles of my Toy Story cake on my sixth birthday. Well, Dad did all the work. I was laughing at him. He says the gleeful look on my face is why he keeps this picture so close.
I know it’s sort of strange, but Dad is just as much my best friend as Lidia is. I could never admit that out loud without someone making fun of me, I’m sure, but we’ve always had a great relationship. Not perfect, but I’m sure every two people out there—in my school, in this city, on the other side of the world—struggle with dumb and important things, and the closest pairs just find a way to get over them. Dad and I would never have one of those relationships where we had a falling-out and never talked to each other again, not like these Deckers on some CountDowners feeds who hate their fathers so much they either never visited them on their deathbeds or refused to make amends before they themselves died. I slip the photo out of the frame, fold it, and put it in my pocket—the creases won’t bother Dad, I don’t think—and get up to go to the hospital and say my goodbye and make sure this photo is by his side when he finally wakes up. I want to make sure he quickly finds some peace, like it’s an ordinary morning, before someone tells him I’m gone.
I leave his room, pumped to go out and do this, when I see the stack of dishes in the sink. I should clean those up so Dad doesn’t come home to dirty plates and mugs with impossible stains from all the hot chocolate I’ve been drinking.
I swear this isn’t an excuse to not go outside.
Seriously.
RUFUS
1:41 a.m.
We used to beast through the streets on our bikes like we were racing without brakes, but not tonight. We look both ways constantly and stop for red lights, like now, even when the street is clear of cars. We’re on the block with that Decker-friendly club, Clint’s Graveyard. There’s a crowd forming of twentysomething-year-olds and the line is straight chaos, which has gotta be keeping the paychecks coming for the bouncers dealing with all these Deckers and their friends trying to get crazy on the dance floor one last time before their time is up.
This brunette girl, mad pretty, is bawling when a guy advances on her with some tired-ass pickup line （“Maybe you’ll live to see another day with some Vitamin Me in your system.”）， and her friend swings her purse at him until he backs up. Poor girl can’t even get a break from assholes hitting on her when she’s grieving herself.