“Dying!” I interrupt, standing. I’m heated and I punch him mad hard in the arm. Not saying sorry either. “I’m dying and we can’t trade lives. You’re not a big nothing, but you can step your damn game up anyway.”
Tagoe stands, massaging his neck, beating back a twitch. “Roof, I’ll miss you shutting us up like this. You stop me from assassinating Malcolm whenever he eats off our plates and doesn’t flush twice. I was ready to see your damn mug until we were old.” Tagoe takes off his glasses, wiping his tears with the back of his hand, and closes it into a tight fist. He looks up, like he’s waiting for some Death pi?ata to drop from the ceiling. “You’re supposed to be a lifer.”
No one says anything, they just cry harder. The sound of everyone grieving me before I’m gone gives me crazy chills. I wanna console them and stuff, but I can’t snap out of my daze. I spent a lot of time feeling guilty for living after I lost my family, but now I can’t beat this weird Decker guilt for dying, knowing I’m leaving this crew behind.
Aimee steps up to the center and we all know this is about to get mad real. Brutal. “Is it lame to say I think I’m stuck in a nightmare? I always thought everyone was being so dramatic when they said that: ‘This feels like a nightmare.’ Like, really, that’s all you feel when tragedy happens? I don’t know how I wanted them to feel, but I can say now they hit the nail on the head. There’s another cliché for you, whatever. I want to wake up. And if I can’t wake up, I want to go to sleep forever where there’s a chance I dream everything beautiful about you, like how you looked at me for me and not because you wanted to gawk at this fuckery on my face.”
Aimee touches her heart, choking on her next words. “It hurts so much, Rufus, to think you won’t be around for me to call or hug and . . .” She stops looking at me; she’s squinting at something behind me, and her hand drops. “Did someone call the police?”
I jump out of my seat and see the flashes of red and blue in front of the duplex. I’m in full-on panic mode that feels insanely brief and mad long, like eight forevers. There’s only one person who isn’t surprised or freaking out. I turn to Aimee and her eyes follow mine back to Peck.
“You didn’t,” Aimee says, charging toward him. She snatches her phone from him.
“He assaulted me!” Peck shouts. “I don’t care if he’s on his way out!”
“He’s not expired meat, he’s another human being!” Aimee shouts back.
Holy shit. I don’t know how Peck did it because he hasn’t made any calls here, but he got the cops on me at my own funeral. I hope Death-Cast calls that bastard in the next few minutes.
“Go out the back,” Tagoe says, twitches running wild.
“You have to come with me, you guys were there.”
“We’ll slow them down,” Malcolm says. “Talk them out of it.”
There’s a knock on the door.
Jenn Lori points at the kitchen. “Go.”
I grab my helmet, walking backward toward the kitchen, taking in all the Plutos. My pops once said goodbyes are “the most possible impossible” ’cause you never wanna say them, but you’d be stupid not to when given the shot. I’m getting cheated out of mine because the wrong person showed up at my funeral.
I shake my head and run out the back, catching my breath. I rush through the backyard we all hated because of relentless mosquitoes and fruit flies, then hop the fence. I sneak back around to the front of the house to see if there’s a chance I can grab my bike before having to book it on my feet. The cop car is parked outside, but both officers must be inside, maybe even in the backyard by now if Peck snitched. I grab my bike and run with it down the sidewalk, hopping onto the seat once I get enough momentum.
I don’t know where I’m going, but I keep going.
I lived through my funeral, but I wish I was already dead.
MATEO
2:52 a.m.
The third time was not the charm. I can’t even tell you if Elle is actually a Decker, but I blocked her without investigating because she spammed me with links to “funny snuff videos gone wrong.” I closed the app afterward. Have to admit it, I feel a little vindicated in how I’ve lived my life because people can be the worst. It’s hard to have a respectful conversation, let alone make a Last Friend.
I keep receiving pop-up notifications for new messages, but I ignore them because I’m on the tenth level of A Dark Vanishing, this brutal Xbox Infinity game that has me wanting to look up cheat codes. My hero, Cove, a level-seventeen sorcerer with fire for hair, can’t advance through this poverty-stricken kingdom without an offering to the princess. So I walk (well, Cove walks) past all the hawkers trying to sell off their bronze pins and rusty locks and go straight for the pirates. I must’ve gotten lost in my head on the way to the harbor because Cove steps on a land mine and I don’t have time to ghost-phase through the explosion—Cove’s arm flies through a hut’s window, his head rockets into the sky, and his legs burst completely.
My heart pounds all through the loading screen until Cove is suddenly back, good as new. Cove’s got it good.
I won’t be able to respawn later.
I’m wasting away in here and . . .
There are two bookcases in my room. The blue bookcase on the bottom holds my favorite books that I could never get myself to purge when I did my monthly book donations to the teen health clinic down the block. The white bookcase on top is stacked with books I always planned on reading.
. . . I grab the books as if I’ll have time to read them all: I want to know how this boy deals with a life that’s moved on without him after he’s resurrected by a ritual. Or what it was like for the little girl who couldn’t perform at the school talent show because her parents received the Death-Cast alert while she was dreaming of pianos. Or how this hero known as the People’s Hope receives a message from these Death-Cast-like prophets telling him he’s going to die six days before the final battle where he was the key to victory against the King of All Evil. I throw these books across the room and even kick some of my favorites off their shelves because the line between favorites and books that will never be favorites doesn’t matter anymore.
I rush over to my speakers and almost hurl them against the wall, stopping myself at the last second. Books don’t require electricity, but speakers do, and it can all end here. The speakers and piano taunt me, reminding me of all the times I rushed home from school to have as much private time as I could with my music before Dad returned from his managerial shifts at the crafts store. I would sing, but not too loudly so my neighbors couldn’t overhear me.