They Both Die at the End

by Adam Silvera

Forget that, “warning” is too strong a word since warnings suggest something can be avoided, like a car honking at someone who’s crossing the street when it isn’t their light, giving them the chance to step back; this is more of a heads-up.

The number one person I’ll miss the most is Future Mateo, who maybe loosened up and lived. It’s hard to picture him clearly, but I imagine Future Mateo trying out new things, like smoking pot with friends, getting a driver’s license, and hopping on a plane to Puerto Rico to learn more about his roots. Maybe he’s dating someone, and maybe he likes that company. He probably plays piano for his friends, sings in front of them, and he would definitely have a crowded funeral service, one that would stretch over an entire weekend after he’s gone—one where the room is packed with new people who didn’t get a chance to hug him one last time. Future Mateo would have a longer list of friends he’ll miss.

I wasted all those yesterdays and am completely out of tomorrows.

“You want me to be a person, Rufus? You want me to get off my throne and get real with you? Okay. An hour ago I got off the phone with a woman who cried over how she won’t be a mother anymore after her four-year-old daughter dies today. She begged me to tell her how she can save her daughter’s life, but no one has that power. And then I had to put in a request to the Youth Department to dispatch a cop just in case the mother is responsible, which, believe it or not, is not the most disgusting thing I’ve done for this job. Rufus, I feel for you, I do. But I’m not at fault for your death, and I unfortunately have many more of these calls to make tonight. Can you do me a solid and cooperate?”

Nah, that’s a lie and I know it, I’m just trying to be hard. But I’m not hard. I’ve barely been able to live with myself for surviving something my family didn’t—something that wasn’t even my fault. There’s no way in hell I would’ve been chill with myself for beating someone to death.

When someone puts their journey out there for you to watch, you pay attention—even if you know they’ll die at the end.

Walking out of here . . . I really don’t wanna go.

“We didn’t make sense anymore. And there’s no point lying, like you said, even on your last day.” She holds my hand while she cries, which I was doubting she’d even do because she was so pissed when she got here. “I read our love wrong, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. You were there for me when I needed to act out and be angry, and you made me happy when I was tired of hating everything. Nobodies can’t make someone feel all of that.”

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.

I keep getting dicked out of proper goodbyes. No final hug with my family, no final hug with the Plutos. It’s not even the goodbyes, man, it’s not getting to thank everyone for all they did for me. The loyalty Malcolm showed me time and time again.

Ever since my family died, I would’ve bet anything I was gonna die alone. Maybe I will, but just because I was left behind doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have a Last Friend. I know there’s a good Rufus in me, the Rufus I used to be, and maybe a Last Friend can drag him out of me.

No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.

Rule number one of one: Deckers are no longer people. That’s it. Abide by this one and only rule and you won’t find yourself wasting hours with the company’s counselors.

Malcolm stares out the window, wishing he could glimpse Rufus on his bike turning a corner, and finally he cries, these loud, stuttering sobs, not because he’ll now have a criminal record, not because he’s scared to go to the police station, not even because Rufus is dying, but because the biggest crime of all tonight was not being able to hug his best friend goodbye.

But this sentiment is a Mateo thing, meaning it’s always made others think I’m weird. I don’t share thoughts like these with just anyone, rarely even with Dad or Lidia.

Deckers get some perks, like free unlimited passes for the subway, you just gotta bother the teller with some form. But the “unlimited” part is bullshit because they expire at the end of your End Day.

The roar of the approaching train drowns Mateo out a little at the end there, but it’s fine, I get what he’s saying. The real victory here is catching a train instantly. Now we can safely rule out falling onto the exposed tracks, getting stuck while rats run by us, and straight chopped up and flattened by the train—damn, Mateo’s grimness is already rubbing off on me.

“What are we celebrating, dying? I’m not trying to dance with strangers while on my way to say goodbye to my dad and best friend, knowing damn well there’s a chance I may not even reach them. That’s just not my scene, and those aren’t my people.”

Death-Cast did not call Aimee DuBois because she isn’t dying today. But she’s losing Rufus—lost him already because of her boyfriend.

But I wasn’t honest with Rufus, because, on a deep level, I do believe partying on the train is my kind of scene. It’s just that the fear of disappointing others or making a fool of myself always wins.

I hate to admit it, but I’m a little frustrated Dad is not awake right now. He was there when my mother brought me into this life and when she left us, and he should be here for me now. Everything is going to change for him without me: no more dinners where instead of telling me about his day he would go on remembering the trials my mother put him through before she finally agreed to marry him, and how the love they shared was worth it while it lasted; he’ll have to put away the invisible pad he would whip out whenever I said something stupid as a promise to embarrass me in front of my future children, even though I never really saw kids as part of my future; and he’ll stop being a father, or at least won’t have anyone to parent.

I was raised to be honest, but the truth can be complicated. It doesn’t matter if the truth won’t make a mess, sometimes the words don’t come out until you’re alone. Even that’s not guaranteed. Sometimes the truth is a secret you’re keeping from yourself because living a lie is easier.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I say stupid things. He doesn’t want you wasting away here. Look, you got a chance to say goodbye—I didn’t get that with my fam. I took too much time trying to figure out what I was gonna say. I’m happy for you, but mad jealous, too. And if that isn’t enough to get you out, I need you. I need a friend by my side.”

The line about loving someone until the end of time is haunting.

You shouldn’t donate to charity, help the elderly cross the street, or rescue puppies in the hopes you’ll be repaid later. I may not be able to cure cancer or end world hunger, but small kindnesses go a long way.

There’s newness that comes with the rising sun, and even though there’s a chance I won’t reach daytime or see sun rays filtering through trees in the park, I should look at today as one long morning.

“If that’s your call, I back it. I don’t know if she’ll resent you or not, you know her best. But look, we gotta stop caring about how others will react to our deaths and stop second-guessing ourselves.”

right. I am doing this to myself. I’m holding myself back. I’ve spent years living safely to secure a longer life, and look where that’s gotten me. I’m at the finish line, but I never ran the race.

Today is one long morning. But I have to be the one who wakes up and gets out of bed. I look ahead at the empty streets, and I start walking toward Rufus and his bike, walking toward death with every minute we lose, walking against a world that’s against us.

This is Penny’s beginning. And one day she’ll find herself on the terrible end of a Death-Cast call and it sucks how we’re all being raised to die. Yes, we live, or we’re given the chance to, at least, but sometimes living is hard and complicated because of fear.

“I keep my photos in black and white because my life lost color after they died.”

I didn’t exactly beat my grief to the point where I would’ve ever seen myself comfortably getting in a car over the next few years, but then there’s Malcolm, who digs fireplaces even though he lost his parents to a house fire. I don’t have that in me.

“You know, Ames, it didn’t seem complicated or confusing when you broke up with me. That legit sucks, but there isn’t a bigger kick to the nuts than you turning your back on the Plutos for the punk-ass kid who got them locked up. We’re supposed to be tight and I’m gonna be out the picture soon enough and you’re actually gonna tell me to my face that you’re keeping that motherfucker in your life?” Screw body-slamming my heart, this girl ripped her own out mad long ago. “They were innocent.”

“I jumped someone,” Rufus says. He’s staring straight ahead at his bike, parked by the pathway. “Aimee’s new boyfriend. He was mouthing off about me and I was pissed because it felt like my life was ending in a lot of ways. I felt unwanted, frustrated, lost, and I needed to take it out on someone. But that’s not me. It was a glitch.”

“It didn’t seem right how my family was dying without me. Shit, I make it sound like I was getting left behind from a family vacation, but their End Day was spent with me already missing them. And Olivia could barely look at me.”

“You asked for it.” I tell him everything: how Olivia wanted to go up one last time to this cabin near Albany where we always went for her birthday. The roads were slippery on our way upstate and our car flew into the Hudson River. I’d sat shotgun because I thought it bettered our chances of surviving a head-on car crash if both of my parents weren’t in the front. It didn’t matter. “Same song, different verse,” I tell Mateo before going on about the screeching tires, the way we busted through the road’s safety rail and tumbled into the river. . . .

Lidia will never know how Mateo is spending his End Day, but she hopes her best friend finds whatever he’s looking for.

“You’re right. You’re totally right. It’s all going away, everyone and everything is dying. Humans suck, man. We think we’re so damn indestructible and infinite because we can think and take care of ourselves, unlike pay phones or books, but I bet the dinosaurs thought they’d rule forever too.”

Death-Cast did not call Tagoe Hayes because he isn’t dying today, but he’ll never forget what it was like seeing his best friend receive the alert. The look on Rufus’s face will haunt Tagoe far longer than any of the gore he’s seen in his favorite slasher films.

I gotta take a photo of Mateo sleeping. That sounds creepy, no shit. But I gotta immortalize this dreamy look on his face. That doesn’t sound any less creepy. Shit. It’s the moment, too, I want. How often do you find yourself on a train that’s having a blackout with an eighteen-year-old kid and his Lego house as he’s on his way to the cemetery to visit his mother’s headstone? Exactly. That’s Instagram-worthy.

But she lived because Delilah isn’t dying today. People fall all the time. Delilah is no exception, she reminds herself, even if she’s not a Decker.

“I think we’re already dead, dude. Not everyone, just Deckers. The whole Death-Cast thing seems too fantasy to be true. Knowing when our last day is going down so we can live it right? Straight-up fantasy. The first afterlife kicks off when Death-Cast tells us to live out our day knowing it’s our last; that way we’ll take full advantage of it, thinking we’re still alive. Then we enter the next and final afterlife without any regrets. You get me?”

Everything has come full circle between my mother and me. She died the day I was born and now I’ll be buried next to her. Reunion.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. —Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor

Twelve hours ago I received the phone call telling me I’m going to die today, and I’m more alive now than I was then.

“I’ve spent so much time being pissed at my family for leaving me, Mateo. Everyone’s always running their mouth about survivor’s guilt and I get it, but . . .” I’ve never talked about this with the Plutos, not even Aimee when we were dating, ’cause it’s too horrible. “But I’m the one who left them, yo. I’m the one who got out the sinking car and swam away. I still think about if that was even me or some strong reflex. Like how you can’t keep your hand on a hot stove without your brain forcing it away. It would’ve been mad easy to sink with them, even though Death-Cast hadn’t hit me up yet. If it was that easy for me to almost die, maybe they should’ve worked harder to beat the odds and live. Maybe Death-Cast was wrong!”

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.

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.

Boy what

“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.”

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.

Oh my god