They Both Die at the End

by Adam Silvera

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.

I wanna take full credit, but he’s had this in him all along, always wanting to do something exciting, just being too scared to go out and do it.

“It pulled me out of my bullshit zone. My whole I’m-ready-for-whatever-is-gonna-hit-us thing is bullshit, and I’m scared shitless. We could legit die in the next thirty seconds from rogue bullets or something, and I hate that. Whenever I get into this freaking-out headspace, I end up here. Never fails.”

I smile. “Let me get real with you, Mateo.” I say his name a lot, even though I’m obviously talking to him, because it’s just cool, seriously—Mateo. “Past few months have been brutal. My life always felt over even without the alert. There were days I believed I could prove Death-Cast wrong and ride my bike into the river. But on top of being scared now, I’m pissed off because there’s so much I’ll never get to have. Time . . . other stuff, like—”

Mateo doesn’t deserve to die.

Life isn’t meant to be lived alone. Neither are End Days.

We’re here. We’re safe. We have each other’s back. We’ll stretch this day out as long as possible, like we’re the summer solstice.

“You’re supposed to be with me forever,” Lidia cries. “You’re supposed to be around to play bad cop when Penny brings a crush home for the first time. You’re supposed to keep me company with card games and bad TV marathons when she leaves for college. You’re supposed to be around to vote for Penny to become president because you know she’s such a control freak already that she won’t be happy until she’s ruling the country. God knows she’ll sell her soul to take over the whole world, and you’re supposed to be there to help me stop her from making Faustian deals.”

Hey so im crying

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. —Steve Jobs

“The time of my life, Rufus,” I say. “I’m having it. Right now.” “Me too, dude. Thanks for reaching out to me over Last Friend,” Rufus says. “Thanks for being the best Last Friend a closet case could ask for.”

I kiss the guy who brought me to life on the day we’re going to die. “Finally!” Rufus says when I give him the chance to breathe, and now he kisses me. “What took you so long?”

“You took care of me too,” Rufus says. “I’ve been so damn lost the past few months. Especially last night. I hated all the doubts and being so pissed off. But you gave me the best assist ever and helped me find myself again. You made me better, yo.”

The car jerks and Howie closes his eyes, a deep sinking in his chest, like every time he’s been on a roller coaster, scaling higher and higher, past the point of no return, and he’s falling at incredible speed. Except Howie knows he’s not safe.

Her heartbeat runs wild. In a single day, the same day when she received a call informing her she will die today, Delilah has not only survived an explosion by a bookstore, but also a car accident caused by three boys running through the street. If Death wanted her, Death had two shots. Delilah and Death won’t be meeting today.

We take it slow, and out of all the ways I’ve lived today, maintaining eye contact with Rufus is really hard; it’s easily become the most intense intimacy I’ve ever experienced.

I want us to have history, something longer than the small window of time we’re actually sharing, with an even longer future, but the dying elephant in the room crushes me.

This loaded question is the reason I didn’t want anyone to know I was dying. There are questions I can’t answer. I cannot tell you how you will survive without me. I cannot tell you how to mourn me. I cannot convince you to not feel guilty if you forget the anniversary of my death, or if you realize days or weeks or months have gone by without thinking about me.

I grab Mateo and we jet because Peck and his people are here to kill and we’re the ones most likely to find a knife in our necks or bullets in our heads. This day is doing me dirty on goodbyes.

“My Last Message would be to find your people. And to treat each day like a lifetime.”

The connection I have with Rufus isn’t what I expected when I met him around three in the morning. This day is unimaginably rewarding and still so, so impossible.

You may be born into a family, but you walk into friendships. Some you’ll discover you should put behind you. Others are worth every risk. The three friends hug, a planet missing from their Pluto Solar System—but never forgotten.

“I miss . . .” Mateo stops on the third floor. I think he’s about to bring up his dad, maybe Lidia. “I miss when I was so young I didn’t know to be afraid of death. I even miss yesterday when I was paranoid and not actually dying.”

“I had a panic attack earlier. I don’t want my dad knowing I was scared when he comes home. I want him to believe I was brave all the way through.”

I take a deep breath. “But if for some reason this plan doesn’t work, we need to promise to find each other in the afterlife. There has to be an afterlife, Roof, because it’s the only thing that makes dying this young fair.” Rufus nods. “I will make it so easy for you to find me. Neon signs. Marching bands.”

“People have their time stamps on how long you should know someone before earning the right to say it, but I wouldn’t lie to you no matter how little time we have. People waste time and wait for the right moment and we don’t have that luxury. If we had our entire lives ahead of us I bet you’d get tired of me telling you how much I love you because I’m positive that’s the path we were heading on. But because we’re about to die, I want to say it as many times as I want—I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I know. But maybe this is how it was always written in stone or the stars or whatever: Two dudes meet. They fall for each other. They die.”

“That’s not our story.” Mateo squeezes my hands. “We’re not dying because of love. We were going to die today, no matter what. You didn’t just keep me alive, you made me live.” He climbs into my lap, bringing us closer. He hugs me so hard his heart is beating against my chest. I bet he feels mine. “Two dudes met. They fell in love. They lived. That’s our story.”

I kiss my Last Friend because the world can’t be against us if it brought us together.

When I switch on the burner, my chest sinks with regret. Even when you know death is coming, the blaze of it all is still sudden.

Mateo is dead. That was no way for him to go out. Mateo should’ve gone out saving someone, because he was such a selfless person. No, even if he didn’t die a hero’s death, he died a hero. Mateo Torrez definitely saved me.

Lidia will keep Mateo alive the only way she can.

I’m making my way back to Althea Park to wait this night out. No matter how normal that is for me, I can’t get myself to stop shaking ’cause I can be alert as all hell right now and it won’t change what’s going down mad soon. I also miss my family and that Mateo kid so much. And yo, there better be an afterlife and Mateo better make it easy to find him like he promised. I wonder if Mateo found his mother yet. I wonder if he told her about me. If I find my family first, we’ll have our hug-it-out moment, and then I’ll recruit them in my Mateo manhunt. Then who knows what comes next.