They Both Die at the End

by Adam Silvera

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that’s all. —Oscar Wilde

special instrument to record the sounds of different planets. I know, it sounded weird to me too, especially because of all the movies I’ve watched telling me about how there isn’t sound in space. Except there is, it just exists in magnetic vibrations. NASA converted the sounds so the human ear could hear them, and even though I was hiding out in my room, I stumbled on something magical from the universe—something those who don’t follow what’s trending online would miss out on. Some of the planets sound ominous, like something you’d find in a science fiction movie set in some alien world—“alien world” as in world with aliens, not non-Earth world. Neptune sounds like a fast current, Saturn has this terrifying howling to it that I never listen to anymore, and the same goes for Uranus except there are harsh winds whistling that sound like spaceships firing lasers at each other.

I’d be ready for the way Jenn Lori speaks directly to me and not the other attendees. It makes me feel vulnerable and seen, and it gets me teary eyed, like when someone sings “Happy Birthday” to me—seriously, every year,

“the most possible impossible”

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. —John A. Shedd

They work—no ties, you got me there—and mate and nurture baby birds until they can fly. Some of them become pets who entertain children, children who learn to love and be kind to animals. Other birds are living until their time is up. 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.

Thank you for everything, Dad. I’ll be brave, and I’ll be okay. I love you from here to there.

“Dad loves creating lists. He wanted me to start a blog for his lists. He thought we’d become rich and famous, and that commenters would request special lists. He even believed he’d finally get on TV because of the lists. Appearing on TV has been a dream of his since he was a kid. I never had the heart to tell him his lists weren’t that funny, but I liked seeing how his mind worked so I was happy whenever he gave me a new one to read. He was a really great storyteller. It sometimes feels like whiplash, like I was walking on the Coney Island beach with him where he proposed to my mother the first time—” “The first time?”

liked playing hard to get. Then she found out she was pregnant with me and he got down on one knee in the bathroom and she smiled and said yes.” I really like that moment. I know I wasn’t there, but the memory I’ve created in my head over the years is crystal clear. I don’t know exactly what that bathroom looked like, since it was in their first, shoebox-sized apartment, but Dad always commented on how the walls were a muted gold, which I always took to mean aged yellow, and he said the floor tiles were checkered. And then there’s my mother, who comes alive for me in his stories. In this particular one she’s laughing and crying about making sure I’m not brought into this world a bastard, because of her family’s traditions. It never would’ve mattered to me in the long run. The whole bastard thing is stupid.

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.

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.

Rufus nods as the rain comes down harder on us. He stands first and offers me a hand. I take it. The poetry you could write about Rufus helping me out of my grave isn’t lost on me. I step out and walk over to my mother’s headstone, kissing her inscribed name. I leave my toy sanctuary against the stone. I turn in time to catch Rufus snapping a photo of me; capturing moments really is his thing. I turn to my headstone one last time. HERE LIES MATEO TORREZ, JR.

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

“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.” My face is warm, and I wish I had the superpower of common sense because this isn’t something I should’ve ever said out loud.

the future, Rufus is a travel blogger and I’m an architect. We have tattoos we got together. We’ve gone to so many concerts he can’t keep them straight in his head. I almost wish we weren’t so creative in this moment, because these fake memories of friendship feel incredible. Imagine that—reliving something you never lived. “We have to leave our mark,” I say, getting up from my seat.

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

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 ever I’ve ever experienced. He leans in to my ear, throwing me into this weird phase where I’m relieved to be free of his gaze but also miss his eyes and the way he looks at me, like I’m good enough, and Rufus says, “I wish we had more time. . . . I wanna ride bikes through empty streets and spend a hundred dollars at an arcade and take the Staten Island ferry just to introduce you to my favorite snow cones.” I lean in to his ear. “I want to go to Jones Beach and race you to the waves and play in the rain with our friends. But I want quiet nights, too, where we talk about nonsense while watching bad movies.” 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. I rest my forehead against his, the both of us sweating. “I have to talk to Lidia.” I kiss Rufus again before we break through the crowd. He grabs my hand from behind, following me through the path I’m clearing.

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

I finish and Rufus’s smile is a victory. He’s tearing up. “You were hiding from me, Mateo. I always wanted to stumble into someone like you and it sucks that I had to find you through a stupid app.”

“I like the Last Friend app,” I say. I get his sentiment, but I wouldn’t change how I met Rufus. “There I was, looking for some company, and I found you and you found me, and we chose to meet up because of gut instinct. What would’ve been the alternative? I can’t guarantee I would’ve ever left here, or that our paths would’ve crossed. Not with one day left. It

“I would’ve loved you if we had more time.”

I spit it out because it’s what I’m feeling in this moment and was feeling the many moments, minutes, and hours before. “Maybe I already do. I hope you don’t hate me for saying that, but I know I’m happy.

“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...

“Yo. You know damn well I love you too.” Man, it actually hurts how much I mean this. “I don’t talk out of my dick, you know that’s not me.” I wanna kiss him again because he resurrected me, but I’m tight. If I didn’t have common sense, if I hadn’t fought so hard to be who I am, I would do some dumb shit again and punch something because I’m so pissed. “The world is mad cruel. I started my End Day beating up someone because he’s dating my ex-girlfriend and now I’m in bed with an awesome dude I haven’t known for twenty-four hours. . . . This sucks. Do you think . . . ?”

“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.” If this is really our truth, I get to punch whatever wall I want. Don’t try and stop me. “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.”

“Two dudes met. They fell in love. They lived. That’s our story.” “That’s a better story. Ending still needs some work.”

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.

I have less than two hours to live and I can’t think of a better way to spend that time than respecting Mateo’s final request to meet his father, but for real this time. I gotta meet the man who raised Mateo into the dude I fell in love with in less than a day.

I scroll through the photos I took from the beginning of the day, skipping over the ones from my time before meeting Mateo and starting with my first color photo. “We did a lot of living today.” I give him the full recap as I go from photo to photo: a sneaky shot of Mateo in Wonderland, which I never got to show him; the two of us dressed up like aviators at Make-A-Moment, where we went “skydiving”; the graveyard of pay phones where we discussed mortality; Mateo sleeping on the train, holding his Lego sanctuary; Mateo sitting inside his half-dug grave; the Open Bookstore window, minutes before we survived an explosion; that dude riding my bike I no longer wanted because Mateo was scared it would be the death of us, but not after one first and last ride together; adventures in the Travel Arena; outside of Clint’s Graveyard, where Mateo and I sang and danced and kissed and ran for our lives; Mateo jumping around on his bed for me; and our last photo together, me in Mateo’s glasses and he’s squinting but so damn happy.

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.

I see Althea Park in the distance, my place of great change.

I cross the street without an arm to hold me back.