“Which means,” said the scythe, “that about three out of every thousand souls I glean will fit that profile. One out every three hundred thirty-three. Your friend here just got a new car and has a record of drinking to excess. So, of the teens who fit that profile, I made a random choice.”
Kohl buried his head in his hands, his tears intensifying. “I’m such an IDIOT!” He pressed his palms against his eyes as if trying to push them deep within his head.
“So tell me,” the scythe said calmly to Rowan. “Has the explanation eased his gleaning, or made his suffering worse?”
Rowan shrunk a bit in his chair.
“Enough,” said the scythe. “It’s time.” Then he produced from a pocket in his robe a small paddle that was shaped to fit over his hand. It had a cloth back and a shiny metallic palm. “Kohl, I have chosen for you a shock that will induce cardiac arrest. Death will be quick, painless, and nowhere near as brutal as the car accident you would have suffered in the Age of Mortality.”
Suddenly Kohl thrust his hand out, grabbing Rowan’s and holding it tightly. Rowan allowed it. He wasn’t family; he wasn’t even Kohl’s friend before today—but what was the saying? Death makes the whole world kin. Rowan wondered if a world without death would then make everyone strangers. He squeezed Kohl’s hand tighter—a silent promise that he wouldn’t let go.
“Is there anything you want me to tell people?” Rowan asked.
“A million things,” said Kohl, “but I can’t think of any of ’em.”
Rowan resolved that he would make up Kohl’s last words to share with his loved ones. And they would be fine words. Comforting ones. Rowan would find a way to make sense of the senseless.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to let go of his hand for the procedure,” the scythe said.
“No,” Rowan told him.
“The shock could stop your heart, too,” the scythe warned.
“So what?” said Rowan. “They’ll revive me.” Then he added, “Unless you’ve decided to glean me, too.”
Rowan was aware that he had just dared a scythe to kill him. In spite of the risk, he was glad he had done it.
“Very well.” And without waiting an instant longer, the scythe pressed the paddle to Kohl’s chest.
Rowan’s vision went white, then dark. His entire body convulsed. He flew backwards out of his chair and hit the wall behind him. It might have been painless for Kohl, but not for Rowan. It hurt. It hurt more than anything—more pain than a person is supposed to feel—but then the microscopic painkilling nanites in his blood released their numbing opiates. The pain subsided as those opiates took effect, and when his vision cleared, he saw Kohl slumped in his chair and the scythe reaching over to close his sightless eyes. The gleaning was complete. Kohl Whitlock was dead.
The scythe stood and reached out to offer Rowan his hand, but Rowan didn’t take it. He rose from the floor on his own, and although Rowan felt not an ounce of gratitude, he said, “Thank you for letting me stay.”
The scythe regarded him a little too long, then said, “You stood your ground for a boy you barely knew. You comforted him at the moment of his death, bearing the pain of the jolt. You bore witness, even though no one called you to do so.”
Rowan shrugged. “I did what anyone would do.”
“Did anyone else offer?” the scythe put to him. “Your principal? The office staff? Any of the dozen students we passed in the hall?”
“No . . . ,” Rowan had to admit. “But what does it matter what I did? He’s still dead. And you know what they say about good intentions.”
The scythe nodded, and glanced down at his ring, sitting so fat on his finger. “I suppose now you’ll ask me for immunity.”
Rowan shook his head. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“Fair enough.” The scythe turned to go, but hesitated before he opened the door. “Be warned that you will not receive kindness from anyone but me for what you did here today,” he said. “But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell.”
? ? ?
The slap was just as jarring as the electric shock—even more so because Rowan wasn’t expecting it. It came just before lunch, as he was standing at his locker, and flew in with such force it knocked him back, making the row of lockers resound like a steel drum.
“You were there and you didn’t stop it!” Marah Pavlik’s eyes flared with grief and righteous indignation. She looked ready to reach up his nostrils with her long nails and extract his brain. “You just let him die!”
Marah had been Kohl’s girlfriend for over a year. Like Kohl, she was a highly popular junior, and as such would actively avoid any interaction with sophomore rabble such as Rowan. But these were extraordinary circumstances.
“It wasn’t like that,” Rowan managed to blurt out before she swung again. This time he deflected her hand. She broke a nail but didn’t seem to care. If nothing else, Kohl’s gleaning had given her perspective.
“It was exactly like that! You went in there to watch him die!”
Others had begun to gather, drawn, as most are, to the scent of conflict. He looked to the crowd for a sympathetic face—someone who might take his side—but all he saw in the faces of his classmates was communal disdain. Marah was speaking, and slapping, for all of them.
This is not what Rowan had expected. Not that he wanted pats on the back for coming to Kohl’s aid in his last moments—but he wasn’t expecting such an unthinkable accusation.
“What, are you nuts?” Rowan shouted at her—at all of them. “You can’t stop a scythe from gleaning!”
“I don’t care!” she wailed. “You could have done something, but all you did was watch!”
“I did do something! I . . . I held his hand.”
She slammed him back into the locker with more strength that he thought she could possibly have. “You’re lying! He’d never hold your hand. He’d never touch any part of you!” And then, “I should have held his hand!”
Around them the other kids scowled, and whispered things that they clearly wanted him to hear.
“I saw him walking in the hall with the scythe like they were best buddies.”
“They came into school together this morning.”
“I heard he gave the scythe Kohl’s name.”
“Someone told me he actually helped.”
He stormed to the obnoxious kid who made the last accusation—Ralphy something or other. “Heard from who? No one else was in the room, you moron!”
But it didn’t matter. Rumors adhered to no logic but their own.
“Don’t you get it? I didn’t help the scythe, I helped Kohl!” Rowan insisted.
“Yeah, helped him into the grave,” someone said, and everyone else grumbled in agreement.
It was no use—he had been tried and convicted—and the more he denied it, the more convinced they’d be of his guilt. They didn’t need his act of courage; what they needed was someone to blame. Someone to hate. They couldn’t take their wrath out on the scythe, but Rowan Damisch was the perfect candidate.
“I’ll bet he got immunity for helping,” a kid said—a kid who’d always been his friend.
“I didn’t!”
“Good,” said Marah with absolute contempt. “Then I hope the next scythe comes for you.”
He knew she meant it—not just in the moment, but forever—and if the next scythe did come for him, she would relish the knowledge of his death. It was a darkly sobering thought, that there were now people in this world who actively wished him dead. It was one thing not to be noticed. It was something else entirely to be the repository of an entire school’s enmity.
Only then did the scythe’s warning come back to him: that he would receive no kindness for what he had done for Kohl. The man had been right—and he hated the scythe for it, just as the others hated Rowan.
* * *