“Keep trying.”
Why not? I park my bike against the wall and FaceTime Malcolm and Tagoe. Both are no-gos. I FaceTime Aimee, and right when I’m about to hang up and send all the Plutos a picture of me flipping them off, Aimee answers, breathing quickly, her eyes strained, her hair sticking to her forehead. She’s home.
“I was knocked out!” Aimee shakes her head. “What time is . . . You’re alive. You . . .” She loses my eyes for a second; she’s staring at one half of Mateo’s face. She leans over like the phone’s camera is a window she can stick her head out of for a closer look. It’s like when I was thirteen and flipping through magazines, I’d scout for pictures of girls in skirts and dudes in shorts and would tilt the page to see what was underneath. “Who’s that?”
“This is Mateo,” I say. “He’s my Last Friend.” Mateo waves. “And this is my friend Aimee.” I don’t add that she’s the girl who body-slammed my heart, because I’m not trying to make everyone uncomfortable here. “I’ve been calling you.”
“I’m sorry. Everything got crazy after you left,” Aimee says, rubbing her eyes with her fist. “I got home a couple hours ago and my phone was dead and I set it to charge but fell asleep before it came back on.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Malcolm and Tagoe got arrested,” Aimee says. “They wouldn’t stop mouthing off and Peck threw them under the bus since they were with you.”
I storm away from Mateo, telling him to stay put. He looks pretty frightened; so much for taking any suspicion of me being a shitty person to the grave. “Are they okay? Which station?”
“I don’t know, Roof, but you shouldn’t go looking around for them unless you want to spend your last day in a holding cell where who-knows-what will happen to you.”
“This is bullshit. They didn’t do anything!” I raise my fist to punch in this car window, but that’s not me, I swear it’s not, I don’t go around hitting things and hitting people. I slipped up with Peck, that’s that. “And what’s good with Peck?”
“He followed me home, but I didn’t want to talk to him.”
“You ended things with him, right?”
She doesn’t answer.
If we were chatting on the phone instead of over video, I wouldn’t have to be disappointed by the face she’s giving me. I could pretend she’s nodding her head, getting ready to break up with him if she hadn’t already. But that’s not what I’m seeing.
“It’s complicated,” Aimee says.
“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.”
“Rufus, they weren’t totally innocent, you know that, right?”
“Yeah, bye. I gotta get back to my real friend.”
Aimee begs me not to hang up and I hang the hell up anyway. I can’t believe my boys are in jail for my stupidity and I can’t believe she didn’t tell me sooner.
I turn around to tell Mateo everything but he’s gone.
AIMEE DUBOIS
7:18 a.m.
Aimee gives up calling Rufus. There are three possible explanations for why Rufus isn’t picking up, ranked from greatest hope to biggest fear: 1. He’s ignoring her but will call her back.
2. He’s blocked her number and has no interest in reaching out.
3. He’s dead.
Aimee goes on Rufus’s Instagram, leaving comments on his pictures asking him to call her back. She charges her phone, raises the volume, and changes into an old T-shirt of Rufus’s and her shorts.
Aimee has really gotten into exercise ever since becoming a Pluto. When she originally snuck into her foster parents’ room, looking for something to steal from Francis, who gave her the weakest welcome, she spotted Jenn Lori’s bedside dumbbells and gave lifting a shot. Her own parents, locked up for robbing a family-owned movie theater, inspired her kleptomaniac urges, but Aimee discovered working on herself made her feel more powerful than stealing from others.
Aimee already misses going on runs with Rufus while he rides his bike.
And she’ll always think back to the time when she taught him to do a proper push-up.
And she has no idea what comes next.
MATEO
7:22 a.m.
I keep running down the block, far away from Rufus.
I’m Last Friend–less, but maybe dying alone is an okay End Day for someone who lived his life pretty alone.
I don’t know what Rufus was involved in that led to his friends being arrested. Maybe he was hoping to use me as some alibi. But now I’m gone.
I stop to catch my breath. I sit on the stoop of this daycare and press my palm against my aching rib cage.
Maybe I should go back home and play some video games. Write more letters. I even wish I was still in high school and attending one of Mr. Kalampoukas’s classes because he always made me feel seen. Though sharing a chemistry lab with kids who were always texting while mixing chemicals was terrifying, even last fall when it wasn’t my End Day.
“MATEO!”
Rufus is riding his bike down the block, his helmet swinging from the handlebars. I get up and keep moving, but it’s no use. Rufus pulls up next to me, swinging his left leg behind the seat, and then hops off his bike. The bike falls to the ground as Rufus catches me by my arm. He looks me in the eyes, and when I realize he isn’t pissed, but instead frightened, I’m absolutely certain he isn’t how I end.
“Are you crazy?” Rufus asks. “We’re not supposed to split up.”
“And you’re not supposed to be a total stranger,” I say. We’ve been together for several hours now. I sat down with him at his favorite diner, where he told me who he wanted to be if he had years ahead of him. “But you’re apparently running from the cops and you never mentioned that once.”
“I don’t know if the cops are actually looking for me,” Rufus says. “They gotta know I’m a Decker, and it’s not like I robbed a bank, so they’re not gonna send the entire force looking for me.”
“What did you do?”
Rufus lets go of me and looks around. “Let’s go somewhere and talk. I’ll give you the full story. The accident that killed my family and the stupid thing I did last night. No more secrets.”
“Follow me.”
I’m choosing the place. I mostly trust him, but until I know everything, I don’t want to be completely alone with him again.