We walk in silence into Central Park, passing early risers as we do. There are enough cyclists and joggers around that I feel comfortable, especially since Rufus is keeping his distance by staying on the grass, where a young golden retriever is chasing its owner around. The dog reminds me of the CountDowners story I was following when I received my alert, though I’m sure this dog and that one aren’t one and the same.
I maintain the silence at first because I wanted us to settle in before Rufus explains himself, but the deeper we go into the park, the quieter I get because of pure wonder, especially as we stumble onto a bronze sculpture of characters from Alice in Wonderland. Dark green leaves crush under my feet as I approach Alice and the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter.
“How long has this been here?” I’m embarrassed to ask. I’m sure it’s not new.
“I don’t know. Probably forever,” Rufus says. “You never seen it?”
“No.” I look up at Alice, who’s sitting on a gigantic mushroom.
“Wow. You’re like a tourist in your own city,” Rufus says.
“Except tourists know more about my own city than I do,” I say. This is a completely unexpected find. Dad and I prefer Althea Park, but we’ve spent a lot of time in Central Park too. He loves Shakespeare in the Park. Plays aren’t really my thing, but I went with him to one, and it was fun for me because the theater reminded me of coliseums in my favorite fantasy novels and gladiator matches in Rome from movies. I wish I’d discovered this piece of Wonderland as a kid so I could’ve climbed on top of the mushrooms with Alice and imagined adventures of my own.
“You found it today,” Rufus says. “That’s a win.”
“You’re right.” I’m still stunned this has been here all along, because when you think of parks, you think of trees and fountains and ponds and playgrounds. It’s sort of beautiful how a park can surprise me, and it gives me hope that I can surprise the world too.
But not all surprises are welcome.
I sit down on the mushroom beside the White Rabbit. Rufus sits next to the Mad Hatter. His silence is an awkward one, like those times in history class when we reviewed monumental events from the BDC days. My teacher, Mr. Poland, would tell us “how good we got it” for having Death-Cast’s services. He’d assign us reports where we reimagined periods of significant deaths—the plague, the world wars, 9/11, et cetera—and how people would’ve behaved had Death-Cast been around to deliver the warning. The assignments, quite honestly, made me feel guilty for growing up in a time with a life-changing advancement, sort of like how we have medicine to cure common diseases that killed others in the past.
“You didn’t murder anyone, right?” I finally ask. There’s only one answer here that will get me to stay. The other will get me to call the police so he can be detained before killing anyone else.
“Of course not.”
I’ve set the bar so high it should be easy enough for him to stay under. “Then what?”
“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.”
I believe him. He’s not monstrous. Monsters don’t come to your home to help you live; they trap you in your bed and eat you alive. “People make mistakes,” I say.
“And my friends are the ones being punished,” Rufus says. “Their last memory of me will be running out the back door from my own funeral because the cops were coming for me. I left them behind. . . . I’ve spent the past four months feeling abandoned by my family dying, and in a split second I did the same damn thing to my new family.”
“You don’t have to tell me more about the accident if you don’t want,” I say. He feels guilty enough as it is, and just like I wouldn’t ever push a homeless person into sharing their story so I can determine whether or not they deserve my charity, I don’t need Rufus to jump through any more hoops to keep my trust.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Rufus says. “But I have to.”
RUFUS
7:53 a.m.
I’m lucky to have a Last Friend, especially with my boys locked up and my ex-girlfriend on block. I get to talk about my family and keep them alive.
The sky is getting cloudy, and some strong breezes come our way, but no drops of rain yet.
“My parents woke up to the Death-Cast alert on May tenth.” I’m gutted already. “Olivia and I were playing cards when we heard the phone ring, so we rushed to their bedroom. Mom was on the phone and keeping it together while Dad was across the room cursing them out in Spanish and crying. First time I ever saw him cry.” That was brutal. It’s not like he was mad macho, but I always felt like crying was some little bitch move, which is freaking stupid.
“Then the Death-Cast herald asked to speak with my pops and Mom lost it. It was that this-must-be-a-nightmare shit. Nothing scarier than watching your parents freaking out. I was panicking but I knew I would have Olivia.” I wasn’t supposed to be alone. “Then Death-Cast asked to speak with Olivia and my pops hung up the phone and threw it across the room.” I guess throwing phones is in our genes.
Mateo is about to ask something, but stops.
“Say it.”
“Never mind,” Mateo says. “It’s not important. Well, I was wondering if you were nervous about being end-listed that day and not knowing. Did you check the online database?”
I nod. Death-cast.com is helpful that way. Typing my social security number and not finding my name in the database that evening was a weird sort of relief. “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.”
I get it. It wasn’t my fault I got to keep living, and it wasn’t her fault she was dying.
“Were you two close?”
“Mad close. She was a year older. My parents were saving up money so Olivia and I could attend Antioch University in California this fall. She had a partial scholarship but hung back here at the community college so we wouldn’t be separated until I could go with her.” My breaths are tight, like when I was laying into Peck earlier. My parents tried convincing Olivia to take off to Los Angeles without me and not settle at a school in a city she was hating on, but she refused. Every morning, afternoon, evening, I always think she’d still be alive if she’d listened to our parents. She just wanted to reboot our lives together. “Olivia is the first person I came out to.”
“Oh.”
I don’t know if he’s playing it off like he doesn’t know this from my Last Friend profile or if he’s impacted by this piece of history between me and my sister or if he overlooked this on my profile and is some ass who cares about who other people kiss. I hope not. We’re friends now, hands down, and it’s not forced. I met this kid a few hours ago because some creative designer somewhere developed an app to forge connections. I’d hate to disconnect.
“Oh what?”
“Nothing. Honestly.”
“Can I ask you something?” Let’s get this over with.