“Nah. I wanna do something new. How do you feel about skydiving?”
“Dangerous,” I say. “But tell my story if this goes south.” I wouldn’t be surprised if I managed to die in a place that promises risk-free thrills.
“You got it.”
Deirdre gives us a six-page-long waiver, which isn’t uncommon for businesses serving Deckers, but it’s also definitely not uncommon that we skim the form, because it’s not as if we’re going to be around to sue them if something does go wrong. There are so many freak accidents that can happen at any point. Every new minute we’re alive is a miracle.
Rufus’s signature is messy. I can make out only the first two letters before the remaining letters get lost in curves that look like a sales chart for a business that is rising and failing regularly. “Okay. I’ve signed away my right to bitch if I die.”
Deirdre doesn’t laugh. We pay two hundred and forty dollars each, the kind of price you can get away with charging people whose savings accounts would go to waste otherwise. “Follow me.”
The long hallway reminds me of the storage center where Dad worked, except inside the lockers there weren’t happy screams and laughter. At least none that I ever heard of. (Kidding.) These rooms are like karaoke rooms except some are twice, even three times as big. I peek in each window as we go down the hall, zigzagging like a pinball, finding Deckers with goggles in every room. Some are sitting inside racecars that are shaking, but not speeding down the racetracks. One Decker is “rock climbing” while an employee in the room texts away. A couple are kissing in a hot air balloon that is hovering six feet, but not in the sky. A crying man without goggles is holding the back of a laughing girl on top of a horse, and I can’t tell which one of them is the Decker, or if it’s both, but it makes me so sad that I stop looking into the rooms.
Our room isn’t very large, but there are huge vents, safety mats leaning against the wall, and an instructor who’s dressed like an aviator, with her curly brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. We dress up in matching gear and harnesses, the three of us looking like X-Men cosplayers, and Rufus asks the young woman, Madeline, to take a photo of us. I don’t know if I should wrap my arm around him, so I follow his lead, placing my hands on my waist.
“Is this good?” Madeline asks, holding the phone out to us.
We look like we mean serious business, like we refuse to die until we save the world from all its ugliness.
“Dope,” Rufus says.
“I can take more photos while you’re diving!”
“That’d be cool.”
Madeline breaks it down for us on how this works. We’ll put on the goggles, the virtual experience will begin, and the room itself will play its own role in making this feel as real as possible. Madeline locks our harnesses to suspending hooks, and we climb a ladder up to a plank that looks like a diving board except we’re only about six feet above the floor.
“When you’re ready, press the button on your goggles and jump,” Madeline says, dragging the mats under us. “You’ll be fine.” She turns on the high-powered vents, and the room becomes loud with wind.
“Ready?” Rufus mouths to me, dropping his goggles over his eyes.
I do the same with my goggles and nod. I click the green button by the lens. The virtual reality kicks in. We’re inside a plane with an open door, and a three-dimensional man is giving me the thumbs-up to jump into the open blue sky. I’m scared to jump, not out of the plane, but into the actual open space before me. My harness might break, even though I feel one hundred percent secure.
Rufus shouts for a few seconds, descending a couple feet away from me, and goes quiet.
I lift my goggles away from my eyes, hoping I don’t find Rufus on the floor with a twisted neck, but he’s hovering in the air, being blown side to side by wind from the vents. I shouldn’t be seeing Rufus like this, but I had to know he was okay, even if it ruins the experience a little bit. I still want that same exhilaration Rufus experienced, so I put the goggles back on, count down from three, and jump. I’m weightless as I hug my arms to my chest, like I’m speeding down a tunnel slide instead of free-falling through cloud after cloud, which I suppose I’m not actually doing either. I stretch my arms out, trying to touch the wisps at the edge of multiple clouds, as if I can actually grab one and roll it around in my hands like a snowball.
A couple minutes later, the magic wears off. I see the green field we’re approaching and I know I should be relieved I’m almost there, I’m almost safe again, but there was never any true danger in the first place. It’s not exciting. It’s too safe.
It’s exactly what I signed up for.
Virtual Mateo lands right as I do, my feet digging into the mat. I force a smile for Rufus, who smiles back at me. We thank Madeline for her help, take off the aviator gear, and let ourselves out.
“That was fun, right?” I say.
“We should’ve waited to swim with sharks,” Rufus says as we pass Deirdre and leave.
“Thank you, Deirdre,” I say.
“Congratulations on making a moment,” Deirdre says, waving. It’s odd to be praised for living, but I guess she can’t exactly encourage us to come again.
I nod at her and follow Rufus out. “I thought you had fun! You cheered.”
He’s removing the chain from the bike no one stole, unfortunately. “For the main jump, yeah. It got wack after that. Did you actually like that? No judgment except yes judgment.”
“I felt the same as you.”
“It was your idea,” Rufus says, walking his bike down the block. “You don’t get any more ideas today.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m kidding, dude. It was interesting, but low casualties are the one thing this place has going for it, and that sort of risk-free fun isn’t really fun at all. We should’ve read reviews before dropping bank on it.”
“There aren’t that many reviews online,” I say. When your service is exclusive for Deckers, not many reviews are to be expected. I mean, I can’t imagine any Decker who would spend precious time praising or bad-mouthing the foundation. “And I really am sorry. Not because we wasted money, but because we wasted time.”
Rufus stops and pulls out his phone. “It wasn’t a waste of time.” He shows me the photo of us in our gear and uploads it to Instagram. He tags it #LastFriend. “I might get ten likes out of this.”
LIDIA VARGAS
9:14 a.m.
Death-Cast did not call Lidia Vargas because she isn’t dying today. But if she were, she would’ve told all her loved ones, unlike her best friend, who didn’t come out and tell her he’s dying.