“That sucks,” I say. Rufus turns to me, his wrist spinning, encouraging me to go on. “Oh. She’ll go back home, where she’ll find her favorite movie on some cable network and catch up on emails to her friends during commercial breaks.” He grins. “What?”
“She started her evening fairly adventurous,” he says.
“She was taking a nap.”
“So she’d have energy to party all night!”
“I figured she’d want to see what her friends are up to. She probably misses text messages and phone calls since she’s usually too busy saving lives and delivering babies. She needs this, believe me.” I nod at a girl with headphones bigger than fists and hair dyed platinum. She’s drawing something colorful on her tablet with a blue stylus. I nod toward her. “She got the tablet for her birthday last week and she really wanted it for games and video-chatting with her friends, but she discovered this design app and experimented with it when she was bored. It’s her new obsession.”
“I like that,” Rufus says. The train stops and the girl is scrambling to get her illustrated tote bag together. She runs out of the car right when the doors are closing—like an action movie sequence. “And now she’s going home where she’ll be late for a video chat with her friends because she’s too busy getting this one idea right.”
We keep playing Traveler. Rufus points out a girl with a suitcase who he thinks is running away, but I correct him. She’s actually returning home after a big fight with her sister and they’re going to repair their relationship. I mean, anyone with eyes can see that’s what’s happening. Another passenger, soaked, was having car trouble and had to ditch his van—no, wait, his Mercedes, Rufus corrects, because a train ride is a humbling experience for this rich guy. Some NYU students jump on the train with umbrellas by their sides, possibly coming from orientation, their whole lives ahead of them, and we play a flash round predicting who they’ll become: a family court judge in a family of artists; a comedian in Los Angeles, where they’ll appreciate her traffic jokes; a talent agent who won’t make it big for a few years but will have her time to shine; a screenwriter for a children’s TV show about monsters playing sports; a skydiving instructor, which is funny because he has this handlebar mustache that must look like it’s smiling against the wind during every descent.
If someone else were playing Traveler, what would they predict for me and Rufus?
Rufus taps my shoulder, pointing at the exit as the doors open. “Hey, isn’t this the stop where we spontaneously got our gym memberships?”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, it is! You wanted to be brolic after some dick bumped into you at the Bleachers concert,” Rufus says, right when the doors close.
I haven’t been to a Bleachers concert but I get the game now. “Wrong night, Rufus. The dude bumped into me at the Fun concert. Hey, this is the stop where we got tattoos.”
“Yeah. The tattoo artist, Barclay—”
“Baker,” I correct. “Remember? Baker the tattoo artist who quit medical school?”
“Riiiight. We caught Baker in a good mood and he gave us a Buy One, Get One Free deal. I got the bike tire on my forearm”—he taps his arm—“and you got . . . ?”
“A male seahorse.”
Rufus looks so confused, like he might call time-out to see if we’re still playing the same game. “Uh . . . remind me why you got that one again.”
“My dad is really into male seahorses. He carried me through life solo, remember? I can’t believe you forgot the meaning of the seahorse tattoo on my shoulder. No, wrist. Yeah, it’s on my wrist. That’s cooler.”
“I can’t believe you forgot where your tattoo is.”
When we get to the next stop, Rufus throws us into the future: “Hey, this is where I normally get off for work. When I’m in the office, at least, and not in whatever resort around the world they send me to for review. It’s wild I get to work in a building you designed and built.”
“So wild, Rufus.”
I look down at where my seahorse tattoo should be.
In 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.
“We going outside to piss on fire hydrants?”
I put the blind-date book on the seat. “I don’t know who will find this. But isn’t it cool knowing someone will if we leave it here?”
“It’s true. This is prime seating,” Rufus says, getting up from the bench.
The train stops and the doors open. There has to be more to life than imagining a future for yourself. I can’t just wish for the future; I have to take risks to create it.
“There’s something I really want to do,” I say.
“We out,” Rufus says, smiling.
We get off the train before the doors close, almost bumping into two girls, and we take off out of the subway.
ZOE LANDON
2:57 p.m.
Death-Cast called Zoe Landon at 12:34 a.m. to tell her she’s going to die today. Zoe was lonely, having only moved to New York eight days ago to begin classes at NYU today. She’s barely unpacked her boxes, let alone made friends yet. But thankfully the Last Friend app was one click away. Her first message went to this boy Mateo, but he never responded. Maybe he died. Maybe he ignored her message. Maybe he found a Last Friend.
Like Zoe ultimately did.
Zoe and Gabriella get on the train right before the doors close, dodging two boys to do so. They rush to the bench in the corner, halting when they see a paper-wrapped object sitting there. Rectangular. Every time Zoe enters the subway, there are all these signs encouraging her to say something if she sees something—she’s seeing something.
“This is bad,” Zoe says. “You should get off at the next stop.”
Gabriella, fearless because she didn’t receive the alert today, picks up the object.
Zoe flinches.
“It’s a book,” Gabriella says. “Ooh! It’s a surprise book!” She sits and eyes the illustration of a fleeing criminal. “I love this art.”
Zoe sits next to her. She thinks the drawing is cute but respects Gabriella’s opinion.
“It’s my turn to tell you a secret,” Gabriella says. “If you want.”
Zoe shared all her secrets today with Gabriella. All the secrets she made her childhood best friends pinkie swear to never tell another soul. All the heartbreaking ones she always kept to herself because speaking up was too hard. Together, the two have laughed and cried, as if they’ve been best friends their entire lives. “Your secret dies with me,” Zoe says. She doesn’t laugh and neither does Gabriella, but she squeezes her hand to let her know she’s going to be okay. A promise based on nothing but a gut instinct. Screw evidence of the afterlife.
“It’s not a huge secret, but I’m Batman . . . of the Manhattan graffiti world,” Gabriella says.