متیو

MATEO

2:52 a.m.

The third time was not the charm. I can’t even tell you if Elle is actually a Decker, but I blocked her without investigating because she spammed me with links to “funny snuff videos gone wrong.” I closed the app afterward. Have to admit it, I feel a little vindicated in how I’ve lived my life because people can be the worst. It’s hard to have a respectful conversation, let alone make a Last Friend.

I keep receiving pop-up notifications for new messages, but I ignore them because I’m on the tenth level of A Dark Vanishing, this brutal Xbox Infinity game that has me wanting to look up cheat codes. My hero, Cove, a level-seventeen sorcerer with fire for hair, can’t advance through this poverty-stricken kingdom without an offering to the princess. So I walk (well, Cove walks) past all the hawkers trying to sell off their bronze pins and rusty locks and go straight for the pirates. I must’ve gotten lost in my head on the way to the harbor because Cove steps on a land mine and I don’t have time to ghost-phase through the explosion—Cove’s arm flies through a hut’s window, his head rockets into the sky, and his legs burst completely.

My heart pounds all through the loading screen until Cove is suddenly back, good as new. Cove’s got it good.

I won’t be able to respawn later.

I’m wasting away in here and . . .

There are two bookcases in my room. The blue bookcase on the bottom holds my favorite books that I could never get myself to purge when I did my monthly book donations to the teen health clinic down the block. The white bookcase on top is stacked with books I always planned on reading.

. . . I grab the books as if I’ll have time to read them all: I want to know how this boy deals with a life that’s moved on without him after he’s resurrected by a ritual. Or what it was like for the little girl who couldn’t perform at the school talent show because her parents received the Death-Cast alert while she was dreaming of pianos. Or how this hero known as the People’s Hope receives a message from these Death-Cast-like prophets telling him he’s going to die six days before the final battle where he was the key to victory against the King of All Evil. I throw these books across the room and even kick some of my favorites off their shelves because the line between favorites and books that will never be favorites doesn’t matter anymore.

I rush over to my speakers and almost hurl them against the wall, stopping myself at the last second. Books don’t require electricity, but speakers do, and it can all end here. The speakers and piano taunt me, reminding me of all the times I rushed home from school to have as much private time as I could with my music before Dad returned from his managerial shifts at the crafts store. I would sing, but not too loudly so my neighbors couldn’t overhear me.

I tear down a map from the wall. I have never traveled outside of New York and will never get on a plane to touch down in Egypt to see temples and pyramids or travel to Dad’s hometown in Puerto Rico to visit the rainforest he frequented as a kid. I rip up the map, letting all the countries and cities and towns fall at my feet.

It’s chaos in here. It’s a lot like when the hero in some blockbuster fantasy film is standing in the rubble of his war-ravaged village, bombed because the villains couldn’t find him. Except instead of demolished buildings and disintegrated bricks, there are books open face-first on the floor, their damaged spines poking up, while others are piled on one another. I can’t put everything back together or I’ll find myself alphabetizing all the books and taping the map back together. (I swear this isn’t some excuse to not clean my room.) I turn off the Xbox Infinity, where Cove has respawned, all limbs together as if he didn’t just explode minutes ago. Cove is standing at the start point, idly dangling his staff.

I have to make a move. I pick up my phone again, reopening the Last Friend app. I hope I step over the people who are dangerous like land mines.