متیو

MATEO

8:32 a.m.

On the way to the Make-A-Moment station, Rufus stops in front of a sporting goods store. In the window there are posters of a man cycling, a woman in ski gear, and a man and woman running side by side, with celebrity smiles and zero sweat.

Rufus points at the woman in ski gear. “I always sent Olivia photos of people skiing. We went skiing every year, up at Windham. You’re gonna think we were stupid for always going back. My pops broke his nose on the first trip by smashing it against a rock; we were really shocked he didn’t die, even though Death-Cast hadn’t called. My mom sprained her ankle on the next trip. Two years ago I got a concussion after skiing downhill. I suck at braking and almost ran down some kid, so I switched left at the last second and slammed into a tree like some fucking cartoon character.” “You’re right,” I say. “I have no idea why you kept going back.”

“Olivia put her foot down after I was admitted to the hospital. But we continued driving up to Windham whenever we could because we loved the mountains, the snow, and playing games by our fireplace in the cabin.” Rufus keeps it moving. “I’m hoping this spot is as safe and fun as that was.” A few minutes later we reach the Make-A-Moment station. Rufus stops and takes a picture of the entrance and its blue banner hanging above the door: No-Risk Thrills! He uploads it to Instagram in full color. “Look.” He hands me his phone. It’s open to the comments on his previous picture. “People are asking why I’m awake so early.” There are a couple comments from Aimee, begging him to pick up his phone. “What happened with Aimee?” He shakes his head. “I’m done with her. Her boy is the reason Malcolm and Tagoe are in jail for something I did, and she’s still dating him. She’s not loyal.” “It’s not because of any feelings you have for her?”

“No,” Rufus says. He chains his bike to a parking meter.

It doesn’t matter if he’s telling the truth or not.

I drop it and we head inside.

I didn’t expect this place to look like a travel agency. The wall behind the counter is half sunset orange, half midnight blue, and there are framed photos of people doing different activities, like rock climbing and surfing. It’s easy on the eyes, I guess. Behind the counter is a young black woman in her twenties writing in a notebook that she puts away once she sees us. She’s in a yellow polo shirt and her name tag reads “Deirdre.” I’ve seen this name before, maybe in a fantasy novel.

“Welcome to Make-A-Moment,” Deirdre says, not too cheery, not too distant. The right amount of solemn. She doesn’t even ask us if we’re Deckers. She slides a binder toward us. “There’s currently a half-hour wait for the hot air balloon rides and swimming with sharks.” “Who the hell . . . ?” Rufus turns to me, then back to Deirdre. “Is swimming with sharks something people really feel like they’re missing out on?” “It’s a popular attraction,” Deirdre says. “Wouldn’t you swim with sharks if you knew they couldn’t bite you?” Rufus sucks his teeth. “I don’t mess with big bodies of water like that.”

Deirdre nods as if she understands all of Rufus’s history. “No prob. I’m here if you have any questions.” Rufus and I take a seat and flip through the binder. In addition to hot air balloon rides and swimming with sharks, the station offers skydiving, racecar driving, a parkour course, zip-lining, horseback riding, BASE jumping, white-water rafting, hang gliding, ice/rock climbing, downhill mountain biking, windsurfing, and tons more. I wonder if this business will ever expand to fictional thrills, like running away from dragons, fighting a Cyclops, and magic carpet rides.

We won’t be around to know.

I shake it off. “You want to try mountain biking?” I ask. He loves biking and there’s no water involved.

“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.”