روفس

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.

“Did you ever come out to your parents?” Mateo asks.

Avoiding a question with another question. Classic. “On our last day together, yeah. I couldn’t put it off any longer.” My parents had never hugged me like they did on their End Day. I’m really proud I spoke up to get that moment out of them. “My mom got really sad because she’d never get a chance to meet her future daughter- or son-in-law. I was still a little uncomfortable, so I just laughed and asked Olivia if there was anything she wanted us all to do, hoping she’d hate me a little less. My parents wanted to ditch me.” “They were just looking out for you, right?”

“Yeah, but I wanted every possible minute with them, even if it meant being left with the memory of watching them all die in front of me,” I say. “I didn’t know any better.” That idiocy died too.

“Then what happened?” Mateo asks.

“You don’t have to have the details,” I say. “You might be better off without them.” “If you have to carry this around, I will too.”

“You asked for it.”

I tell him everything: how Olivia wanted to go up one last time to this cabin near Albany where we always went for her birthday. The roads were slippery on our way upstate and our car flew into the Hudson River. I’d sat shotgun because I thought it bettered our chances of surviving a head-on car crash if both of my parents weren’t in the front. It didn’t matter. “Same song, different verse,” I tell Mateo before going on about the screeching tires, the way we busted through the road’s safety rail and tumbled into the river. . . .

“I sometimes forget their voices,” I say. It’s only been four months, but that’s fact. “They blend with the voices of people around me, but I could recognize their screams anywhere.” I’m getting goose bumps up my arms thinking about it.

“You don’t have to go on, Rufus. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have encouraged you to keep talking about it.” Mateo knows how this ends, but there’s more to it. I stop because he has the basics and I’m crying a little and need to keep my shit together so he doesn’t freak out. He places a hand on my shoulder and pats my back, and it reminds me of all the other seniors who tried comforting me over texts and Facebook but didn’t know what to say or do because they’d never lost someone the way I had.

“You’re okay,” he adds. “Let’s talk about something else, like . . .” Mateo scans the area around us. “Birds and beat-up buildings and—” I straighten up. “That was pretty much it anyway. I ended up with Malcolm, Tagoe, and Aimee. We became the Plutos and that was exactly the kind of company I needed—we were all lost and okay with not being found for a while.” I dry my eyes with my fist and shift toward Mateo. “And now you’re stuck with me until the end. Don’t run away again or you might get kidnapped and find yourself the inspiration for some shitty thriller movie.” “I’m not going anywhere,” Mateo says. He has a kind smile. “What’s next?” “Game for whatever.”

“Should we go make a moment?”

“I thought we were already making moments, but why not.”