The First to Die at the End (Death-Cast #0)(17)

There are so many eyes on me, and this isn’t how I want the world to see me.

It’s time to prove everyone wrong so we can move on.

I slide my thumb across my phone’s screen to answer this pocket-dial End Day call.

“Hello?” I ask.

“Hello, I’m calling from Death-Cast,” a familiar deep voice says, the one we all know well ever since the day he was standing beside the president and announcing this new program. “I’m Joaquin Rosa. Is this Valentino Prince?”

Hearing Joaquin Rosa—Mr. Death-Cast himself—say my name is a shock to the system. It’s like being stabbed by cold air all the times I left the house at 5:00 a.m. to go for a run. There’s always that temptation to return inside where it’s warm and cozy, where I can rest instead. But I’m someone who keeps it moving because that’s how you go forward in life. Even now, I feel an urge to hang up this call and pretend it’s not happening, but then this cloud will be hanging over my head. I’m sure Joaquin is calling because someone in customer service noticed an error with my registration, and since it’s a busy night for everyone, Joaquin is personally seeing to it that there will be no issues when Death-Cast is actually calling about my End Day decades from now. It’s awfully kind of him to take the time on this big day.

“Hi, Mr. Rosa. This is Valentino. Everything okay?”

There’s a pause on his end. I almost check to see that he hasn’t hung up. “Unfortunately not, Valentino.”

“Well, what’s going on?” I ask. “Did I mess up my registration form?”

“Valentino, I regret to inform you that sometime in the next twenty-four hours you’ll be meeting an untimely death,” Joaquin says. “While there isn’t anything I can do to suspend that, I want you to know that you still have a chance to live.”

I’m shaking my head like he can see me. But Orion and Dalma and a ring of strangers can. I don’t mind Orion and Dalma, but everyone else is crowding me like they’re waiting for me to break-dance, to put on a show. I wish Times Square would go dark right now, sort of like how all the doomsayers have been prophesizing. Except I don’t want the world to end for anyone, myself very much included.

“Are you sure you got the right person?” I ask. “This has to be a mistake, I’m—” I want to say I’m healthy, but I make eye contact with teary Orion, who doesn’t need to be reminded that between the two of us he’s the one people would vote Most Likely to Receive an End Day Call. Then I remember that being healthy doesn’t matter when a car hits you. My sister almost lost her life because of an accident, and now I’m going to be losing mine?

“I just signed up right before midnight. This has to be a mistake,” I conclude with no evidence to suggest otherwise.

“I’m afraid it isn’t,” Joaquin says.

“But how do I know that? How do you know that? You can be wrong.”

“I’m not wrong, though I wish I were.”

“You might be, Mr. Rosa. Maybe you have me confused with another Valentino Prince.”

Others exist, I know. I’ve been typing my name into Google Images as I’ve done more and more modeling and my pictures have been burying the other Valentino Princes across the country. It felt a bit like winning a popularity contest. There’s supposed to be—there will be more pictures of me for years to come.

“I understand this is difficult news to receive,” Joaquin says. “It breaks my heart to deliver it.”

“I didn’t even know you’ll be making calls.”

“I won’t, but seeing as this is the first official End Day call, it’s mine to make.”

The first.

This is the first End Day call.

The first time Death-Cast is calling someone to tell them they’re going to die.

This is not how I want to go down in history.

“I don’t want to go first,” I say. I must sound like I’m a kid all over again, begging my parents to send Scarlett into the bath or dentist chair before me.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know at what point today you’ll meet your untimely end, but being called first doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily die first.”

I might faint.

I’m actually on the line with Joaquin Rosa, minutes after his Death-Cast program has gone live across the country, and he’s very confident that I—Valentino Prince, the first known Decker—will die today. But he doesn’t know how, or what time. That’s his claim at least, and something tells me that begging for the truth since the secret could die with me won’t go very far.

“Valentino, how may I support you right now? Are you alone?”

No one standing in Times Square is alone, but it feels that way. I’m the only one going through this right now. Then my eyes find Orion again, like magnetism, and he’s more than familiar with this fear of dying.

“I’m not alone,” I say.

“That’s good news,” he says.

If I were more confrontational, I’d challenge him. I may not be alone, but the right people aren’t here. Scarlett doesn’t arrive until the morning, though maybe I should stop her from going and book my own flight back home so I can see everyone. Scarlett, high school friends, kind neighbors. Maybe even my parents will give me the time of day now. But time is so limited. Hours spent at the airport and on the plane could be spent living.