They Both Die at the End (Death-Cast #1)(19)

We get downstairs safely. My hand hovers over the lobby door. I can’t do it. I’m ready to retreat back upstairs until Rufus moves past me and pushes open the door, and the wet late-summer air brings me some relief. I’m even hit with hope that I, and only I—sorry, Rufus—can beat death. It’s a nice second away from reality.

“Go ahead,” Rufus says. He’s pressuring me, but that’s the whole point of our dynamic. I don’t want to disappoint either of us, especially myself.

I exit the lobby but stop once the door is behind me. I was last outside yesterday afternoon, when I was coming home from visiting Dad, an uneventful Labor Day. But being out here now is different. I check out the buildings I’ve grown up with but never paid any special attention to. There are lights on in my neighbors’ apartments. I can even hear one couple moaning; the roaring audience laughter from a comedy special; someone else laughing from another window, possibly at the very loud comedy show or possibly because they’re being tickled by a lover or laughing at a joke someone cared enough to text them at this late hour.

Rufus claps, snapping me out of my trance. “You get ten points.” He goes to a railing and unlocks his steel-gray bike.

“Where are we going?” I ask, inching farther away from the door. “We should have a battle plan.”

“Battle plans usually involve bullets and bombs,” Rufus says. “Let’s roll with game plan.” He wheels his bike toward the street corner. “Bucket lists are pointless. You’re not gonna get everything done. You gotta go with the flow.”

“You sound like a pro at dying.”

That was stupid. I know it before Rufus shakes his head.

“Yeah, well,” Rufus says.

“I’m sorry. I just . . .” A panic attack is coming on; my chest is tightening, my face is burning up, my skin and scalp are itchy. “I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’m living a day where I might need a bucket list.” I scratch my head and take a deep breath. “This isn’t going to work. It’s going to backfire on us. Hanging out together is a bad idea because it’ll only double our chances of dying sooner. Like a Decker hot zone. What if we’re walking down the block and I trip and bang my head against a fire hydrant and—” I shut up, cringing from the phantom pain you get when you think about falling face-first onto spiked fences or having your teeth punched out of your mouth.

“You can do your own thing, but we’re done for whether we hang or not,” Rufus says. “No point fearing it.”

“Not that easy. We’re not dying from natural causes. How can we try to live knowing some truck might run us down when we’re crossing the street?”

“We’ll look both ways, like we’ve been trained to do since we were kids.”

“And if someone pulls out a gun?”

“We’ll stay out of bad neighborhoods.”

“And if a train kills us?”

“If we’re on train tracks on our End Day, we’re asking for it.”

“What if—”

“Don’t do this to yourself!” Rufus closes his eyes, rubbing them with his fist. I’m driving him crazy. “We can play this game all day, or we can stay out here and maybe, like, live. Don’t do your last day wrong.”

Rufus is right. I know he’s right. No more arguing. “It’s going to take me some time to get where you are with this. I don’t become fearless just because I know my options are do something and die versus do nothing and still die.” He doesn’t remind me that we don’t have a whole lot of time. “I have to say goodbye to my dad and my best friend.” I walk toward the 110th Street subway station.

“We can do that,” Rufus says. “I have nothing I’m gunning to do. I had my funeral and that didn’t exactly go as planned. Not really expecting a do-over, though.”

I’m not surprised someone so boldly living his End Day had a funeral. I’m sure he had more than two people to say goodbye to.

“What happened?” I say.

“Nonsense.” Rufus doesn’t elaborate.

I’m looking both ways, getting ready to cross the street, when I spot a dead bird in the road, its small shadow cast from a bodega’s lit awning. The bird has been flattened; its severed head is a couple inches away. I think it was run down by a car and then split by a bike—hopefully not Rufus’s. This bird definitely didn’t receive an alert telling it that it would die tonight, or maybe yesterday, or the day before, though I like to imagine the driver that killed it at least saw the bird and honked their horn. But maybe that warning wouldn’t have mattered.

Rufus sees the bird too. “That sucks.”

“We need to get it out of the street.” I look around for something to scoop it up with; I know I shouldn’t touch it with my bare hands.

“Say what?”

“I don’t have this dead-is-dead-so-just-walk-away attitude,” I say.

“I definitely don’t have this ‘dead-is-dead-so-just-walk-away attitude’ either,” Rufus says, an edge to his voice.

I need to check myself. “I’m sorry. Again.” I quit my hunt. “Here’s the thing. When I was in third grade, I was playing outside in the rain when a baby bird fell out of its nest. I caught every second of it: the moment the bird leapt off the edge of the nest, spread its wings, and fell. The way its eyes darted around for help. Its leg broke on impact, and it couldn’t drag itself to shelter, so the rain was pummeling it.”