Adam Silvera - They Both Die at the End

Lidia logs on to Facebook. She used to use this account to keep up with friends from high school, but now she uploads photos of Penny for Christian’s family without having to text his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or that one cousin who’s always asking for dating advice.

Lidia visits Mateo’s page, which is a wasteland of nineteen mutual friends, two gorgeous pictures of sunrises in Brooklyn from a “Good Morning, New York!” fan page, an article about some instrument NASA created that allows you to hear what outer space sounds like, and a status from months ago that didn’t receive nearly enough love about being accepted to his online college of choice. Mateo has never been good about sharing his own stuff, obviously, but you can always count on him to comment on your photo or show love to your status. If it matters to you, it matters to him.

Lidia hates that Mateo is out there by himself. This isn’t the early 2000s, when people were dying without warning. Death-Cast is here to prepare Deckers and their loved ones, not for the Decker to turn their back on their loved ones. She wishes Mateo had let her into his life, every last minute of it.

She goes through Mateo’s photos, starting from the most recent: Mateo and Penny napping on the same couch Lidia is sitting on now; Mateo carrying Penny through the reptile room at the zoo, where they were both scared of snakes escaping; Mateo and his dad in Lidia’s kitchen, where his dad was teaching them how to make pegao; Mateo hanging streamers for Penny’s first birthday party; Mateo, Lidia, and Penny smiling in the backseat of Abuelita’s car; Mateo in his graduation cap and gown, hugging Lidia, who brought him flowers and balloons. Lidia clicks out of the photos. Memory lane is too painful when she knows he’s still out there, alive. She stares at his profile picture, a photo she took of him in his bedroom where he was looking out the window, waiting for the mailman to deliver his Xbox Infinity.

This time tomorrow, Lidia will put up a status about her best friend passing. People will reach out to her and offer their condolences, much like they did when Christian passed. And after everyone remembers Mateo, whether as the boy in their homeroom or at their lunch table, they’ll rush over to his page and leave comments like a digital memorial. How they hope he rests in peace. How he was too young to go. How they wish they’d taken the time to talk to him while he was alive.

Lidia will never know how Mateo is spending his End Day, but she hopes her best friend finds whatever he’s looking for.

9:41 a.m.

We stumble across seven abandoned pay phones in some ditch, underneath a highway leading north toward the Queensboro Bridge.

“We gotta go in there.”

Mateo is about to protest, but I hold up my finger, shutting that down real fast.

I drop my bike on the ground, and we crawl through an opening in the chain-link fence. There are rusty pipes, stuffed garbage bags that smell like old food and shit, and trails of blackened gum snaking around the pay phones. There’s graffiti of a Pepsi bottle beating the crap out of a Coca-Cola bottle; I take a picture, upload it to Instagram, and tag Malcolm so he knows he was with me on my End Day.

“It’s like a graveyard,” Mateo says. He picks up a pair of sneakers.

“If you find any toes in there, we’re jetting,” I say.

Mateo inspects the insides of the sneakers. “No toes or other body parts.” He drops the sneakers. “Last year I bumped into this guy with a bloody nose and no sneakers.”

“Homeless dude?”

“Nope. He was our age. He got beat up and robbed so I gave him my sneakers.”

“Of course you did,” I say. “They don’t make them like you.”

“Oh, I wasn’t looking for a compliment. Sorry. I’m curious what he’s up to now. Doubt I’d recognize him since he had so much blood on his face.” Mateo shakes his head, like it’ll make the memory go away.

I crouch over one pay phone, and in blue Sharpie there’s a message by where the receiver used to be: I MISS YOU, LENA. CALL ME BACK.

Pretty damn hard for Lena to call you back, Person, without an actual phone.

“This is a crazy find,” I say, mad lit as I move on to the next pay phone. “I feel like Indiana Jones right now.” Mateo smiles my way. “What?”

“I watched those movies obsessively as a kid,” Mateo says. “Forgot about it until now.” He tells me stories about how his dad would hide treasure around the apartment—how the treasure was always a jar of quarters they used for laundry. Mateo would wear his cowboy hat from his Woody costume and use a shoelace as a lasso. Whenever he got close to finding the jar, his dad would put on this Mexican mask a neighbor bought him and he would throw Mateo onto the couch for an epic fight.

“That’s awesome. Your pops sounds cool.”

“I got lucky,” Mateo says. “Anyway, I hijacked your moment. Sorry.”

“Nah, you’re fine. It’s not some huge, big, worldly moment. I’m not about to go off on how removing pay phones from street corners is the start of universal disconnection or some nonsense like that. I think this is just really dope.” I snap some photos with my phone. “It is crazy, though, right? Pay phones are gonna stop being a thing. I don’t even know anyone’s phone number.”

“I only know Dad’s and Lidia’s,” Mateo says.

“If I was locked up behind bars, I would’ve been extra screwed. Knowing someone’s number isn’t gonna matter anyway. You’ll no longer be a quarter away from calling someone.” I hold up my phone. “I’m not even using a real camera! Cameras that use film are going extinct too, watch.”

“Post offices and handwritten letters are next,” Mateo says.

“Movie rental stores and DVD players,” I say.

“Landlines and answering machines,” he says.

“Newspapers,” I say. “Clocks and wristwatches. I’m sure someone’s working on a product for us to automatically know the time.”

“Physical books and libraries. Not anytime soon, but eventually, right?” Mateo is quiet, probably thinking about those Scorpius Hawthorne books he mentioned in his profile. “Can’t forget about all the endangered animals.”

I definitely forgot about them. “You’re right. You’re totally right. It’s all going away, everyone and everything is dying. Humans suck, man. We think we’re so damn indestructible and infinite because we can think and take care of ourselves, unlike pay phones or books, but I bet the dinosaurs thought they’d rule forever too.”

“We never act,” Mateo says. “Only react once we realize the clock is ticking.” He gestures to himself. “Exhibit A.”

“Guess that marks us next on the list,” I say. “Before the newspapers and clocks and wristwatches and libraries.” I lead us out through the fence and turn around. “But you do know no one actually uses landlines anymore, right?”

9:48 a.m.

Death-Cast did not call Tagoe Hayes because he isn’t dying today, but he’ll never forget what it was like seeing his best friend receive the alert. The look on Rufus’s face will haunt Tagoe far longer than any of the gore he’s seen in his favorite slasher films.

Tagoe and Malcolm are still at the police station, sharing a holding cell that is twice the size of their bedroom.

“I thought for sure it was gonna smell like piss here,” Tagoe says. He’s sitting on the floor because the bench is too shaky, creaking every time he shifts.

“Just vomit,” Malcolm says, biting his nails.

Tagoe plans on throwing these jeans out when he gets home. He removes his glasses, letting Malcolm and the desk officer blur. He’s been known to do this every now and again, so everyone knows when he wants a time-out from whatever is happening around him. The only time it ever pissed Malcolm off was when Tagoe did this during a game of Cards Against Humanity; Tagoe never admitted it was because the card he’d drawn from the deck was making fun of suicide, which made him think about the man who’d abandoned him.