Adam Silvera - They Both Die at the End

If Death wanted her, Death had two shots.

Delilah and Death won’t be meeting today.

5:39 p.m.

I wanna keep holding Mateo’s hand, but I gotta hug my people. I move through the crowd, pushing Deckers and others aside to get to the Plutos. We all hit Pause on ourselves—and press Play at the exact same second, like four cars moving at a green light. We group hug, four Plutos coming together in the Pluto Solar System embrace I’ve been wanting for over fifteen hours, ever since I ran out of my own damn funeral.

“I love you guys,” I say. No one cracks homo jokes. We’re past that. They shouldn’t be here, but taking risks is the name of the game today and I’m playing it. “You don’t smell like prison, Tagoe.”

“You should see my new ink,” Tagoe says. “We’ve seen shit.”

“We didn’t see shit,” Malcolm says.

“You guys ain’t shit,” I say.

“Not even house arrest,” Aimee says. “Damn shame.”

We pull apart, but stay really close, as if the crowd is forcing us to squeeze up against each other. They’re all staring at me. Tagoe looks like he wants to pet me. Malcolm looks like he’s seeing a ghost. Aimee looks like she wants another hug. I don’t let Tagoe treat me like a dog or shout “Boo!” at Malcolm, but I move in and hug the hell out of Aimee.

“My bad, Ames,” I say. I didn’t know I was sorry until I saw her face. “I shouldn’t have shut you out like that. Not on a damn End Day.”

“I’m sorry too,” Aimee says. “There’s only one side that matters to me and I’m sorry I was trying to play both. We didn’t have nearly as much time as we should’ve, but you’ll always be more important. Even after . . .”

“Thanks for saying that,” I say.

“I’m sorry I had to say something so obvious,” Aimee says.

“We’re all good,” I say.

I know I helped Mateo live his life, but he helped me get mine back in shape. I wanna be remembered as who I am right now, not for that dumbass mistake I made. I turn and Mateo and Lidia are standing shoulder to shoulder. I pull him over by his elbow.

“This is my Last Friend, Mateo,” I say. “And this is his number one, Lidia.”

The Plutos shake hands with Mateo and Lidia. Solar systems are colliding.

“Are you scared?” Aimee asks us both.

I grab Mateo’s hand and nod. “It’ll be game over, but we won first.”

“Thanks for taking care of our boy,” Malcolm says.

“You’re both honorary Plutos,” Tagoe says. He turns to Malcolm and Aimee. “We should get badges made.”

I give the Plutos a beat-by-beat play of my End Day, and I fill them in on how color found its way to my Instagram.

“Elastic Heart” by Sia comes to an end. “We should be out there. Right?” Aimee says, nodding toward the dance floor.

“Let’s do this.”

Mateo says it before I can.

5:48 p.m.

I grab Rufus’s hand and drag him to the dance floor right as a young black guy named Chris takes the stage. Chris says he’s about to perform an original song called “The End.” He raps about final goodbyes, nightmares we want to wake up from, and the inevitable squeeze of Death. If I weren’t standing here with Rufus and our favorite people, I would be depressed. But instead we’re all dancing, something else I never thought I would get to do—not just dancing, but dancing with someone who challenges me to live.

The beat pulses through me and I follow the lead of others, bopping my head and bouncing my shoulders. Rufus does a mock Harlem Shake to either impress me or make me laugh, and it works on both counts, mainly because his confidence is glowing and admirable. We close the space between us, our hands still very much to our sides or in the air, but we’re dancing against each other. Not always in sync, but who cares. We remain pressed together as more people flood the dance floor. Yesterday Mateo would’ve found this claustrophobic, but now? Don’t ever move me.

The song changes and now it’s superfast, but Rufus stills me and puts a hand on my hip. “Dance with me.”

I thought we were dancing already. “Am I doing it wrong?”

“You’re great. I meant a slow dance.”

The beat has only increased, but we place our hands on each other’s shoulders and waist; my fingers dig into him a little, the first time I’m getting to touch someone else like this. We take it slow, and out of all the ways I’ve lived today, maintaining eye contact with Rufus is really hard; it’s easily become the most intense intimacy ever I’ve ever experienced. He leans in to my ear, throwing me into this weird phase where I’m relieved to be free of his gaze but also miss his eyes and the way he looks at me, like I’m good enough, and Rufus says, “I wish we had more time. . . . I wanna ride bikes through empty streets and spend a hundred dollars at an arcade and take the Staten Island ferry just to introduce you to my favorite snow cones.”

I lean in to his ear. “I want to go to Jones Beach and race you to the waves and play in the rain with our friends. But I want quiet nights, too, where we talk about nonsense while watching bad movies.” I want us to have history, something longer than the small window of time we’re actually sharing, with an even longer future, but the dying elephant in the room crushes me. I rest my forehead against his, the both of us sweating. “I have to talk to Lidia.” I kiss Rufus again before we break through the crowd. He grabs my hand from behind, following me through the path I’m clearing.

Lidia sees us holding hands right as Rufus lets go and I take hers in mine, leading her toward the bathrooms, where it’s a little quieter. “Don’t slap me,” I say, “but I’m obviously into Rufus and he’s into me and I’m sorry for never telling you someone like Rufus is someone I would be into. I thought I had more time to accept myself, you know, even though I never really saw anything ugly or wrong about it. I think I was waiting around for a reason—something beautiful and awesome to accompany any declaration. It’s Rufus.”

Lidia raises her hand. “I still want to slap you, Mateo Torrez.” She wraps her arms around me instead. “I don’t know this Rufus character, and I’m not sure how well you know him either after one day, but—”

“I don’t know every detail about his past. But what I’ve gotten out of him in one day is more than I feel like I ever deserved. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“What am I going to do without you?”

This loaded question is the reason I didn’t want anyone to know I was dying. There are questions I can’t answer. I cannot tell you how you will survive without me. I cannot tell you how to mourn me. I cannot convince you to not feel guilty if you forget the anniversary of my death, or if you realize days or weeks or months have gone by without thinking about me.

I just want you to live.

On the wall there are markers of many colors, most of them dried out, hanging from rubber cords. I find a bold orange marker that works and I tiptoe to reach this blank space where I write: MATEO WAS HERE AND LIDIA WAS BY HIS SIDE, AS ALWAYS.

I hug Lidia. “Promise me you’ll be okay.”

“It would be a huge lie.”

“Please lie to me,” I say. “Come on, tell me you’ll keep moving. Penny needs you at one hundred percent, and I need to know you’ll be strong enough to take care of the future global leader.”

“Damn it, I can’t—”

“Something is wrong,” I say. My heart is pounding. Aimee is standing between Rufus and the Plutos and three guys who are yelling over her. Lidia grabs my hand, like she’s trying to drag me backward a bit, to save my life before I can get caught up in this. She’s scared she’s going to have to watch me die and I am too. The shorter guy with the bruised face pulls out a gun—who could want to kill Rufus like this?