The Deathday Letter

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  We eat in silence and, as much as I’m enjoying just being with my best friends, I’m sort of bored.

  “What now?”

  Shane busts out with a watery, gurgling burp that makes me a little nauseated. And also a little proud. “I’ll be right back.” Shane trots out of the kitchen leaving me and Ronnie alone.

  “I’ll miss you,” Ronnie blurts out. She instantly realizes it’s the worst thing she could have said. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Silence. “My sisters cried, you know.”

  Ronnie laughs. “So you can get blood from an evil stone. Nice.”

  “Right?” Silence again. “I’ll never forget the first time I met you. Third grade. Art. You were making a macaroni Death Star and I was rolling dried glue into boogers to fling into Mr. Alvarez’s toupee.”

  Ronnie laughs so hard she snorts. “Oh, God, that was too funny. No one told him for like a week, not even the other teachers. He walked around school with glue boogers in his hair.” We both laugh as the front door slams and I hear Shane coming back. Ronnie pushes her pizza away and sways from foot to foot.

  Shane’s got my backpack and a wicked grin. “Come with me if you want to—”

  “Seriously,” Ronnie says with a groan. “Is this really the right time for Terminator quotes?”

  Shane gets scary serious. “Is there ever a wrong time for Terminator quotes?” Ronnie and I are silent. “Then follow me.”

  Curious, I leave to follow Shane, but as I’m about to pass Ronnie, she grabs my arm and says, “That wasn’t the first time we met.”

  Before I can ask her what she means, Ronnie ducks around me and follows Shane.

  “Hurry up, Travers!” yells Shane from his patio. “Stop wasting time!”

  I tuck Ronnie’s statement into my back pocket and trot out to the patio.

  The Grimsleys’ backyard is in worse shape than their living room. The grass is thigh high, and it’s really more weeds than grass. There’s a concrete island in front of the glass double doors, and in the middle of that island is a giant domed grill, into which Shane has dumped my books.

  “What are you doing?” I ask as I join Shane and Ronnie around the grill. All my books and worksheets and illegible notes flutter in the soft breeze. They’re the sum total of all my high school knowledge.

  Shane kicks the side of the grill and my biology book slides down to reveal my world history book and a motorcycle magazine that’s more dog-eared than the Hustler I’ve got hidden in a Trivial Pursuit box at home.

  “These are all your books,” Shane says like he can’t believe it. “I mean, at some point when you walked out of your house, you actually planned on spending your whole day in school.”

  I don’t know why, but it’s hard seeing my books sitting in the grill. Like witches on trial, I know they’re gonna burn no matter what I say. “Where else did you think I was gonna go? It’s kind of my life. I go to school, I hang with you, I chill at home.”

  Shane shakes his head. “Damn. You’re in worse shape than I thought.” Shane holds out a square tin of lighter fluid and a little silver lighter.

  “What am I supposed to do with those?”

  “Duh?” says Shane and looks from me to the books and back. “Burn them.”

  “But they’re my books.”

  Ronnie suddenly grabs me by the shoulders, and I kind of wish she’d quit touching me so much. Listen, I’m harder than geometry 90 percent of my day already. With Ronnie around, I’m gonna hit critical mass. In my pants.

  “Ollie,” she says, looking me dead in the eyes. “You. Are. Going. To. D-I-E. You get that, right? You’re worm food, frosty, a cold dead cadaver, buying the farm, toes up, living-challenged, www-dot-you’re-dead-dot-com, tailgating with Jesus—”

  “Yeah. I got it.”

  “You need to let go of all this. Your books, our fight—none of it matters.”

  Shane squeezes the lighter fluid onto the books until the thin stream is nothing but spray. The lighter fluid smells sweet, like sweat and sex. Or at least what I imagine sex smells like since there’s a pretty huge chance I’m going to die a sad, lonely virgin. When he’s done, he shoves the lighter into my hand and says, “Do it, dude.”

  “Go on, Ollie, burn ’em. You’ll feel better.”

  The Zippo is warm in my hand. Heavy and solid, like I can use it to burn the whole world if I want to. And right now, I want to.

  Whatever. I flick open the top and feel the potential fire, the flame that’s about to be. The moment I turn the ridged, metal wheel I know it’ll create a spark that will ignite the wick. For some reason that act scares me, you know? I mean, screw the books for a second. They belong to the school and, if I’m being honest, I don’t really give a crap about burning school property. But burning them means I’m never gonna use them again.

  I’ve dreamed about never having to go to school again, about throwing all my school shit out the window and hitchhiking to somewhere rad like Vegas or Idaho. It’s just that in my fantasies, ditching my books was always the beginning of my story, not the end.

  “Screw it.” I strike the lighter and the fire springs to life like a pocket ninja. I turn my head and throw the lighter onto the books. Shane doesn’t even flinch, which means that he’s either got a stash of lighters just like it or that he’s an exceptional friend. I’m going with door number two.

  “Dude,” says Shane as my books and the lighter fluid explode. I should say something poetic here, but “dude” says it all.

  We stand back and watch the edges of my books brown and blacken. When my plastic binders catch, the fire flares green, which is cooler than free Internet porn.

  My books spit up angry clouds of black smoke, like a signal to the school that they’re in trouble.

  “We should put these out,” says Ronnie.

  Shane goes to grab the lid but I say, “Wait.”

  “Come on, Ollie. Were you really that attached to your books?” He takes my shrug to mean that I can’t put into words what I’m feeling about the loss of my books, but it’s not the books at all.

  “I’m sure they’ll have plenty of books where you’re going,” tosses out Ronnie.

  “I’m not sure how to take that.”

  Shane grins at us and says, “It works either way. If you end up in heaven—”

  “Fat chance,” says Ronnie, which earns her my superfrosty glare of doom.

  “—I’m sure they’ll have lots of books with naked girls in them for you. If you take a trip to the unhappiest place not on earth, chances are they’ll have whole libraries filled with nothing but schoolbooks just like these. Only less crispy. Or more. I don’t know.”

  The fire’s a mess. It started out as a cotillion and turned into the dance floor at homecoming: hot and dirty and dark. I nod at Shane to put the top on and take a deep breath.

  Everything feels new, it feels like my possibilities are endless. I get it. They were just books but they were also more than that. They were bonds that chained me to a world of school and homework and lame-ass rules. And now they’re gone. Those rules no longer apply to me. I’m free.

  “Let’s get my day started. I’m up for everything.”

  I expect Shane and Ronnie to leap forward with some life-changing, orgasm-inducing plan that they’ve been holding in reserve for this exact moment. I figure the Amazing Plan is sealed in an envelope, like nuclear launch codes, just waiting for them to break that sucker open. Their blank faces tell me just how misguided I am.

  “Come on, I’m ready. Better late than never. Let’s raise some hell.”

  Ronnie serves Shane a look that’s two parts confusion and one part constipation, and says, “Disney World?”

  “Disney? Seriously? I’m not expecting crazy car chases and exploding buildings, but it’s like you’re not even trying.”

  Ronnie puts her arm around my shoulders. “It’s your last day, Ollie. What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I just . . . It’s n
ot like I spend all my time sitting in my room thinking about all the stuff I wanna do on my Deathday.”

  “Yeah, we know what you spend all your time in your room doing—”

  Ronnie cuts Shane off. “Why don’t we go inside and think about it? Maybe you can make a list of all the stuff you want to do.”

  “A list, Ronnie? That’s so stupid.”

  “Shane? A little help?”

  But Shane’s already got a grin on. “No, he’s right. It is stupid.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “It’s stupid because we’ve already done it.” Shane runs inside without bothering to explain.

  The sun’s beating down and I’m a freaking rotisserie in my hoodie. “Go inside?” Ronnie nods. I shrug her arm off and head in. Small streamers of smoke escape from the grill as I give my books one last nod.

  “We’ll figure something out, Ollie,” says Ronnie when we’re back in the kitchen.

  I try to eat my pizza but there’s something other than food and sex on my mind. “Ronnie, listen, if we’re gonna be friends today, I gotta know something.”

  “What?”

  “If you’d known I was gonna get my Deathday Letter, would you have broken up with me?”

  Ronnie starts to answer and then stops. Her lips move but no sounds come out. Words, for the first time ever, have tunneled under the wall and escaped her. Finally, she just nods her head.

  “Was I that bad of a boyfriend?”

  “Ollie, please—”

  “I just need to know.” A crashplosion from Shane’s room, followed by, “I’m all right!” distracts me momentarily.

  Ronnie uses those few seconds to dam her tears. “Losing you this way is less painful than losing you the other way.”

  “Losing me what other way? You dumped me ’cause you thought you were gonna lose me?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. It’s just—”

  My anger rises like a thermometer in the Florida summer sun. “You never gave me a chance, Ronnie. You never gave me an explanation. You were my friend before you were my girlfriend, and I at least deserved that much.”

  Shane runs into the room, a little sweaty and a lot excited. “Okay,” he says, “everybody pay attention to me.”

  We both look at Shane, who’s holding some folded papers in his hand. He’s about to tell us what they are, I think, when Ronnie busts out with, “I told you when we broke up, Ollie, that it wasn’t your fault.”

  Shane groans. “Is this what you all have been doing? Should I call a shrink?”

  Ronnie shakes her head. “No. We’re good.”

  “For now,” I add.

  Shane waits to make sure neither of us has anything else to say. “Now, do you guys remember when Marvin Winkle died in the sixth grade?”

  “Stung by a bee, right?” says Ronnie.

  Shane nods but I can tell he’s a little annoyed that she interrupted. Again. “And do you remember how we each wrote out lists of the stuff we’d do if we ever got a Deathday Letter?”

  I stare at the papers in Shane’s hands. “Are those what I think they are?”

  “Yes. Yes they are.” Shane hands us each a folded piece of paper with our own name on the outside.

  “I can’t believe you kept these,” says Ronnie.

  I start unfolding mine. “Dude, am I really gonna want to spend the day doing stuff my sixth-grade self thought was cool?”

  “This or Disney. Your choice.”

  “I’ll take the list.”

  My cramped handwriting writhes on the creased page like I’d tortured it out of the pen. My handwriting has always been bad. Freshman year, my English teacher wrote at the top of the first and only handwritten paper of my high school career, You’re the reason God invented computers. I couldn’t argue.

  “Well, Travers? What did twelve-year-old you want to do before you died?” Shane stares at me like he’s gonna learn something from my list that he doesn’t already know. I hate disappointing the kid, but he isn’t kidding when he says he knows everything about me. It’s minorly cool and majorly pathetic.

  I clear my throat and read my list. “‘One: be a lucha libre wrestler.’” Shane smiles and nods that I should keep going. He obviously thinks the first was a joke. “‘Two: don’t die. Three: see Mrs. Williamson naked. Four: grow a pornstache.’”

  Shane snatches my list from me. “‘Run through Tokyo in a Godzilla costume’?” He tosses the list in the pizza box. “What the hell is this, Ollie?”

  “What?”

  “Did you put anything serious on there?” Ronnie picks up the list and studies it. There’s a ghostly oil stain on the main crease.

  “I. Was. Twelve.” I wait for Shane to stop looking at me the same way Mrs. Alley looks at me when I forget my homework. “I thought it was stupid. It’s not like I’m allergic to bees. I always figured I’d die of old age in a diaper full of poop while flying cars drove by.”

  Ronnie folds the list and hands it back to me. “Somehow I don’t think we’re going to be able to ‘learn the sacred art of the Samurai’ before tomorrow morning.”

  “Well what have you guys got?”

  Shane unfolds his list, adjusts his glasses, and clears his throat before reading. “‘Swim with the dolphins, write a short story, jump off the East Indiantown Bridge, ride a motorcycle, jump out of an airplane, go into space, become president.’” Shane grins proudly.

  “Great. I got it. You’re awesome and I’m a loser.” I pull a stool over and sit. “But I doubt we’re gonna make it into space today unless you’ve got a rocket in your pocket I don’t know about.”

  “What did you put on your list, Ronnie?” Shane says through clenched teeth.

  Ronnie turns her list over and puts it down on the table. “Nothing. Nothing good.”

  “Come on,” I say. “You have to tell me. I’m gonna be dead tomorrow. You can’t resist a man’s dying wish.”

  “You’re not really a man,” says Ronnie, “so I’m not sure you actually qualify.”

  Shane snatches the list out from under Ronnie’s arm and holds it up. “‘One: get boobs.’”

  I laugh even though Ronnie just about pushes me over to get to Shane. “I’m not doing that,” I say. “Unless I get to have Ronnie’s boobs.”

  “Give it back, Grimsley.” Ronnie’s almost as tall as Shane, but he’s quicker.

  “‘Two: build a rocket with Shane and Ollie.’” Shane stops and mock sighs. “Awww. I never knew you wanted to build rockets with us.”

  Ronnie stops jumping to get the list. “Duh! I played baseball, I swam in that nasty canal behind the Keesey house, and I even helped you freeze Ollie’s underwear when he fell asleep first at our sleepovers. How could you guys not think I’d want to?”

  “I never knew—,” I start.

  “Thank y—”

  “—that you were so interested in our rockets.”

  Shane laughs so hard he almost lets Ronnie get her list back.

  “Good one, dude.”

  “What’s next on her list?”

  “‘Make my mark on the world,’” says Ronnie. “That’s what it says. ‘I wanted to make my mark on the world.’”

  I laugh again. “What’s that even mean?”

  Shane stops laughing and I don’t know why until I see Ronnie’s face. She’s gone from being angry to desolate in the time it took me to make fun of her.

  “Ronnie?” says Shane.

  Ronnie leans on the counter. “It’s what my mom told me the day she got her letter. It was right before I moved here, before I met you guys. But before she died she made me promise not to squander my life. To be someone. That’s what it means.”

  I’m stunned. We’ve never talked about Ronnie’s mom. I mean, we know she died of cancer, but that’s the extent of it.

  “I feel like a total dick,” I say.

  Ronnie wipes the corners of her eyes and breathes out a smile. “No,” she says, “this isn’t about me. It’s about you. About y
our day. Tell us what you want to do.”

  The problem is that I don’t know. Obviously my list is crap, and Ronnie’s list isn’t much help either, except that she sort of got it right. I mean, what’s my mark on the world gonna be? Who’s gonna know that Oliver Travers was here? I think about my books, the freedom burning them gave me, and I get excited, but not in a hide-behind-a-bag kind of way.

  I snatch up Shane’s list and set it on the counter. I close my eyes and hold up my index finger like the pointer on a compass. Up and over and around I wave it until, finally, I drop it on the paper.

  “Let’s start here.”

  19:47

  Ollie, maybe this isn’t the best idea.”

  “Can’t you see I’m busy ignoring you?”

  And I am. Ignoring him. Sort of. It’s hard to ignore Shane Grimsley. He has a way of worming his way into everything that makes me want to give him a black eye. Currently, he’s doing his pee-pee dance and trying not to look like he’s going to barf on Ronnie.

  I, on the other hand, am just being alive. You’ll have to cut me some slack. Knocking on heaven’s door tends to infect a guy with a little bit of sentimentality. But don’t get too carried away, I’m not gonna run home and pop on Grey’s Anatomy and bust out my hankie. What I am going to do is enjoy this view.

  It’s crazy how many times I’ve crossed the East Indiantown Bridge. Just down the road is the best place in the world for hot dogs. Shane and Ronnie and I used to bike there all the time, especially on the weekends. We’d spend the day at the beach, pretending to drown each other and burying each other in the sand (Ronnie always built me boobs). Then we’d bike up to Hot Dog! for the best dogs on the East Coast. Loaded with onions and ketchup and relish and more mayo than God intended ever go on one foot-long piece of processed meat. Sorry, I think I drooled. Where was I? Right. I’ve crossed this bridge so many times and never taken the time to stand at the top and look out at the ocean and the sky and see how they flow into my town. It’s like we’re sitting right on the edge of the world.