by Lance Rubin
I was convinced myself for a number of years, until my dad sat me down for a little talk when I was eight and told me that my biological mom died giving birth to me. It sorta blew my mind.
“Wait, so who’s my mom?”
“She died.”
“Yeah, no, but I mean, who’s the lady I know?”
“Oh, Raquel, right, she’s your stepmom. I got married to her when you were three.”
“But some other lady had me.”
“Right.”
“Were you married to that lady?”
“Cheryl, yes, I was.”
“Did you love her?”
“I did, yes.”
“Was it sad when she died?”
“It was.”
My actual mom’s deathdate fell on my birthdate, which is poetic in a way, but mainly just sad. Some days I feel guilty and responsible for my mom’s death. My dad did imply that my conception was “sort of an accident,” but he also said my mom was really excited that she would have a second child before she died. Apparently, she was nervous up until the moment I was born, though, worrying that she would end up dying from complications before I came out or that her deathdate would also be mine.
Once I knew the deal, I wanted to stop calling my stepmom Mom, but my dad said that wasn’t an option. And I’m glad he did. For all intents and purposes, Raquel is my mom, and I love her like one. In fact, anytime someone even utters the word mom, it’s her reddish-brown, chin-length hair, her jangly pendant necklaces, and the perpetually hopeful yet disapproving expression on her face that come to mind. At her most annoying moments, does it occur to me that my actual mother might have been more relaxed, more like Paolo’s mom? Sure. But at the end of the day, Raquel’s my mom. And I feel bad for her that she’s about to lose a son.
“Dentooon,” my stepmom calls from upstairs in her typical singsongy way.
“Yes?”
“Do you need help picking out what to wear?”
“Nope, I’m fine,” I half shout so she can hear me. “I’m just gonna wear my suit. Like we talked about.”
“You and Raquel talk about suits?” says my older brother, Felix, suddenly appearing, in a suit of his own.
“Always.”
“Us, too. Sometimes I’ll give her a random call between classes just to talk about button variations. But then we end up talking for hours, I miss class, and my professors get mad at me.”
I’m ninety-six percent sure he’s joking. “That’s lame. I feel like law school should be more supportive of your right to discuss menswear with your stepmom.”
“I know, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How are you doing?” He pulls me into a hug.
“I’m all right.”
Felix is nine years older than me, and I honestly don’t know him that well. I was eight when he went away to college, and he’s only home about five days a year. That’s not an exaggeration. Partly because there’s this ever-present, low-level friction between him and my stepmom (his stepmom, too), but also because he lives in the city and is always busy. I feel flattered that he’s here now. I assumed he would make it to my funeral, but I really wasn’t sure.
He pulls himself back to look at me, almost fully replicating my stepmom’s pose from moments ago. I feel like it’s going to be a popular one today.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he says, staring into my eyes with an intensity I don’t think I’ve ever seen from him. It makes me uncomfortable. “You know that, right?”
“I…guess so….”
“Wait, look at me.”
“Okay.”
“Life works in strange ways sometimes.”
“Right.” He means well, but it’s irritating. “Kinda easy to say when you’re gonna live to be sixty-two, but right.”
“Yeah, I know. This is a challenging time. Let yourself feel that.”
“Can you not lecture me right now?”
“I’m not lecturing; I’m trying to help you. I’m sure your death counselor has told you—”
“My death counselor is a weird-smelling old dude!” Who happens to have been genuinely helpful to me in the past months. But I’m eager to end this conversation any way I can. Anger is not something I do often or well, so I usually greet it like a moth that’s landed on my shirt: shake it off shake it off shake it OFF!
“Whoa, all right, Dent,” Felix says, his hands in the air. “It’s all good.”
“I need to go get dressed,” I say, avoiding his eyes and heading up the stairs. I guess even as you approach the end of your life, your family can still annoy the crap out of you.
As I unbutton my shirt and get ready to shower, my mind travels back to some well-worn territory: How am I going to die?
It is a question that has kept me up many a night, occupied many a daydream.
I read that during the first years of the Deathdate Movement, the government offered up the option to learn how your death would happen, but it proved to be accurate only seventeen percent of the time, so they scrapped it. Bummer.
Because sometime tomorrow, I will cease to be. And, man oh man, do I wish I knew how. Car accident? Trip and fall? Stung by a bee and it turns out I’m allergic? Infected by some Ebola-like virus? Mysterious brain thing à la Ashley Miller?
Or: straight-up murdered?
With my health records all perfectly normal, what reason do I have to believe I won’t be murdered? If I was sick with cancer, for example, I’d be pretty confident in how I was going to die, which would maybe give me a sense of ease with the whole thing. No murder here! Just cancer!
But when my grandpa Sid was growing up, as he has never been shy to tell me, nobody knew how or when. How crazy is that? No time to mentally prepare, no way to make sure you do all the things you want to do before you die. In a Time with No Knowledge of Deathdates, I could see how getting cancer would be an advantage of sorts. It would either warn you of your upcoming death, giving you time to get ready, or it would scare you into appreciating your life and then not kill you.
Then again, I’ve known my deathdate my whole life, and have I done all the things I want to do? Not really. “I just want to live a normal life.” That’s always been my party line on my premature death, even dating back to the August afternoon when my dad and stepmom first told me about it.
Parents are advised to let children know their deathdates around age five, old enough to comprehend things but young enough to accept information without overthinking it. (I guess in our family, “You’re gonna die young” got first dibs over “That’s not your actual mom.”)
“So, uh, Denton,” my dad said as I sat on the couch with Blue Bronto, the first and best stuffed animal I ever owned, on my lap.
“Are we eating lunch soon?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. Absolutely. But, uh…”
“Oh come on, Lyle,” my stepmom said, plopping down next to me. “Denton, do you understand what death is?”
“Yeah, when people aren’t alive anymore.”
“Right, that’s right. And it doesn’t have to be a scary thing at all. It just is.”
“Okay.”
“Well, your death is going to happen when you’re seventeen years old.”
“I’m five.”
“Right, you’re five now, so that’s…a long while away. We just wanted to tell you now. And if you ever have any questions about it, you can always ask me or your dad, okay?”
“Okay.” I ran my hand down Blue Bronto’s tail. “How do you know?”
“What?”
“How do you know I’ll die then?”
“Well, they know when everybody will die, sweets.”
“Except for the undated people,” my dad said. “Those are the people whose, uh, blood is unreadable by the ATG tests. Just comes up blank. Possibly because of a gene defect.”
“What is a jeans defect?”
“Oh, that’s…,” my dad said.
“Lyle, you’re just confusing him,” my stepmom said.
“Look, when you were born, they took some of your blood and a couple of your hairs—”
“Ew.”
“And then they used those, along with the time and date you were born, and some other things—”
“A genetic map of your DNA,” my dad said, “as well as one of my DNA and of your, uh, well…” (In retrospect, I realize he was starting to refer to my biological mother’s DNA here but then remembered I had NO KNOWLEDGE WHATSOEVER of her existence.) “They have these people who are really good at math and probability, called statisticians, who have this highly advanced thing called a risk assessment model, which, you know, gets thrown into the mix.” My dad rubbed at his right eye under his glasses. “And then they know.”
“When will you and Mom die?” I asked. “Before me? Or after?”
My stepmom looked up toward the ceiling, blinked three times, and took a deep breath. My dad shifted his position on the couch. “After, sweetie,” my stepmom said. “We’ll always be here with you.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“It is,” my dad said. “And, uh, Dent, now that you know this, we support whatever choices you make, like if you wanna go skydiving, or if you just wanna skip school some days, or…you know…”
“Lyle, he has no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t—”
“I don’t wanna skip school,” I said.
“Oh. Of course. Sure,” my dad said.
My stepmom ruffled the hair on the back of my head; my dad looked down at his feet.
“Is now lunch?” I asked.
We had alphabet chicken nuggets.
Soon after, I became obsessed with death, with the science of AstroThanatoGenetics, with thinking about how it would happen for me. Yet, at the same time, I never wanted my early death to make me different, to force me to live some rebellious life I wasn’t actually cut out for. Sure, I could have been riding motorcycles off rooftops while shooting heroin into my veins, but it freaked me out too much. I couldn’t die before seventeen, but I could become paralyzed or go into a coma or do permanent damage to my brain. So, nope, reckless wasn’t for me. I just wanted to be normal.
But now I stare around my room—at the black-and-white squares on my bedspread, the meaningless trophies from elementary school soccer leagues, the crowded shelves of books and movies, the bulletin board photos of me and Paolo, and me and Taryn, and me and my family—and I wonder if I’ve done this perhaps a little too normally. I’m not leaving any legacy to speak of: no novels written or inventions invented. (I have written a couple of dinky songs on my guitar, but I keep forgetting to record them.) I’ll just be another name on the list of unexceptional people who lived and then died in a suburb of New Jersey. I could have done so much more.
What was the point of normal? Did I think that by blending in with the crowd, maybe Death wouldn’t see me?
I’m sliding off my socks when my phone buzzes in my pocket: a call, not a text. It’s Taryn.
“Hey.”
“Oh, hi! I didn’t think you were going to pick up.” Taryn sounds like she’s been crying. “’Cause of the funeral and everything.”
“Yeah, I can’t really talk long. What’s up?”
Taryn is silent.
“Hello?”
“Hi, yeah, I’m here. You sound a little mean.”
She’s right, I do sound kinda mean. But there’s definitely no way to correct that because now I’m annoyed and self-conscious about how I sound. “Sorry. It’s the day of my funeral and you dumped me last night, so you’ll have to pardon any meanness.”
“What did you just say?”
“You’ll have to pardon my meanness.”
“Do you think I dumped you last night?”
“I…Yeah, I mean, I think I remember you dumping me last night.”
“I didn’t dump you, Denton. I just wouldn’t, you know, do it with you. You were too drunk.”
It is my turn to be silent.
“Which is maybe stupid, but I didn’t want our first time to be like that,” she adds.
I can’t keep up with the information being fired my way. I am disoriented, I am ashamed, I am an idiot.
“Right…No, me neither. I didn’t want that either.”
“No, you really did.”
This is so pathetic. My first time drinking alcohol, and I apparently morphed into the jerk from the after-school special, pressuring his girlfriend to have sex with him. “I…am so sorry, Taryn. I was really drunk, I guess, and I don’t remember…much of that.” My mind is racing to catch up with the present moment. Why did I assume she had broken up with me? Thanks, peach schnapps. “I’m sorry I was pressuring you, that’s so lame.”
“No, I mean, I’m sorry I disappointed you. I feel lame, too. I know I probably should’ve just done it because there’s not much time and everything, but I just felt like it should be more special than that. You know?”
“Yes, yes,” I say. She should know that I am the undisputed winner of the Lame Award. “Of course I know, and I think you’re right.”
“Okay, thanks. Because you were saying things like ‘Don’t you think I’m cool and great and fun?’ and—”
“Wow.”
“—and I need you to know that I think you’re the most cool and great and fun; it just—”
“Tar, it’s really all right. I understand, we don’t have to keep talking about this.”
“You were just kinda messy.”
“Oh man. Well, yeah, new topic.”
“How was the rest of your night? You get sick?”
“Uh, it was…” I made out with Veronica! And I’m not broken up with Taryn! This is so bad. Or maybe I’ve misremembered that, too. “It was dumb. I got a little sick this morning.” On Veronica’s pillow! I feel Blue Bronto judging me from the bed.
“Ew, sorry, that sucks. I guess I’d be angrier about the whole thing if you weren’t gonna…”
“If I wasn’t gonna what?”
“You know.”
“Oh, if I wasn’t gonna die tomorrow?”
“Don’t say that.”
I laugh. “Why shouldn’t I say it? I am dying tomorrow.”
“I don’t like to think about it.” She is crying. “I wish you were at least going to make it through prom.”
I can’t decide if that’s flattering or the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard Taryn say. “Well…I mean, I might still be alive tomorrow night when prom happens, but…yeah, well, no, I won’t be going to prom. Sorry.”
Taryn sobs.
Part of me wants to sob, too. I wish the prom committee had been a little more compassionate when they chose the date for this year.
“Hey, it’s okay. I very like you, remember?” I say in my boyfriend voice, hoping an inside joke will make this better.
Taryn and I have been dating for more than seven months, and I’m still kinda surprised we’re a couple. The first two and a half years of high school, I knew her only as the girlfriend of Phil Lechman, the fastest runner in the school and a teammate of mine on the cross-country squad. He’s also kind of a dick. So when Taryn would be at some of our meets, cheering Phil on at the finish line, I never paid much attention. Sure, she was cute—in her tall, gawky way—but her attachment to Phil deemed it likely that she was as lame as he was.
And then, my junior year, I saw the spring musical Cabaret. About halfway through, I realized that the actress playing the sad main character was Phil’s girlfriend. I was blown away. Her performance was so funny, ballsy, and sophisticated. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
So when cross-country season started senior year, I was still a little starstruck. After one of our first meets, I caught Taryn standing alone by a tree. Without any clear plan of what to say, I walked over to her.
“So. Cabaret, huh?”
“What?”
“Very good. I very liked it.”
“Ha, what?”
Somehow she was able to see past that train wreck of an introduction, and we found oursel
ves on a consistent “How’s it going?” basis—at meets, in the hallways—and sometimes I would sneak in a joke, too, which, to my surprise, she’d actually laugh at.
I started nursing an impossible crush, looking forward to every cross-country meet, pretending Taryn was there to cheer for me. Until she stopped showing up at meets. This was disappointing, but potentially awesome. Because, sure enough, she and Phil had broken up.
“Get it!” Paolo started chanting in my ear every day during class. “It’s Dent time!” It still seemed painfully unrealistic—going after Phil’s girl, thinking she would have any interest in me—but having less than a year of life left can be a big motivator.
Cut to early October, the school variety show. Taryn had mentioned once in passing that she’d be performing a song in it, so I decided I would, too. “You can be in one of the big numbers,” Ms. Donatella said when I stopped her in the hallway, “but I can’t just give you a solo number. I’ve never even seen you before.” And then I told her when my deathdate was.
I sat up there with my guitar, singing and playing a ridiculous song I’d written just for the occasion, something designed to be airtight in its ability to charm and garner immense sympathy: “I’m Gonna Die This Spring (So Let’s Make Out Tonight).” As I left the stage, I bumped right into Taryn, who was waiting there in the wings, smiling nervously and looking at me in a way she never had before.
“I very liked that,” she said.
We made out that night.
And many other nights.
Because of my deathdate, it got real serious and real committed real fast. Like, we’ve talked about the wedding we’ll never have, about possible kids’ names we’ll never use. And I’m into that. Have a monogamous relationship was high on my bucket list. But, even so, now that I’m almost dead, part of me wonders if the sow-my-wild-oats route might have been the way to go. It’s probably the same part of me that thought it would be okay to make out with Veronica last night.
“Dentoooon!” My stepmom’s shouting from downstairs pierces our cell-phone bubble. “Have you showered yet? Come on! We need to eat!”