by Lance Rubin
“With those dreads, Willis’s head would make a good sponge,” Millie says.
We all look at her.
“For cleaning,” she adds.
“Denton,” my stepmom says. “You shouldn’t have left the house without telling us. That was very dangerous.”
“I know,” I say.
“I’m just glad you’re all right. We’re not going to the hospital, okay? You got your wish. In fact, we won’t be going anywhere. You’re not allowed outside anymore. Okay? Not up for debate.”
It sucks, but where the hell was I gonna go anyway?
“Got some bandages. Let’s fix you up, Purple,” Felix says, appearing at my right side.
“Wait, wait, wait. Can we get Denton out of the street before you do this?” my stepmom asks. “This is a major thoroughfare. We need to get away from here.”
“It’s a residential street in a suburban neighborhood,” Felix says, “but message received. Dent, you good to stand up?”
“Sure,” I say, but as Felix helps me to my feet, pain shoots up from my ankle, which I’d temporarily forgotten about. “Ow.”
“What, your foot?” Felix asks.
“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” my stepmom asks.
“My ankle, I ran on it wrong and twisted it. Right before the car came.”
“Really?” Felix asks.
“Yes, really,” I say. “What’s so crazy about me twisting my ankle?”
“Nothing, just…It saved you.”
“What did?”
“You twisted your ankle, and it saved you from getting hit by the car.”
“Oh.” I guess that’s true. “Well, great, but it still hurts.”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s walk you over here.” Felix assists me as I limp away from the street and helps me sit down on our front steps. He becomes surprisingly nurselike as he cleans out my elbow wounds and covers them with bandages.
“Such a good older brother,” Paolo’s mom says.
Everyone who was in the house is crowded around me, except for Grandpa Sid and Veronica. Taryn is next to me, rubbing my back. “Let’s check out this ankle,” Felix says. I fully extend my right leg and roll up my jeans. “Huh,” he says.
“Huh what?” I say.
“Look.”
I do, and I see that the red dots on my ankle are moving around uninstigated by anyone’s touch, rapidly reconfiguring themselves in a grid pattern. “Huh,” I say.
“Does it hurt?” Felix asks.
“It does. My ankle is kinda throbbing.”
“The injury might have triggered something with this rash.”
“Triggered something?”
“Well, I don’t know, but let’s keep tabs on it.”
“Felix,” I say, “what do you think I’ve been doing all day?”
He silently wraps my ankle with an Ace bandage.
For once, Felix is actually being an attentive, caring brother, so I don’t know why I’m getting all irritated with him.
“I don’t think Denton should be near cars anymore,” Millie says.
“Thank you, Millicent,” my stepmom says. “I agree.”
“Me too,” Taryn says.
“You hit me, then almost got hit, then almost got hit again,” Millie says.
“I’ll stay away from cars, everyone.” With the danger having passed—at least for now—I see a restless look on Taryn’s face, like she’s remembered she’s supposed to be mad at me. “Look, now that I’m okay and still alive, would you guys mind leaving me and Taryn alone out here for a little bit?”
“RUDE,” Paolo says. He’s kidding.
“I don’t disagree, Paolo,” my stepmom says, but she’s not kidding. She and everyone else shuffle into the house.
Taryn and I sit on the porch step in silence. It really is beautiful out, one of those breezy, not-a-care-in-the-world spring days. The sun feels good. It’s nice not to have to worry about sunscreen anymore.
“I’m so glad you’re still alive,” Taryn says.
I take her hand. “Me too.”
“I was all set to leave and never see you again.”
“Yeah, I got that. That’s why I was inspired to run into the street without looking. To stop you.”
“Because you care or because you hate having people angry at you?”
Can it be both?
She absentmindedly plays with a bundle of her hair as she stares at the ground. “Look, I get that today is your deathdate, and the last thing I wanna do is make this about me. I’m trying so hard not to, Dent. Really.”
“I know that,” I say. For her, this is trying hard.
“But I couldn’t sit there any longer, waiting and hoping you would want to hang out with me.”
“I do want to hang out with you,” I say.
She looks up at me, then back at the ground, tears entering her voice. “I heard you laughing with her.”
Oh man. I thought she was angry because I left the house and ditched her, but maybe she never even realized I was gone. She just heard me with Veronica. Well, this is cutting to the chase faster than I wanted to, but so be it.
“I got worried,” Taryn continues, “so I went up to check on you, but before I could knock…I heard you laughing with her. In the bathroom.”
“Yeah…”
“Why would you do that?” Taryn looks up at me, her eyes pink and glossy.
“I…” I hadn’t anticipated just how much the truth would make me feel like a shithead, but I must press onward. “Taryn, you’re completely right. It was wrong of me. I didn’t plan it. Veronica was in there when I went to pee.”
“So then why didn’t you leave? Or tell her to leave?”
“I guess because…” Own that shit. “I was enjoying talking to her. I’ve known Veronica for, like, ever, and we were laughing about how weird it was that I’m gonna die.”
“But I wanna be the one laughing with you on your deathdate, Dent….”
“Yeah, I know. You can laugh with me, too. Let’s laugh about something right now.”
“Don’t patronize me,” Taryn says, picking at the nail polish on her index finger.
I don’t say anything.
“If this is some weird punishment for me spending time with Phil at your funeral, please, Dent, you have to forgive me. Please.”
“Yeah, I forgive you, of course I do. Tar—and I mean this in the best way—just like you said, this really isn’t about you. I’m going to die soon. Any minute, really, so—”
“And if you’re blaming me for Phil and his gun, I’m so sorry, Dent. I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have ever forgiven myself if he…” She begins to sob—big, contorted-face bawling.
I put my arms around her. “Tar, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
“I know you think I ran back into the house because I was freaked that I was all splotchy. I feel so bad about that.”
I’d forgotten that happened.
Taryn looks up at me, a few stray strands of light brown hair covering her face. “Me running away doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I love you so much. Too much. It makes me angry at you.”
I kiss her, and it’s like one of the electric kisses from the beginning of our relationship. I remember making out at a party Max Reinhold threw when his parents went away for the weekend. It was a November night, and we were some of the only people in the backyard, but we didn’t notice the cold at all.
We pull out of the kiss, still close.
I look at her and wonder: if I were going to live to old age, would she actually be someone I would marry? I try to picture us in a house somewhere, playing a board game with our kids, the family dog bounding over and hilariously messing up all the game pieces.
Who am I kidding? I have no idea what being married would be like. Or if Taryn would be that person.
“I want you to know how insanely important you are to me,” I say. “Being with you these seven months has been one of the best things in my life. I mean that.”
Taryn is drinking up my word
s, her hazel eyes brimming, so moved that it’s making me think twice about leading with this section instead of the part where I confess what I did with Veronica.
“You’re so pretty and so crazy talented and so funny. Your smile kills me every time. And you’re smart. You think you’re not, but you are. Seriously.”
Taryn just stares, tears racing each other down her cheeks.
Behind us, the front door opens up. Taryn wipes her cheeks dry. It’s Veronica—naturally—wearing a big black hooded sweatshirt that I recognize as Felix’s. She navigates around us and bounds down the steps.
“Ron, wait!” Paolo’s mom says, leaning out the front door.
“No,” Veronica says, continuing to speed-walk away.
“You don’t understand. Please!”
“Bye, guys,” Veronica says, without turning around or taking down her hood.
I’m confused by what’s happening. I know I don’t want Veronica to leave, though.
“Veronica!” Paolo’s mom says. “How are you gonna get home? I have the car keys.”
“Guess I’ll just have to walk,” Veronica says.
“You’re overreacting!” Paolo’s mom says.
Veronica strides away down the sidewalk.
“Uh, bye!” I call out.
“Yeah, night,” Taryn says.
I turn back to Paolo’s mom, who’s still suspended in the doorway, trailing Veronica with her eyes.
“Everything okay?” I say.
“What?” Paolo’s mom says, as if breaking from a trance. “Oh yeah, nothing for you to worry about, certainly. Sorry to interrupt.” She steps back in and closes the front door.
“Weirdest exit ever,” Taryn says.
“I know,” I say.
“And it’s, like, a beautiful day. Why was Veronica wearing a hoodie?”
That’s as good of a segue as any.
“Hey, so you know how before I was saying all this really isn’t about you?”
“Yeah…,” Taryn says, already looking alarmed.
“No, don’t worry, I’m just…Okay, so I’m going to die, right? My life is going to end. And I love you so much. I know that now, I really love you—”
“Are you breaking up with me?” Taryn says, eyes wide.
“Well, no, I mean, I’m about to die, so—”
“Did you cheat on me? Is that what this is?”
“Oh wow, whoa, easy, easy.” I wanted to approach this with tact and integrity. Instead, this thing is rocketing out of my control.
“Did you?”
“I…Well, lemme get to that part.”
Taryn gasps like she’s in some kind of old-timey horror movie. She looks like she’s in shock. “Get to that part? Ohmigod. You cheated on me. With Veronica.”
“Well, sorta. I mean, yes, essentially, but I don’t think of it as cheating—”
“What?” Taryn is very pale.
“I think of it as exploring. I’m a dying dude who needed to explore, and it has nothing to do with you. You get that, right?”
“I can’t believe you,” she says. An army of tears rises up and hangs on to the cliffs of her eyeballs, ready to jump.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve never died before. I don’t think I’m very good at it. But I still love you.”
“Don’t you say those words to me.” As if in response to her anger, Taryn’s splotch slowly snakes above her scarf and up her neck, blossoming outward to cover her entire chin.
“What are you looking at?” Taryn asks.
“Oh, it’s…Don’t worry, it’s just your chin….”
Taryn’s hand shoots up to her face, and her brain-gears begin spinning. She looks at me, incredulous. “Veronica has this, too, doesn’t she? Ohmigod. OhmiGOD.” Taryn begins to straight-up weep into her hands. Which is even more devastating than her earlier sobs.
“Oh, Tar…”
I don’t know why, but when I imagined the way this would play out, it wasn’t nearly this painful.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I was so drunk I don’t even remember it. At least the—” I stop before saying the words first time. There’s no need to reference our bathroom make-out. Even being real has its limits.
Taryn’s sobs peter out. She stares at me. It’s brutal. Her mouth is moving, but she can’t make words. “What…what did you do with her?”
“Taryn, please. It takes nothing away from what we have, it—”
“What did you do with her?” she says again, with a surprising amount of power.
I can’t lie. “I guess…We did it.”
Taryn puts her hand to her mouth like she’s going to throw up, and it suddenly seems overdramatic. I mean, come on, I’m the one dying.
“I know it seems horrible, I do,” I say. “But I got drunk for the first time, and it happened. And honestly, I’m glad it happened.” Words are pouring out. “This—today—is about my life, and me, and I was never trying to hurt you. So I understand if you hate me, but I hope, I really hope, you can forgive me one day.”
Taryn is crying and staring forward into nothing. She slowly stands and starts to walk away.
“I can’t,” she says quietly.
I watch as she gets into her car again, but this time I don’t chase after her.
“No way. Screw you.”
Paolo’s not on board with my idea.
“Why not?” I ask.
“WHY NOT? I’m not gonna even answer that, I just won’t.”
“It could be fun. We could get creative with it!”
Paolo stares at me like I’m crazy. Maybe I am. “I’m sorry, are we talking about the same thing? Did you seriously just say we could ‘get creative’ with ways for you to kill yourself?”
“Yeah, you know, something legendary. Like with pills and a gun. You love Kurt Cobain; I thought you’d be into this.”
Paolo puts the palms of his hands onto his eyes and breathes loudly. He’s sitting in my desk chair; I’m on the edge of my bed. “Okay, I don’t even…You are actually freaking me out, dude. Do we have to bring in a suicide expert to talk you down off the ledge? We can call a hotline.”
“Oh, come on, I’m completely clearheaded right now—”
“Completely—”
“I’m just tired of waiting around for bad shit to happen! I obliterated Taryn’s heart, your sister’s gone, I’m stuck in this house, and I’ve got a dickhead cop hovering around waiting to do God knows what to me. What’s the point of waiting it out another five hours? Why shouldn’t I control the one thing I have control over and just do it myself? Didn’t you tell me I should ‘own that shit’?”
“That was about being a cool dude who bangs chicks and doesn’t care, not about putting a bullet through your head while simultaneously chewing on pills!”
“I don’t think the pills would be chewable.”
“Whatever! Bottom line: you should’ve done this on your own, because now that I’m involved, it ain’t happening.”
He’s right. I should have done it on my own. But I wussed out.
After Taryn drove off, I remembered to open the lavender envelope she’d given me, which had been sitting unread in my back pocket for hours.
It was one of those standard Hallmark deathdate cards—a picture of a pretty flower on the front under the words YOU WILL BE MISSED—but the note inside was a minor masterpiece.
It was a love letter, plain and simple. Long and pure and surprisingly eloquent.
She said that knowing a genuinely good guy like me was such a gift. Especially because her parents could be really cold to each other, and her dad had actually cheated on her mom when she was ten, and her parents didn’t know that she knew that, but she had overheard once or something like that (I skimmed that section once I saw it wasn’t about me), and it sorta messed her up. But the point was, I had shown her that there are guys out there with integrity and class, who are loyal and respectful and great. I’d shown her that it is okay to trust men.
I know.
As I sat holding the note, my mind drifted back to my list of things to accomplish before death, and suddenly number four (Do something awesome and memorable) took on a dark meaning.
I limped inside and up to my bedroom (“Dent, everything okay?” my stepmom asked. “Did Taryn leave?”), where I began to contemplate the ways I could do it.
I ruled out slitting my wrists: too clichéd and too awful for my parents to find. I thought I could hang myself, but how? The one time I’d tried to hang a picture, it took me two hours. I thought to myself that maybe it would have been easier if Phil had shot me this morning.
And then Paolo was knocking on my door, which I interpreted as the universe sending me an ally for this last mission.
Not so much.
Paolo rolls the desk chair over to the bed and puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Hey. How about we just watch a movie?”
“I’m down to single-digit possible hours left. Why would I want to sit and watch other people experiencing things?”
“Because you love movies,” Paolo says quietly, spinning away from me on his chair.
“Sorry, I’m not trying to be a jerk. I’m just scared.”
Paolo grabs my Magic Eight Ball off my dresser and starts absentmindedly shaking it. “We don’t have to watch a horror movie,” he says. “We could watch something funny.”
“I’m not saying I’m scared of movies. I’m saying I’m scared to die, Pow.”
“Oh. Right. I’m scared, too.”
“Yeah.” We both get quiet.
Paolo stops shaking the eight ball and looks at it. He slowly raises his eyes to mine. “ ‘As I see it, yes,’ ” he says.
“What?”
“I just asked the eight ball if you were going to live through today, and it said, ‘As I see it, yes.’ Holy shit, dude.”
I can tell he’s not joking. He actually believes in the power of this plastic toy.
“D, you could be like Harry Potter. Or Darth Vader or something. So cool.”
I suddenly remember how lucky I am to have a friend like Paolo. And just like that, I’m not ready to die yet.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Don’t thank me,” Paolo says, dumbfounded. “Thank this amazing contraption here. What great news.”
“No, Pow,” I say, taking the eight ball out of his hands and putting it on the floor. “Thanks for being my best friend.”