Amanda sat in silence in the backseat, her mind keeping time to the pulse of the streetlights going by out the window. The concert had gone by so quickly, but all that happened after the meeting with Stephen went so painfully slowly: the phone calls, the meetings with agents or lawyers or whoever they were. The parents coming in, signing papers, talking to men in silk shirts and ties. People talking about nondisclosure agreements and lawsuits. It had been a little satisfying to see Julie’s father come in and find out about her taking the device without asking—Amanda thought she heard the words “grounded for a month” as they left the room—but to be honest, she didn’t really care.
She was grateful that the people had explained everything to her own father, so he wasn’t pestering her with questions during the car ride. He knew how much she loved Stephen and how much Amanda wanted to be left alone right now.
THYROID CANCER? She had always told herself that Stephen’s death prediction didn’t define him, that it could be something else and she would love him just as much. She loved his music, his attitudes, his ways. The whole death-prediction thing was something that the media latched on to. The paparazzi. Not her; she was so much more than a fan.
But it did matter, and she was having a hard time confronting herself with that fact. Not that there was anything intrinsically wrong with a prediction of thyroid cancer; it probably meant that he would live a long life. But the deception? The lie? It went against everything she thought he stood for.
She was reminded of the lyrics to a song she knew: “When our heroes turn and fall / We have no one to turn to but ourselves.” It wasn’t one of Stephen’s songs.
She opened her purse, took out her wallet, and pulled out her own prediction. The one that she had gotten at the mall with Mimi when they were both thirteen, with the money her parents thought they were using for ice cream. She read the large block lettering in the light cast rhythmically by the passing streetlights.
ROCK AND ROLL.
She tucked the slip back into her wallet, leaned her head against the cool window, and fell asleep watching the city lights roll by.
* * *
Story by Toby W. Rush
Illustration by Meredith Gran
NATURAL CAUSES
THE MACHINE APPEARED ON A Friday morning. Lucy Swett said that she saw men in black unloading it from the back of a Mack truck, but no one had listened to Lucy Swett since she’d claimed to have been chosen to go to a special convention for young scientists, which was definitely a lie.
The contraption was a bit of a spectacle, mostly because we didn’t have much in the way of modern conveniences. We didn’t have much in the way of anything, truth be told. Almond Hill was the kind of town that you could drive through and not realize it. The kind of town where everyone knew everyone else and people liked it the way it was, thank you very much.
A crowd of people had gathered round on the corner across from the Jiffy Lube at about nine in the morning, when the sun was still rolling out of bed. I was bringing back a carton of milk for Mama and stopped to gawk with the others. The hulking red-and-black box looked almost like a vending machine, but there were no chips or soda behind the glass. Nothing except the ominous title MACHINE OF DEATH printed in crooked circus letters at the top.
“Machine of Death!” Lucy Swett gasped from the front of the crowd. “I’ve heard of those. They tell you how you’re gonna die.”
“Oh, posh,” drawled Dr. Hudson, who had delivered most everyone in town. His wisp of a wife hung on his arm and looked up into his clear blue eyes, prodding him to tell Lucy off. “That’s ridiculous. Who ever heard of such a thing?”
“No! It’s true!” cried Lucy Swett, sandy blond ponytail bobbing up and down. “They’re in all the cities. It was in one of my magazines. I heard of a girl who—”
“Now, Lucy—” The crowd was starting to get excited. People chattered, jostling for a better look at the machine.
“She’s telling the truth,” Helen Calloway said quietly, her face still and her eyes wide open under heavy, straight bangs. Everyone turned to look at her. Mrs. Calloway’s late husband had owned the hardware store and gave it to her when he died. She didn’t lie. “My sister lives in Charleston. Says everyone has ’em done, at shopping malls same as hospitals. Doing it to babies before they’re christened now.”
“My God,” said Mrs. Hudson feebly, putting a shaking hand to her mouth. Dr. Hudson just shook his head. It was quiet for a long while.
“Well, I’m gonna do it,” said Lucy, always one to try out the latest hairstyle or facial cream from one of her glossies. After glancing at the machine, she noisily pulled out her purse and fished around. A pout wrinkled her brow and pursed her lips. “Anyone got a twenty?”
“Twenty dollars?” asked Mrs. Hudson.
“That’s what it says on the machine.” She indicated the marking and gleefully pulled out a wrinkled bill she found at the bottom of her purse. “It’s a medical procedure, Mrs. Hudson.” Lucy fed the twenty into the machine, which sucked up the money like a little kid sucks up ice cream. She waited. “Come on!” She banged the side. “I paid my twenty—”
Then the machine rattled, a sound like a copper kettle would make if it fell off the highest shelf in the garage. It clattered and clanged until we all thought it would break, and then it spit out a slip of paper smaller than my palm. It fluttered to the ground as people craned to see. Lucy snatched it up and cupped her hands around it to read her prediction.
“Tell us what you got, Lucy!” Joe Schafer and his gang called, greasy duck-tailed heads wagging. There was a murmur of agreement among the crowd. I think Joe had had a bit of a crush on me for a while, but Mama wouldn’t let me go out with boys yet, especially not boys like Joe. He was a good guy, but he wore a leather jacket and pierced his own ear behind the Jiffy Lube the summer before eighth grade. The symbol of rebellion had shocked Almond Hill; Principal Skinner made Joe take it out for school, saying that “ridiculous ornamentation for men was unheard of” in his day.
“She ought to tell us her prediction, seeing as she’s the first one and all. There’s no point to it if you don’t tell us. It’s part of the fun,” said lanky Mr. Paganini, who owned the R&R diner.
“Fun, Hank?” asked Dr. Hudson.
“Shhh… It’s not decent,” Mrs. Hudson whispered loudly. “To tell other people.”
The crowd looked to Mrs. Calloway, now the expert on this sort of thing.
“I never heard my sister tell of keeping them secret. She says she’s gonna die of old age. Very matter-of-fact. Everyone knows, in the city.”
We all turned back to Lucy Swett, who was shaking a little in front of the Machine of Death, staring at her sliver of paper. She looked up and was met with silence.
“Well,” she said with her nose in the air, pausing for effect. “I got ‘shot.’ ” There were a few gasps. Her voice was falsely brave, her face pale. “Must mean I’m going to be famous. Only famous people get shot.”
“Stupid people get shot, Lucy,” said Joe Schafer. “Let me at it. I bet I get hit by a car.”
By now, people were leaving. I stood there for a moment, unnerved by the whole idea, then turned to go. Someone grabbed my shoulder.
“Hey, Tess,” Joe Schafer said with a strange, earnest look about him. His hair was slicked back like always. Up this close, I could see his scar, a little line on his cheek where he said he’d been cut in a knife fight with some guys from Seeley.
“Hey, Joe.” I got shy around him and his glinting green eyes.
“Will you get yours done, then?”
“I dunno.” There was an awkward pause. “What’d you get, Joe?”
He took a deep breath. I’d never seen him shaken; he seemed almost concerned, faced with his own death.
“Motorcycle accident,” he said, his voice strangely quiet and husky. There was a moment of silence.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” I whispered, unsure of how to respond. He shook his head.
�
�Oh, ’s’okay. I always said I’d ride till the day I die.” He narrowed his eyes, dragging them over me. “You should get yours done, Tess. Live a little on the edge. It’d be good for you. I mean…” He looked over his shoulder at his gang. “Some people say you’re a stick-in-the-mud. I know you’re not. But you gotta show ’em.”
“Joe!” Caleb, his right-hand man, motioned for their leader to join them. Joe nodded, then turned his head back to me.
“I gotta go, Tess. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do. But think about what I said.” I nodded, not meeting his eyes. “See ya later.” I scurried out of there.
Did people really think I was a stick-in-the-mud? I tried to stay out of trouble. I just went to school and helped my parents out and went to the R&R for milk shakes. I generally liked Almond Hill. But most kids agreed that meant I was doomed. If you didn’t rebel or have dramatic plans to leave, you could never get out.
My parents invited the Hudsons over for lunch. Talk quickly and unceremoniously turned from gossip about Marge Flicker and Toby Dale’s upcoming wedding to discussion of the machine.
“What do you think, Hudson?” my father boomed, mouth full of potato salad. He hadn’t been in the morning congregation across from the Jiffy Lube. “I mean, you’re a doctor.”
“It’s a hell of a thing,” muttered Dr. Hudson. “A hell of a thing.”
My father nodded in agreement and swallowed. “The postman said he heard of a guy who got his done. Said it was gonna be kidney failure, and he died the next day of a kidney failure.” He smacked his hand on the table. “Just like that.”
“Well, it’s a medical machine,” drawled Dr. Hudson. “I guess there could be practical uses for it.”
“We’ve got on fine without them for centuries, Doc—we don’t need ’em now. It’s just gonna make people crazy. Thinking about death all the time.”
“It’s not natural,” Mrs. Hudson intoned. “Prob’ly the devil in it.”
Everyone sat in silence.
“Well, I think that we had better just ignore it,” said my mama, ever practical, as she gathered the plates. “Folks who want it should get it. Folks who don’t, shouldn’t. No need to rally one way or another. I wouldn’t get mine done if you paid me, but I’m not going to tell anyone else what’s best for them. It’s nobody’s business but the person gettin’ it done.”
But of course, the book-club ladies, who fancied themselves proper gentlewomen, started a campaign against the machine. Led by frail Mrs. Hudson, they marched around the machine’s street corner, pausing only to read Scripture at those who decided to get their death predictions. At their strongest, they called a town meeting that got pretty rowdy but decided nothing. Their campaign quickly deteriorated into snide comments at dinner parties and disapproving glares in the supermarket. They took every opportunity to tell those who had gotten predictions that they were damned. That no one ought to know but God himself.
I don’t know about God, but all the kids at the high school were getting theirs done. After Lucy Swett’s bold decision to get her prediction, it became a test of character. “Do you have your slip?” The kids with younger, more liberal parents got their slips right away. But most of the older folks had “sensibilities.” Some kids had to sneak out in the middle of the night to get theirs done. And even after they’d done it, they had to pass another test. “How’s it going to happen?” Separating the wheat from the chaff. The more fantastic the death, the more respect earned. Crashes and firearms trumped natural causes and drowning. Those who didn’t know were at the bottom.
“Tess, we have to do it,” whined Debbie Hayes as we walked home from school, just as we had since we were five. She had been my best friend for as long as I could remember. “Everyone else is getting theirs done.”
“Everyone else doesn’t have parents like mine.”
“But everyone does, Tess!” Debbie stopped and put her hands on her hips. “We all have parents like yours. Old farts. They’re not gonna let us get our slips in a million years.” I started walking again. “But we have to go get them.”
“Go behind our parents’ backs, you mean.”
“Well, yeah.”
I shook my head.
“Deb, I don’t think—”
“Oh, come on, Tess—you’ve never done anything exciting in your whole life.”
“Yes, I have!”
“Tell me one thing.”
“I drank some champagne at your sister’s wedding,” I snapped.
“My five-year-old cousin Bobby drank some champagne at my sister’s wedding.” Debbie stopped again and wheeled to face me, eyes wide. “We’re gonna die someday, Tess. You know that?”
“Yeah.” I crossed my arms. Debbie was good at convincing me; I had to put up a defense.
“These little slips—they just say how it’s gonna happen. They don’t tell you when. We could die tomorrow. And we’d die boring little girls who lived in Almond Hill all their lives and never did anything, just like our parents. We have to be different from them.” She sighed. “Maybe knowing how we die is the first step.”
“I don’t know, Deb… I don’t have any money.”
“I know for a fact you have exactly twenty dollars saved up.”
“That was for the pink dress at Dillingham’s!”
“Think about it, Tess. A dress?” She raised her eyebrow. “Or knowing how it’s all going to end.” She knew she’d hooked me.
“Oh, come on.” She grinned conspiratorially, like she used to when she’d push me to steal a cookie from her parents’ cookie jar (I had always been taller than her). “Sneak out with me. Get your slip.” She bumped my hip with hers. “Show Joe Schafer that you’re really worth talking to.” I felt my face flush red.
“Joe Schafer already talks to me,” I retorted quietly.
She ignored that comment and whispered the plan to me. When we got to her house, she skipped down her front walk, twirling around to give me a little wave at her door. I shook my head and trudged home, muttering to myself.
I was supposed to meet Deb in her treehouse at midnight. It wasn’t hard to sneak out of my house; I had never done anything like that before, so there was no security. My parents slept soundly. We didn’t have a dog.
Deb had a dog, but Cooper was an old, mostly deaf hound who’d known me all his life. He let me shimmy up to the treehouse after I slipped him a treat and sat quiet while I waited.
I had almost fallen asleep with my head propped up in my hand when I saw a flashing light coming from Deb’s window. She was turning a flashlight on and off to get my attention. I squinted. She held up a piece of paper with a message written in her loopy handwriting. Can’t go. Daddy’s watching TV. Deb’s father worked the late shift at the police station and sometimes had problems sleeping. I sighed and started to climb down, fully intending to go back home and slip into bed like I’d never left. Deb flashed the light frantically. I looked up.
You still have to go.
Crickets chirped. I shouldn’t do it. But I’d come this far. But Deb couldn’t go. But I had saved the money. But I could just get the dress and be done with it. But this was my chance to do something. But I didn’t want to die.
Some people say you’re a stick-in-the-mud. I know you’re not. But you gotta show ’em.
I looked up at Deb’s window. I nodded.
The machine was more terrifying at night. In the daylight, it looked almost comical, out of place on the sunny sidewalk. But in the dark, it lurked like a monster on the street corner, waiting for a victim.
I shivered as I fed it my savings. I thought I might wet myself when the machine came to life, clanking and whirring as gears turned and metal grated. It would wake the whole town. When I was absolutely sure that no one was around, I stooped to get my slip. It fluttered out of my hand in the night breeze, and I had to snatch it out of the chilly night air. I held it facedown for what seemed like an eternity, then took a deep breath and turned it over.
on the john.
I couldn’t die on the john. How could I ever tell that to anyone? How could I be respectable with that prediction? I could never admit that to Joe.
It had to be wrong. I had to save up for another prediction. Tell Debbie I’d chickened out. The kids at school were wrong. Getting on the john would be even worse than not getting my slip.
I’d only managed to scrape seven dollars and forty-three cents together when the machine disappeared the next Friday, exactly two weeks after it had arrived. It didn’t make a fuss. Everyone just woke up on Friday and it wasn’t there. Mr. Malloy at the Jiffy Lube said he was happy to see it go. “Gloomin’ up the place,” he said. “Bad for business.”
There was absolutely nothing I could do. My parents wouldn’t let me go to the city to get another slip. Dejected, I used the money to take Debbie to the R&R for milk shakes (vanilla for me, chocolate for her). Mr. Paganini served them up with a smile, then bustled back through the swinging door into the kitchen. I couldn’t help feeling that maybe Mr. Paganini would be a good person to talk to about my death slip. He was nice and gave good advice. He was attentive. He noticed that we’d stayed long after our milk shakes were slurped down.
“What are you two lovely ladies still doing at my counter?” Mr. Paganini asked, long arms folded, pointy elbows sticking out as he leaned on the Formica.
“Thinking about dying.” I sighed, swaying back and forth on my seat cushion while I looked at the black-and-white linoleum. Debbie tapped her fingers on the counter.
“Happens to everyone, one time or another,” he said. There was a tired pause.
“How are you going to die, Mr. Paganini?” Debbie asked brightly. I elbowed her.
He chuckled. “That’s fine, Tess. I’m not ashamed.” More chuckling as his face turned pinkish. “Says I’m going to die on the john, myself.” I couldn’t help it; I gasped, then covered my mouth. “Not very dignified, is it? But I’m sure it happens to lots of people. That’s probably why Mrs. Hudson and those ladies are so uptight about the whole thing—they probably got underwear or false teeth or something.” He smiled and winked.
This Is How You Die Page 3