Life Is Short and Then You Die

by Kelley Armstrong

  You have to understand that my league is my everything. I built the app that does the game simulations and the website it lives on. I recruited users from followers of my Instagram New York Mets news page. They’re mostly NYC locals, but I’ve also got users from Florida, Seattle, even Japan. Maybe to you it sounds lame to run an app that simulates a baseball season. That’s okay. I’d probably hate your personal obsessions, full-contact Quidditch or zombie-massacre video games or annotated rap videos. But who cares what I think? You love what you love. If I lost my league, I’d be totally ordinary. Well, ordinary in every way but one.

  I made an immediate decision: permanent ban. I blasted the announcement to the league.

  My mom shoved open the door. When she saw my tablet, her eyes bulged and her face got as red as fruit punch. To her, my sim league was something shameful and disgusting, like dinosaur porn.

  “Justin.” Her whole body drooped. “I wouldn’t mind so much if you were talking to friends.” When I’m at my lowest point, she has the superhuman ability to make me feel worse. I think riot police should hire her to yell depressing comments over a bullhorn until the rampaging masses are reduced to moping.

  “I just need a minute, Mom.”

  She sighed and left. I went back to the tablet.

  But before I could disconnect PhillyFreak from my league and my life completely, he replied one more time to everyone. Just two words.

  Too late.

  3.

  Saturday morning, I logged in first thing from my bed. Another DM from SynderGirl.

  SynderGirl: OMG you hear about RonanB?

  Me: No.

  Her reply was just a link to a story in the Daily News. Someone named Ronan Blitstein had been found dead behind a construction-site dumpster in the far west side, not far from his home. His skull had been crushed. Cops found an aluminum baseball bat nearby. Bloody.

  There was no picture, thank god. Another DM came in.

  SynderGirl: That’s our Ronan! You think PhillyFreak did it? Did he say anything after you banned him?

  About what? About murdering RonanB?

  Me: No.

  SynderGirl: My dad made me call the cops to tell them about PhillyFreak. Maybe you should, too.

  What a terrific idea. I love barging into murder investigations. Maybe I could un-ban PhillyFreak and ask him for his real name and address. It’s not like he’s easily annoyed.

  SynderGirl: I’m seriously freaked. Me and Ronan had been hanging out. He was such a good guy. Can you come over?

  Was she serious? Come over?

  SynderGirl: His parents are having a wake or something today. We could go together.

  SynderGirl: Are you there? I’m scared. I’m also pissed off. Can’t we do something? Find the killer? Here’s my address. My real name’s Christa.

  I could hear my mom fumbling with the coffeemaker. She was going to shout me awake, make pancakes, suggest we embark on some expedition out in the city—something to get me off my site and Instagram. When I’m out with her, some pizza-faced teenager reduced to hanging with his mom, I feel like the culmination of human loserdom. I try to hide my embarrassment as best as I can. I know how much she loves me.

  Christa had directly asked for my help. That only ever happened to me at school when some teacher or girl (boys never ask) needed a hand with computer stuff. They always felt they had to make small-talk afterward or gush about my brilliance.

  Conversation with Christa would be a billion times more awkward. She and RonanB had been friends, apparently. So I’d have to be sensitive. I’d have to be sorrowful. I’d have to maintain a free-flowing, thoughtful conversation for god knows how long—thirty minutes, an hour?

  Maybe RonanB had been her boyfriend. Maybe they’d been planning to run away together and now her dreams were crushed, and I was the last person standing between her and a swan dive off the GW Bridge.

  I just wanted to stay home and sim.

  No. I never cut out on my obligations. I never missed school or a coding class or a haircut appointment, no matter what I looked like. My goal is to fulfill all my responsibilities so I can be fully prepared for the day, years from now, when I’m an adult, and normal-looking, and real life finally starts. Believe me, I’ll enjoy it more than anyone.

  And one of life’s unavoidable responsibilities is, every now and then, to meet people face to face.

  But what would I say to her? I don’t have a lot of practice consoling people my own age. Or—to be honest—even talking to them. Especially girls.

  I’d never known a guy my age who died before. But then, I never really knew Ronan. Nor did I know PhillyFreak—but I thought I knew how to find him.

  I checked the chat. Christa had not only announced the news of Ronan’s death, but also proposed a meet-up this evening for all local league members, in RonanB’s honor. She wrote, Commissioner SimDawg will deliver the eulogy.

  Whoa.

  When I opened my door, there was my mother. She stared. Fully dressed on a Saturday before 11 A.M. is not my usual condition.

  “I’m going out, Mom.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “To get bagels?”

  “To meet a friend.”

  I might as well have said, “Join the Marines.” She was speechless. I laughed, kissed her on the cheek, and grabbed my sweatshirt.

  4.

  On the crosstown bus, I started to question my decisions, as you do on a bus. What if I was in danger myself? What if this “Christa” was really Kristof, an eight-foot-tall European gangster who wanted to smash my skull and eat my brains like he ate Ronan’s? Leaving the apartment was a mistake. Getting out of bed was a mistake. I had sims to do. My favorite pitcher, Jacob deGrom, was pitching for the Mets that night. It was a terrible time to be murdered. My mom hyperventilated when she caught me on a screen after 11 P.M. Imagine what she’d do if she had to identify me in the morgue.

  The little girl across the aisle was squinting at me. “Why does he have so many mosquito bites?” she asked her mother, who started whispering furiously in her ear. The girl just looked confused. I decided to examine ESPN on my phone. But first I made myself smile at them both, to prove to her mother that I understood, that I loved children and their adorable innocence. Which I did, mostly.

  I could just jump off the bus and go home. But then I’d know life had defeated me. That was worse than getting skull-smashed or brain-eaten or even stared at.

  I got off at Ninth Avenue and found Christa’s address, a brownstone on Twenty-First Street. I knocked.

  An enormous man with a forehead the size of a retaining wall opened the door.

  “Is Christa here?” I asked.

  He grabbed me by the sweatshirt, hauled me into the entryway, and tossed me against the wall tiles inside. His huge fist grabbed a hunk of sweatshirt, twisting up the fabric until it drew tight against my always-tender neck.

  So it was a trap after all. That’s what I get for leaving home to meet some catfish from the internet. Every warning every health teacher had ever given me, every middle-school field trip to Safety City—all useless, because I was a moron.

  I tried to gulp some air. The man’s face quivered, like a boulder just about to plummet from a cliff. Who needs a bat? He was going to crush my skull with his head.

  Someone cried out: “Dad!”

  The man shook his fist, rattling my body. “Who are you?!”

  “Justin,” I croaked.

  “Dad! Let me see him!”

  His hand dropped slightly, and the fabric loosened slightly around my neck. He took a half-step backward while maintaining his grip.

  Now I could see a girl. She was taller than me, and not fat but solid in the middle, like she was wearing protective gear under her clothes. She slipped around her dad to see me. I imagined I looked pretty bizarre, my body plastered against her entry wall, my face extra-red with surprise and oxygen-deprivation.

  “Are you SimDawg?”

  I
nodded as much as my tightened collar would allow. I noticed she was wearing a Noah Syndergaard Mets shirt. She had dressed up to meet me.

  “Dad, you’re strangling a celebrity! This is the commissioner of the Worldwide Virtual Baseball League!”

  She called out my title in a booming announcer voice, as if introducing me at the home run derby. I wished I had her around to introduce me everywhere I went. Her dad dropped the stranglehold.

  When I was done smoothing my sweatshirt, I found I could look them both in the eyes. These people had a) invited me to their home and b) tried to throttle me. What did I have to be embarrassed about? I decided to live up to her introduction. “You know what I like to do when I meet people?”

  The dad stared at me, both puzzled and outraged. I was oddly comfortable with letting him examine my face. He thought I was strange. He thought I was dangerous. This guy was okay.

  “I like to breathe,” I answered myself.

  When Christa grinned, I rolled my eyes and let my tongue loll, like the fourth-grade class clown. I was confident now. I was somebody else.

  She giggled.

  “How does he know where we live?” Her father’s voice cracked.

  “I invited him.” Christa stroked his arm like she was soothing a cat. “He’s taking me to Ronan’s.”

  “You’re always sneaking out with weird people. Not anymore! Kids die out there. You’ve seen it!”

  He was the opposite of my mother—she was anxious over all the time I spent at home alone; he was terrified of his daughter venturing out. Were all parents so agonizingly afraid for their children?

  Now came a woman’s voice from deeper inside: “Let them go. That poor boy was their friend.”

  “Boy!” He ground his fist into his other hand. “That was no boy!” Then he covered his face with his hand, as if ashamed of what he’d said. “But I liked Ronan. Everyone did. Tell his family I’m sorry.”

  5.

  Ronan’s apartment was nearby. “Sorry about that,” Christa said as we walked. “Can’t wait until I graduate and ditch the parents forever. Do yours try to lock you up on weekends, too?”

  “I have to stay in a lot and do my sims.” But I’m trying to get out more, I wanted to say. Maybe we could watch a Mets game together.

  I knew that whenever I glanced at her face—which was full, healthy, and clear—she’d be getting a full blast of mine. That was fine, I told myself, though I knew I was lying. Faking self-confidence was my best hope. We all know weird-looking kids who march right up to the class superstars and start chatting away. It’s as if they forget how weird they are, so everybody else forgets, too. Maybe I could learn the trick.

  “I was lucky to get away. My dad always says I have too many friends, especially guy friends. I have to be home at ten even on weekends! Believe that?”

  “Wow.”

  “What do you know about PhillyFreak? I told the cops about the chat.”

  “I’ve been looking through my site data. I think I can track him down.”

  “That’s why I called you in, SimDawg! We’re gonna nail this guy together. You’ve got the brains and the hi-tech know-how.”

  I loved the way she used my handle. “What do you bring to the team? Your”—Why not?—“devastating beauty?” I tried to say this with a twinkle in my eye. How do you make a bodily organ twinkle? But I already knew the answer—you do it by believing you’re so brilliant, so irresistible that, yes, you actually twinkle.

  She snorted and noogied me in the shoulder. Who does that? Maybe normal kids do. “Listen, SimDawg, I’m a big girl who loves sports. I feel like half my friends are waiting for me to sit them down and reveal who I really am. But this is who I am, and I like it.”

  “Same with me. I build websites. I run sims. That’s who I am. And I like it.”

  “That’s it! Half the league’s coming to the meet-up this afternoon. Not just to honor Ronan—they want to meet you, too. Look. There’s the lot where he died.”

  You could still see the police tape.

  His apartment was just around the corner. I was ready.

  I was the SimDawg.

  6.

  Entrances are always hell for me. Every pair of eyes in the room turned our way. Usually at this point I pull out my phone or examine my sneakers, but now I forced myself to scan their faces. They all seemed surprisingly hopeful, as if there were some chance Christa and I might say, “We’re from the hospital! We made a huge mistake! Ronan’s okay!”

  After a silent moment, their hope faded, and they all turned back to their murmured conversations, or their coffee mugs, or their sorry little brownies. Everyone in the room looked over fifty, except for one younger man, who was also the only one in a suit. He squinted at me for a second before dipping his eyes back to his mug.

  “What is this?” Christa whispered. She was staring at a mirror covered in cheesecloth. But I knew. Ronan must have been Jewish, like me and my mom. Jewish people cover their mirrors up because you’re not supposed to be obsessing over yourself and your appearance when someone dies; you’re supposed to focus on the deceased. Christa probably thought she was in some vampire ritual.

  In general, I approve of disabling mirrors.

  “They’re sitting shiva,” I whispered back. “That’s what Jews do after someone dies.”

  She nodded, impressed with my knowledge.

  An elderly woman on a sofa pointed a fragile finger at us and said, “Look, it’s Christa!” Her (somewhat) younger companion turned and collapsed into sobs, her gray scrub-brush hair shaking violently.

  “That’s his mother and grandmother,” Christa whispered. “They all lived here together.”

  “They look old.”

  “Ronan was almost thirty.”

  That was a surprise.

  The older woman, with assistance from two spryer but fatter men, struggled to her feet.

  The elderly are my favorite people to meet. Their baggy, disordered faces are far enough along on the spectrum of weirdness that I feel like we can relax in each other’s presence.

  “I knew his friends would come.” The woman’s dark eyes were wet and bright, like puddles shining under streetlights. I introduced myself. I half hoped Christa would chime in with my commissioner title in her movie-trailer voice, but she hung back. Faking confidence has its drawbacks.

  Now Ronan’s mother rose, too. Her face, though less ragged, was blotchy with grief and ruined makeup. She tried to smile, but her lips just flexed once and slumped back down, exhausted.

  I hugged her. I wish I could say I just did it without thinking, but really I had to force myself to step forward and open my arms. But I did it. And she hugged back, as desperately if I was Ronan myself and this was our final goodbye.

  “I’m Justin,” I said into her scrub-brush hair, which was softer than it looked. “Ronan called me SimDawg.”

  She gave one last little sob and leaned back. Her lips had at last managed a smile. “He loved your website! I remember when he made your playoffs—when was it, Mom? Around New Year’s?”

  The older woman nodded joyfully. “We had a can of beer left over from our celebration. He made us pour it on his head.”

  I had no idea people took my championships that seriously. Christa asked the women if Ronan had ever mentioned a league member named PhillyFreak. The two women shook their heads.

  “That’s what the detective asked, too.” The grandmother waved her hand toward the man in the suit, who was off in a corner jotting something into a notebook. “He’s gathering information. We like him.”

  “Maybe he was the one I talked to,” Christa said.

  I had to tell him what I knew. But what if he made me testify in open court? A hundred people, all staring at me …

  “Ronan kept a lot of secrets,” the mother said. “He’d wait for weeks to tell us he got fired. He got fired a lot. Never had many friends. He was a bit of a…”

  “Weirdo,” finished the grandmother. “Christa knew that. She alwa
ys had to visit him here. Ronan made her father nervous. I suppose because he was older.”

  “My dad’s super helicopter,” Christa apologized. “But in the end he warmed up. Ronan’s the only guy I ever knew who changed his mind.” She blinked a tear out of her eye. “I just wish he hadn’t.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Ronan was coming to my place that night. My dad had finally said he could come over. I hung around with my mom, waiting. He never showed.”

  Was Christa blaming herself? Should I blame myself that he had perhaps been murdered by someone from my league?

  “Everyone’s a weirdo somehow.” I smiled ruefully, as if to say, Just look at me. No one got the joke.

  Christa nodded. “But Ronan made something beautiful from his weirdness.”

  Ronan’s mother smiled. “You mean his collection.” She stretched her neck until her maroon-colored lips were almost kissing my chin, and whispered with a voice so low and intense that the whole room turned to us: “Do you want to see it?”

  Christa took my hand and squeezed. I knew I should be focused on the departed, and I was, but I was also thinking about the warmth of her fingers, the intimacy of our secret connection.

  The detective, from his corner, was squinting at me.

  I released Christa’s hand as the two women began to lead her through the petrified forest of grieving oldsters into a bedroom.

  Christa glanced back. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just a second.”