Loyal to the end

Rufus

1:05 a.m.

Death-Cast is hitting me up as I'm beating my ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend

to death. I'm still on top of this dude, pinning his shoulders down with my

knees, and the only reason I'm not clocking him in the eye again is because

of the ringing coming from my pocket, that loud Death-Cast ringtone

everyone knows too damn well either from personal experience, the news,

or every shitty show using the alert for that dun-dun-dun effect. My boys,

Tagoe and Malcolm, are no longer cheering on the beat-down. They're dead

quiet and I'm waiting for this punk Peck's phone to go off too. But nothing,

just my phone. Maybe the call telling me I'm about to lose my life just

saved his.

"You gotta pick it up, Roof," Tagoe says. He was recording the beatdown

because watching fights online is his thing, but now he's staring at his

phone like he's scared a call is coming for him too.

"The hell I do," I say. My heart is pounding mad fast, even faster than

when I first moved up on Peck, even faster than when I first decked him

and laid him out. Peck's left eye is swollen already, and there's still nothing

but pure terror in his right eye. These Death-Cast calls go strong until three.

He don't know for sure if I'm about to take him down with me.

I don't know either.

My phone stops ringing.

"Maybe it was a mistake," Malcolm says.

My phone rings again.

Malcolm stays shut.

I wasn't hopeful. I don't know stats or nothing like that, but Death-Cast

fucking up alerts isn't exactly common news. And we Emeterios haven't

exactly been lucky with staying alive. But meeting our maker way ahead of

time? We're your guys.

I'm shaking and that buzzing panic is in my head, like someone is

punching me nonstop, because I have no idea how I'm gonna go, just that I

am. And my life isn't exactly flashing before my eyes, not that I expect it to

later on when I'm actually at death's edge.

Peck squirms from underneath me and I raise my fist so he calms the

hell down.

"Maybe he got a weapon on him," Malcolm says. He's the giant of our

group, the kind of guy who would've been helpful to have around when my

sister couldn't get her seat belt off as our car flipped into the Hudson River.

Before the call, I would've bet anything Peck doesn't have any weapon

on him, since we're the ones who jumped him when he was coming out of

work. But I'm not betting my life, not like this. I drop my phone. I pat him

down and flip him over, checking his waistband for a pocketknife. I stand

and he stays down.

Malcolm drags Peck's backpack out from under the blue car where

Tagoe threw it. He unzips the backpack and flips it over, letting some Black

Panther and Hawkeye comics hit the ground. "Nothing."

Tagoe rushes toward Peck and I swear he's about to kick him like his

head's a soccer ball, but he grabs my phone off the ground and answers the

call. "Who you calling for?" His neck twitch surprises no one. "Hold up,

hold up. I ain't him. Hold up. Wait a sec." He holds out the phone. "You

want me to hang up, Roof?"

I don't know. I still have Peck, bloodied and beat, in the parking lot of

this elementary school, and it's not like I need to take this call to make sure

Death-Cast isn't actually calling to tell me I won the lottery. I snatch the

phone from Tagoe, pissed and confused, and I might throw up but my

parents and sister didn't so maybe I won't either.

"Watch him," I tell Tagoe and Malcolm. They nod. I don't know how I

became the alpha dog. I ended up in the foster home years after them.

I give myself some distance, as if privacy actually matters, and make

sure I stay out of the light coming from the exit sign. Not trying to get

caught in the middle of the night with blood on my knuckles. "Yeah?"

"Hello. This is Victor from Death-Cast calling to speak with Rufus

Emmy-terio."

He butchers my last name, but there's no point correcting him. No one

else is around to carry on the Emeterio name. "Yeah, it's me."

"Rufus, I regret to inform you that sometime in the next twenty-four

hours—"

"Twenty-three hours," I interrupt, pacing back and forth from one end

of this car to the other. "You're calling after one." It's bullshit. Other

Deckers got their alert an hour ago. Maybe if Death-Cast called an hour ago

I wouldn't have been waiting outside the restaurant where freshman-year

college-dropout Peck works so I could chase him into this parking lot.

"Yes, you're right. I'm sorry," Victor says.

I'm trying to stay shut 'cause I don't wanna take my problems out on

some guy doing his job, even though I have no idea why the hell anyone

applies for this position in the first place. Let's pretend I got a future for a

second, entertain me—in no universe am I ever waking up and saying, "I

think I'll get a twelve-to-three shift where I do nothing but tell people their

lives are over." But Victor and others did. I don't wanna hear none of that

don't-kill-the-messenger business either, especially when the messenger is

calling to tell me I'll be straight wrecked by day's end.

"Rufus, I regret to inform you that sometime in the next twenty-three

hours you'll be meeting an untimely death. While there isn't anything I can

do to suspend that, I'm calling to inform you of your options for the day.

First of all, how are you doing? It took a while for you to answer. Is

everything okay?"

He wants to know how I'm doing, yeah right. I can hear it in the stunted

way he asked me, he doesn't actually care about me any more than he does

the other Deckers he gotta call tonight. These calls are probably monitored

and he's not trying to lose his job by speeding through this.

"I don't know how I'm doing." I squeeze my phone so I don't throw it

against the wall painted with little white and brown kids holding hands

underneath a rainbow. I look over my shoulder and Peck is still face-first on

the ground as Malcolm and Tagoe stare at me; they better make sure he

doesn't run away before we can figure out what we're doing with him. "Just

tell me my options." This should be good.

Victor tells me the forecast for the day (supposed to rain before noon

and later on as well if I make it that long), special festivals I have zero

interest in attending (especially not a yoga class on the High Line, rain or

no rain), formal funeral arrangements, and restaurants with the best Decker

discounts if I use today's code. I zone out on everything else 'cause I'm

anxious on how the rest of my End Day is gonna play out.

"How do you guys know?" I interrupt. Maybe this dude will take pity

on me and I can clue in Tagoe and Malcolm on this huge mystery. "The End

Days. How do you know? Some list? Crystal ball? Calendar from the

future?" Everyone stays speculating on how Death-Cast receives this lifechanging

information. Tagoe told me about all these crazy theories he read

online, like Death-Cast consulting a band of legit psychics and a really

ridiculous one with an alien shackled to a bathtub and forced by the

government to report End Days. There are mad things wrong with that

theory, but I don't have time to comment on them right now.

"I'm afraid that information isn't available to heralds either," Victor

claims. "We're equally curious, but it's not knowledge we need to perform

our job." Another flat answer. I bet you anything he knows and can't say if

he wants to keep his job.

Screw this guy. "Yo, Victor, be a person for one minute. I don't know if

you know, but I'm seventeen. Three weeks from my eighteenth birthday.

Doesn't it piss you off that I'll never go to college? Get married? Have

kids? Travel? Doubt it. You're just chilling on your little throne in your

little office because you know you got another few decades ahead of you,

right?"

Victor clears his throat. "You want me to be a person, Rufus? You want

me to get off my throne and get real with you? Okay. An hour ago I got off

the phone with a woman who cried over how she won't be a mother

anymore after her four-year-old daughter dies today. She begged me to tell

her how she can save her daughter's life, but no one has that power. And

then I had to put in a request to the Youth Department to dispatch a cop just

in case the mother is responsible, which, believe it or not, is not the most

disgusting thing I've done for this job. Rufus, I feel for you, I do. But I'm

not at fault for your death, and I unfortunately have many more of these

calls to make tonight. Can you do me a solid and cooperate?"

Damn.

I cooperate for the rest of the call, even though this dude has no

business telling me anyone else's, but all I can think about is the mother

whose daughter will never attend the school right behind me. At the end of

the call Victor gives me that company line I've grown used to hearing from

all the new TV shows and movies incorporating Death-Cast into the

characters' day-to-days: "On behalf of Death-Cast, we are sorry to lose you.

Live this day to the fullest."

I can't tell you who hangs up first, but it doesn't matter. The damage is

done—will be done. Today is my End Day, a straight-up Rufus

Armageddon. I don't know how this is gonna go down. I'm praying I don't

drown like my parents and sis. The only person I've done dirty is Peck, for

real, so I'm counting on not getting shot, but who knows, misfires happen

too. The how doesn't matter as much as what I do before it goes down, but

not knowing is still freaking shaking me; you only die once, after all.

Maybe Peck is gonna be responsible for this.

I walk back over to the three of them, fast. I pick Peck up by the back of

his collar and then slam him against the brick wall. Blood slides from an

open wound on his forehead, and I can't believe this dude threw me over

the edge like this. He should've never run his mouth about all the reasons

Aimee didn't want me anymore. If that'd never gotten back to me, my hand

wouldn't be around his throat right now, getting him even more scared than

I am.

"You didn't 'beat' me, okay? Aimee didn't split with me because of

you, so get that out of your head right now. She loved me and we got

complicated, and she would've taken me back eventually." I know this is

legit—Malcolm and Tagoe think so too. I lean in on Peck, looking him

dead-on in his only good eye. "I better never see you again for the rest of

my life." Yeah, yeah. Not much life left. But this dude is a fucking clown

and might get funny. "You feel me?"

Peck nods.

I let go of his throat and grab his phone out of his pocket. I hurl it

against the wall and the screen is totaled. Malcolm stomps it out.

"Get the hell out of here."

Malcolm grabs my shoulder. "Don't let him go. He's got those

connections."

Peck slides along the wall, nervous, like he's scaling across some

windows high up in the city.

I shake Malcolm off my shoulder. "I said get the hell out of here."

Peck takes off, running in a dizzying zigzag. He never looks back once

to see if we're coming for him or stops for his comics and backpack.

"I thought you said he's got friends in some gang," Malcolm says.

"What if they come for you?"

"They're not a real gang, and he was the gang reject. I got no reason to

get scared of a gang that let Peck in. He can't even call them or Aimee, we

took care of that." I wouldn't want him reaching out to Aimee before I can.

I gotta explain myself, and, I don't know, she may not wanna see me if she

figures out what I did, End Day or not.

"Death-Cast can't call him either," Tagoe says, his neck twitching twice.

"I wasn't gonna kill him."

Malcolm and Tagoe are quiet. They saw the way I was laying into him,

like I had no off button.

I can't stop shaking.

I could've killed him, even if I didn't mean to. I don't know if I

would've been able to live with myself or not if I did end up snuffing him

gone. Nah, that's a lie and I know it, I'm just trying to be hard. But I'm not

hard. I've barely been able to live with myself for surviving something my

family didn't—something that wasn't even my fault. There's no way in hell

I would've been chill with myself for beating someone to death.

I storm toward our bikes. My handles are tangled in Tagoe's wheel from

after we chased Peck here, jumping off our bikes to tackle him. "You guys

can't follow me," I say, picking my bike up. "You get that, right?"

"Nah, we're with you, just—"

"Not happening," I interrupt. "I'm a ticking time bomb, and even if

you're not blowing up when I do, you might get burned—maybe literally."

"You're not ditching us," Malcolm says. "Where you go, we go."

Tagoe nods, his head jerking to the right, like his body is betraying his

instinct to follow me. He nods again, no twitch this time.

"You two are straight-up shadows," I say.

"That because we're black?" Malcolm asks.

"Because you're always following me," I say. "Loyal to the end."

The end.

That shuts us up. We get on our bikes and ride off the curb, the wheels

bumping and bumping. This is the wrong day to have left my helmet

behind.

Tagoe and Malcolm can't stay with me the entire day, I know that. But

we're Plutos, bros from the same foster home, and we don't turn our backs

on each other.

"Let's go home," I say.

And we out.