Encounter

Mateo

3:42 a.m.

There's a knock at the front door and I stop pacing.

Different nerves hit me all at once: What if it's not Rufus, even though

no one else should be knocking at my door this late at night? What if it is

Rufus and he's got a gang of thieves with him or something? What if it's

Dad, who didn't tell me he woke up so that he could surprise me—the sort

of End Day miracle they make Lifetime movies about?

I approach the door slowly, nudge up the peephole's cover, and squint at

Rufus, who's looking right at me, even though I know he can't actually

make me out.

"It's Rufus," he says from the other side.

I hope it's only him out there as I slide the chain free from its track. I

pull the door open, finding a very three-dimensional Rufus in front of me,

not someone I'm looking at through video chat or a peephole. He's in a dark

gray fleece and is wearing blue basketball shorts over these Adidas gym

tights. He nods at me. There's no smile or anything, but it's friendly all the

same. I lean forward, my heart pounding, and peek out into the hallway to

see if he has some friends hiding against the walls, ready to jump me for the

little I have. But the hallway is empty and now Rufus is smiling.

"I'm on your turf, dude," Rufus says. "If anyone should be suspicious,

it's me. This better not be some fake sheltered-kid act, yo."

"It's no act," I promise. "I'm sorry, I'm just . . . on edge."

"We're in the same boat." He holds out his hand and I shake it. His

palm is sweaty. "You ready to bounce? This is a trick question, obviously."

"I'm ready-ish," I answer. He's come straight to my door for my

company today, to lead me outside my sanctuary so we can live until we

don't. "Let me grab a couple of things."

I don't invite him in, nor does he invite himself inside. He holds the

door open from the outside while I grab the notes for my neighbors and my

keys. I turn off the lights and walk past Rufus, and he closes the door

behind me. I lock up. Rufus heads toward the elevator while I go the

opposite way.

"Where you going?"

"I don't want my neighbors to be surprised or worried when I'm not

answering." I drop off one note in front of 4F. "Elliot cooked extra food for

me because I was only eating waffles." I come back Rufus's way and leave

the second note in front of 4A. "And Sean was going to take a look at our

busted stove, but he doesn't have to worry about that now."

"That's chill of you," he says. "I didn't think to do that."

I approach the elevator and peek over my shoulder at Rufus, this

stranger who's following me. I don't feel uneasy, but I am guarded. He talks

like we've been friends for a while, but I'm still suspicious. Which is fair,

since the only things I know about him are that his name is Rufus, he rides a

bike, he survived a tragedy, and he wants to be the Mario to my Luigi. And

that he's also dying today.

"Whoa, we're not taking the elevator," Rufus says. "Two Deckers riding

an elevator on their End Day is either a death wish or the start to a bad

joke."

"Good point," I say. The elevator is risky. Best-case scenario? We get

stuck. Worst-case scenario? Obvious. Thankfully, I have Rufus here to be

calculating for me; I guess Last Friends double as life coaches that way.

"Let's take the stairs," I say, as if there's some other option to get outside,

like a rope hanging from the hallway window or one of those aircraft

emergency slides. I go down the four flights like a child being trusted with

stairs for the first time, its parents a couple steps ahead—except no one is

here to catch me should I fall, or should Rufus trip and tumble into me.

We get downstairs safely. My hand hovers over the lobby door. I can't

do it. I'm ready to retreat back upstairs until Rufus moves past me and

pushes open the door, and the wet late-summer air brings me some relief.

I'm even hit with hope that I, and only I—sorry, Rufus—can beat death. It's

a nice second away from reality.

"Go ahead," Rufus says. He's pressuring me, but that's the whole point

of our dynamic. I don't want to disappoint either of us, especially myself.

I exit the lobby but stop once the door is behind me. I was last outside

yesterday afternoon, when I was coming home from visiting Dad, an

uneventful Labor Day. But being out here now is different. I check out the

buildings I've grown up with but never paid any special attention to. There

are lights on in my neighbors' apartments. I can even hear one couple

moaning; the roaring audience laughter from a comedy special; someone

else laughing from another window, possibly at the very loud comedy show

or possibly because they're being tickled by a lover or laughing at a joke

someone cared enough to text them at this late hour.

Rufus claps, snapping me out of my trance. "You get ten points." He

goes to a railing and unlocks his steel-gray bike.

"Where are we going?" I ask, inching farther away from the door. "We

should have a battle plan."

"Battle plans usually involve bullets and bombs," Rufus says. "Let's roll

with game plan." He wheels his bike toward the street corner. "Bucket lists

are pointless. You're not gonna get everything done. You gotta go with the

flow."

"You sound like a pro at dying."

That was stupid. I know it before Rufus shakes his head.

"Yeah, well," Rufus says.

"I'm sorry. I just . . ." A panic attack is coming on; my chest is

tightening, my face is burning up, my skin and scalp are itchy. "I can't wrap

my head around the fact that I'm living a day where I might need a bucket

list." I scratch my head and take a deep breath. "This isn't going to work.

It's going to backfire on us. Hanging out together is a bad idea because it'll

only double our chances of dying sooner. Like a Decker hot zone. What if

we're walking down the block and I trip and bang my head against a fire

hydrant and—" I shut up, cringing from the phantom pain you get when

you think about falling face-first onto spiked fences or having your teeth

punched out of your mouth.

"You can do your own thing, but we're done for whether we hang or

not," Rufus says. "No point fearing it."

"Not that easy. We're not dying from natural causes. How can we try to

live knowing some truck might run us down when we're crossing the

street?"

"We'll look both ways, like we've been trained to do since we were

kids."

"And if someone pulls out a gun?"

"We'll stay out of bad neighborhoods."

"And if a train kills us?"

"If we're on train tracks on our End Day, we're asking for it."

"What if—"

"Don't do this to yourself!" Rufus closes his eyes, rubbing them with

his fist. I'm driving him crazy. "We can play this game all day, or we can

stay out here and maybe, like, live. Don't do your last day wrong."

Rufus is right. I know he's right. No more arguing. "It's going to take

me some time to get where you are with this. I don't become fearless just

because I know my options are do something and die versus do nothing and

still die." He doesn't remind me that we don't have a whole lot of time. "I

have to say goodbye to my dad and my best friend." I walk toward the

110th Street subway station.

"We can do that," Rufus says. "I have nothing I'm gunning to do. I had

my funeral and that didn't exactly go as planned. Not really expecting a doover,

though."

I'm not surprised someone so boldly living his End Day had a funeral.

I'm sure he had more than two people to say goodbye to.

"What happened?" I say.

"Nonsense." Rufus doesn't elaborate.

I'm looking both ways, getting ready to cross the street, when I spot a

dead bird in the road, its small shadow cast from a bodega's lit awning. The

bird has been flattened; its severed head is a couple inches away. I think it

was run down by a car and then split by a bike—hopefully not Rufus's. This

bird definitely didn't receive an alert telling it that it would die tonight, or

maybe yesterday, or the day before, though I like to imagine the driver that

killed it at least saw the bird and honked their horn. But maybe that warning

wouldn't have mattered.

Rufus sees the bird too. "That sucks."

"We need to get it out of the street." I look around for something to

scoop it up with; I know I shouldn't touch it with my bare hands.

"Say what?"

"I don't have this dead-is-dead-so-just-walk-away attitude," I say.

"I definitely don't have this 'dead-is-dead-so-just-walk-away attitude'

either," Rufus says, an edge to his voice.

I need to check myself. "I'm sorry. Again." I quit my hunt. "Here's the

thing. When I was in third grade, I was playing outside in the rain when a

baby bird fell out of its nest. I caught every second of it: the moment the

bird leapt off the edge of the nest, spread its wings, and fell. The way its

eyes darted around for help. Its leg broke on impact, and it couldn't drag

itself to shelter, so the rain was pummeling it."

"That bird had some bad instincts, jumping out the tree like that," Rufus

says.

The bird dared to leave home, at least. "I was scared it was going to

freeze to death or drown in a puddle, so I ran out and sat down on the

ground with the bird, sort of shielding it with my legs, like a tower." The

cold wind got the best of us, and I had to take off from school the following

Monday and Tuesday because I'd gotten really sick.

"What happened then?"

"I have no idea," I admit. "I remember I got a cold and missed school,

but I must've blocked out what happened to the bird. I think about it every

now and again because I know I didn't find a ladder and return it to its nest.

Sucks to think I left it there to die in the rain." I've often thought that

helping that bird was my first act of kindness, something I did because I

wanted to help another, and not because my dad or some teacher expected

me to do it. "I can do better for this bird, though."

Rufus looks at me, takes a deep breath, then turns his back and wheels

his bike away from me. My chest tightens again, and it's very possible I

have some health problems I'm going to discover and die from today, but

I'm hit with relief when Rufus parks his bike along the sidewalk, throwing

down the kickstand with his foot. "Let me find you something for the bird,"

he says. "Don't touch it."

I make sure no cars are coming from up the block.

Rufus returns with a discarded newspaper and hands it to me. "Best I

can find."

"Thanks." I use the newspaper to scoop up the bird's body and its

severed head. I walk toward the community garden opposite the subway

station, set right in between the basketball court and the playground.

Rufus appears beside me on his bike, pedaling slowly. "What are you

doing with that?"

"Burying it." I enter the garden and find a corner behind a tree, away

from the spot where community gardeners have been planting fruit trees

and flowers and making the world glow a little more. I kneel and place the

newspaper down, nervous the head is going to roll away. Rufus hasn't

commented on it, but I feel the need to add, "I can't just leave the bird out

there to be tossed into a trash can or flattened by cars over and over and

over."

I like the idea of a bird that died so tragically ahead of its time resting

amid life here in the garden. I even imagine that this tree was once a person,

some Decker who was cremated and had asked to have their ashes packed

into a biodegradable urn with a tree seed to give it life.

"It's a couple minutes after four," Rufus informs me.

"I'll be fast."

I take it he's not the bury-a-bird type. I know many people won't agree

or understand this sentiment. After all, to most people, a bird is nothing

compared to an actual human being, because actual human beings put on

ties and go to work, they fall in love and get married, and they have kids

and raise them. But birds do all of this too. They work—no ties, you got me

there—and mate and nurture baby birds until they can fly. Some of them

become pets who entertain children, children who learn to love and be kind

to animals. Other birds are living until their time is up.

But this sentiment is a Mateo thing, meaning it's always made others

think I'm weird. I don't share thoughts like these with just anyone, rarely

even with Dad or Lidia.

Two fists can fit in this plot, and I'm shuffling the bird's body and head

off the newspaper and into the hole right when a flash goes off behind me.

No, the first thing I thought wasn't that an alien was beaming down

warriors to take me out—okay, fine, it was. I turn to find Rufus aiming his

phone's camera at me.

"Sorry," Rufus says. "Not every day you see someone burying a bird."

I scoop the soil over the bird, smoothing it flat before standing. "I hope

someone is this kind to us when it's over."