Paz
12:07 a.m.
Fate.
The Death-Cast heir believes fate brought us together on my End Day... on what will become my End Day if I shoot myself
and fall to my death right now. But unless Alano Rosa is actually the grim reaper in disguise, there’s no other reason we
should be meeting. And if Alano is the grim reaper, he sucks at his job for trying to keep me alive.
The LAPD officer’s voice booms over the loudspeaker: “This is your final warning!”
Pulling the trigger would be so easy, especially when I have the cops threatening me. What the fuck are they gonna do, throw
my corpse in jail for trespassing? But Alano said there’s no guarantee I would even die. How is this not a fucking guarantee?
Alano is reaching out for me, and I grab his hand. Together, we slowly walk across the beam, his hand squeezing mine the entire
way, like he’s terrified of falling or of me changing my mind.
Once we reach the ladder, Alano goes down first while I switch on my gun’s safety and drop it in my backpack. There’s a part of me that feels like a failure as I go down the ladder, rung by rung, like I can’t win at death any more than I can win at life. Everything feels over and disappointing when my feet touch the ground, like I’ve missed my only chance to die.
The helicopter is still shining its spotlight on us, giving me a clear view of Alano’s long-lashed eyes, which are two different
colors. The left is brown, the right is green, like he’s got the forest in his eyes. Beyond the colors, I see relief too.
“You made a great choice,” Alano says earnestly.
“No, that was stupid, that was so fucking stupid,” I cry. “They’re gonna arrest me for trespassing and possession of a deadly
weapon and have me thrown in jail or a mental hospital.”
I don’t know which facility would be worse, all I know is that I won’t get a fucking choice because of the fucking choice
I made to keep fucking living.
“Maybe,” Alano says. “But only if they catch you. Follow me.”
Alano darts toward the darkness while the spotlight remains on me. I stand there, my heart racing even though I want it to
shut the fuck up forever, but if I can’t die, I need to run toward a less distressing life. My heart beats harder as I charge
into the shadows, doing my best to outrun the light.
Ahead, Alano skids down a small slope and trips toward a boulder, giving me a chance to catch up. The light is zigzagging behind us, getting closer and closer so we keep moving. I’ve never been so far off the trail like this. We go deeper into the mountain’s wilderness, panting as we hide beneath the trees that give us the most coverage, squeezing between bushes that prick our arms, and holding back low-hanging branches for each other as we continue paving our way toward the city. Something tiny—a lizard—scurries across my foot, giving me goose bumps. I hate how many more bugs and animals there are to be worried about out here. In New York, we really only had rats and roaches, but in LA, there’s so many mosquitoes, lizards, and spiders roaming around our houses. Not to mention the snakes, coyotes, and mountain lions on and off these trails. The possibility of dying is still really real if one of those heavy hitters kills me.
I look up when I don’t hear the helicopter anymore and the only light I see is coming from the moon. “I think we’re good.”
“Good.” Alano coughs. He’s leaning against a tree, holding his stomach, which I think is where he got stabbed. “Because I...”
His hand slides down to his pocket but can’t get in. “I can’t b-breathe. Asthma,” he wheezes.
I rush to his aid and wrench the inhaler out of the tight pocket of his jeans and straight into his mouth. I pump the medicine down his lungs. Alano inhales while looking me in the eyes. This whole thing is already so intense without his stare. The way he’s fighting for breath makes me think about Alano’s suicide attempt. He didn’t tell me why or where or when, just the what: he was going to jump off a roof and then had an asthma attack after saving himself, just as he’s having me save him now, giving him more and more pumps of medicine until he signals with a thumbs-up that he’s all good. Alano rests his head against the tree, relaxing. My heart is still pounding. The last thing I need on my forever record is killing the Death-Cast heir. And the last thing Alano wants to do is die.
“Thank you,” Alano breathes out.
In the ten or whatever minutes of knowing Alano, I’ve almost killed him twice. Meanwhile he’s trying to keep me alive. He’s
better off staying away.
“Why do you think fate brought us together?” I ask.
“It’s hard to imagine anything else. Someone tried to assassinate me and tonight that made me rebel against all the security
measures put in place to keep me alive because I wanted to go live my life as I see fit, only to find you about to kill yourself.
If that’s not fate, then what is it?”
“I don’t know, a huge coincidence or some story you’re telling yourself.”
“I’m not a writer, but I am a reader.” Alano looks up at the night sky. “Something about our meeting feels written.”
“Where, the stars?”
Alano returns his gaze to me. “Possibly.”
I look up at the sky, searching for this constellation that’s shaped like us, but I just see scattered stars. “I don’t see
it.”
“Maybe you’ll see things differently when I let you in on a secret,” Alano says. He seems to be prepping himself to share
this secret, or regretting bringing it up but knows he can’t turn back now. “Tonight, for the first time in my life, I turned
off Death-Cast.”
“You’re lying,” I spit out.
Alano puts a hand on his heart, as if that means anything to me. “It’s the truth.”
“How the hell do you go from almost being assassinated by some pro-naturalist to living pro-naturally twenty-four hours later?”
“This has been more than twenty-four hours in the making. It’s honestly as if my life has been building to this moment for
as long as Death-Cast has been around. Being the heir has had many privileges, but it’s also gotten in the way of the life
I want for myself, so tonight I decided enough was enough. I will no longer be defined by Death-Cast, even if that means living
the old way,” Alano says. He takes a seat on a boulder and tells me all about his trip up to the Wisdom Tree, his first act
of carpe diem. “I shouldn’t have been up there, but I was, tonight of all nights, and when I saw you climbing that sign, I
had two choices ahead of me: risk my life to save you or just let you die.”
And I would’ve died. That much feels true now. “I wasn’t even supposed to do this tonight,” I say, proving Alano right. “I
was originally gonna kill myself on the anniversary of my dad’s death.”
“The anniversary of the first End Day,” Alano says.
One and the same.
“So who do I blame for my shitty life? Fate or Death-Cast?”
“Why not both?” Alano asks sincerely. “Your future got derailed on the first End Day. If Death-Cast didn’t fail to call your
father, then things would have gone differently.”
I’ve imagined this before. I even wrote it out in my letter to Dad last month after surviving my attempt. “Sometimes I think it was for the best. My dad wouldn’t have died quietly. Maybe if he knew he was gonna die he would’ve had more time to actually kill my mom and stepdad. Maybe even me, I don’t know.” I hate how much guilt I feel over killing someone who I can’t confidently say wouldn’t kill me too.
“Then maybe it was fate that Death-Cast didn’t call,” Alano says.
“So I should thank Death-Cast for my shitty life instead?”
Branches snap under Alano’s feet as he gets up and walks toward me. “I’m sorry your life was thrown off course because of
Death-Cast’s error.”
“I gotta ask you something.”
“You want to know how Death-Cast works,” Alano says, already shaking his head.
“No, I wanna know why Death-Cast didn’t work on the first End Day.”
Alano looks at the stars again like he’s about to tell me it’s fate, but instead he says, “I don’t know.”
“What, your dad never told you?”
“My father has never told me how Death-Cast works, let alone anything about the system error,” Alano says, meeting my eyes
again. “What I do know is that I’m happy you’re alive, . I’m hoping we can keep it that way.”
Alano pulls me in for a hug, and I hate how good it feels to be held. He’s like a walking, breathing weighted blanket, designed to calm me down when I’m feeling terrible. But I’ve been here before. I’ve been under the weighted blankets, I’ve squeezed the stress balls, I’ve talked it out in therapy, I’ve taken the meds, I’ve had strangers hold me—I’ve tried everything. I break free from his hug.
“No, nothing’s changed. I always think it’s gonna get better, but it never does and I’m tired, I’m just so tired,” I say.
My breath tightens. If I cared about living, I would snatch Alano’s inhaler. “I feel too much and I’m dead inside, Alano.
I gotta figure out how to die while there’s still time.”
Alano is quiet. He’s accepting defeat too. I can’t be saved.
“How about we make a deal?” Alano quietly asks.
So much for accepting defeat. “No,” I say, turning away.
Alano grabs my wrist. “You’ll want to hear this. Trust me.”
“What?”
“You want to die tonight, but I want to keep you alive. Let’s let fate decide what happens.” Alano checks his watch. “It’s
twelve twenty. There’s still time for Death-Cast to call you. If they do, then you’ll get your way, I guess. If they don’t,
you hang out with me, and if I haven’t convinced you that life is worth living before midnight, then I’ll leave you alone.”
“No deal, I don’t have another day in me,” I snap.
Alano’s eyes dart around, like he’s calculating something. “Fine. Give me until two fifty.”
“Then you’ll leave me alone?”
“I’ll do you one better, .” Alano takes a deep breath. “I’ll help you kill yourself.”