Death-Toll

Chapter 2

I’m not going to tell anyone. Except Dad, but he’s not even awake so it doesn’t really count. I don’t want to spend my last day wondering if people are being genuine when they throw sad words at me. No one should spend their last hours second-guessing people.

I’ve got to get out into the world, though, trick myself into thinking it is any other day. I’ve got to see Dad at the hospital and hold his hand for the first time since I was a kid and for what will be the last . . . wow, the last time ever.

I’ll be gone before I can adjust to my mortality.

I also have to see Leire and her one-year-old, Penny. Leire named me Penny’s godfather when the baby was born, and it sucks how I’m the person expected to take care of her in case Leire passes away since Leire’s boyfriend, Christian, died a little over a year ago. Sure, how is an eighteen-year-old with no income going to take care of a baby? Short answer: He isn’t. But I was supposed to get older and tell Penny stories of her world-saving mother and chill father and welcome her into my home when I was financially secure and emotionally prepared to do so. Now I’m being whisked out of her life before I can become more than some guy in a photo album who Leire may tell stories about, during which Penny will nod her head, maybe make fun of my glasses, and then flip the page to family she actually knows and cares about. I won’t even be a ghost to her. But that’s no reason to not go tickle her one more time or wipe squash and green peas off her face, or give Leire a little break so she can focus on studying for her GED or brush her teeth or comb her hair or take a nap.

After that, I will somehow pull myself away from my best friend and her daughter, and I will have to go and live.

I turn off the faucet and the water stops raining down on me; today isn’t the day for an hour shower. I grab my glasses off the sink and put them on. I step out of the tub, slipping on a puddle of water, and while falling backward I’m expecting to see if that theory of your life flashing before your eyes carries any truth to it when I grab hold of the towel rack and catch myself. I breathe in and out, in and out, because dying this way would just be an extremely unfortunate way to go; someone would add me to the “Shower KO” feed on the DumbDeaths blog, a high-traffic site that grosses me out on so many levels.

I need to get out of here and live—but first I have to make it out of this apartment alive.

12:30 a.m.

I write thank-you notes for my neighbors in 4F and 4A, telling them it’s my End Day. With Dad in the hospital, Elliot in 4F has been checking in on me, bringing me dinner, especially since our stove has been busted for the past week after I tried making Dad’s empanadas. Sean in 4A was planning on stopping by on Saturday to fix the stove’s burner, but it’s not necessary anymore. Dad will know how to fix it and might need a distraction when I’m gone.

I go into my closet and pull out the blue-and-gray flannel shirt Leire got me for my eighteenth birthday, then put it on over my white T-shirt. I haven’t worn it outside yet. The shirt is how I get to keep Leire close today.

I check my watch—an old one of Dad’s he gave me after buying a digital one that could glow, for his bad eyes—and it’s close to 12:55 a.m. On a regular day, I would be playing video games until late at night, even if it meant going to school exhausted. At least I could fall asleep during my free periods. I shouldn’t have taken those frees for granted. I should’ve taken up another class, like art, even though I can’t draw to save my life. (Or do anything to save my life, obviously, and I want to say that’s neither here nor there, but it pretty much is everything, isn’t it?) Maybe I should’ve joined band and played piano, gotten some recognition before working my way up to singing in the chorus, then maybe a duet with someone cool, and then maybe braving a solo. Heck, even theater could’ve been fun if I’d gotten to play a role that forced me to break out. But no, I elected for another free period where I could shut down and nap.

It’s 12:58 a.m. When it hits 1:00 I am forcing myself out of this apartment. It has been both my sanctuary and my prison and for once I need to go breathe in the outside air instead of tearing through it to get from Point A to Point B. I have to count trees, maybe sing a favorite song while dipping my feet in the Hudson, and just do my best to be remembered as the young man who died too early.

It’s 1:00 a.m.

I can’t believe I’m never returning to my bedroom.

I unlock the front door, turn the knob, and pull the door open.

I shake my head and slam the door shut.

I’m not walking out into a world that will kill me before my time.

ALBERT DARIO

1:06 a.m.

Death-Toll 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-Toll 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, Carlos and Alexius, are no longer cheering on the beat-down. They’re dead quiet and I’m waiting for this punk Roberto’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,” Carlos says. He was recording the beat-down 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 Roberto, even faster than when I first decked him and laid him out. Roberto’s left eye is swollen already, and there’s still nothing but pure terror in his right eye. These Death-Toll 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,” Alexius says.

My phone rings again.

Alexius stays shut.

I wasn’t hopeful. I don’t know stats or nothing like that, but Death-Toll f*****g up alerts isn’t exactly common news. And we Darios 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.

Roberto squirms from underneath me and I raise my fist so he calms the hell down.

“Maybe he got a weapon on him,” Alexius 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 Roberto 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.

Alexius drags Roberto’s backpack out from under the blue car where Carlos threw it. He unzips the backpack and flips it over, letting some Black Panther and Hawkeye comics hit the ground. “Nothing.”

Carlos rushes toward Roberto 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 Roberto, 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-Toll isn’t actually calling to tell me I won the lottery. I snatch the phone from Carlos, 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 Carlos and Alexius. 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 Dominik from Death-Toll calling to speak with Albert Dario.”

He butchers my last name, but there’s no point correcting him. No one else is around to carry on the Dario name. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Albert, 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 Linus got their alert an hour ago. Maybe if Death-Toll called an hour ago I wouldn’t have been waiting outside the restaurant where freshman-year college-dropout Roberto works so I could chase him into this parking lot.

"Indeed, you're correct. I'm grieved," Dominik says.

I'm attempting to remain shut 'cause I don't want to take my issues out on some person taking care of his work, despite the fact that I have no clue about why the hellfire anybody goes after this job in any case. We should imagine I got a future briefly, engage me—in no universe am I truly awakening and saying, "I think I'll get a twelve-to-three shift where I never really tell individuals their lives are finished." But Dominik and others did. I don't want to hear none of that don't-kill-the-courier business either, particularly when the courier is calling to disclose to me I'll be straight destroyed by the end of the day.

"Albert, I lament to illuminate you that at some point in the following 23 hours you'll meet an awkward demise. While there is nothing I can do to suspend that, I'm calling to illuminate you regarding your choices for the afternoon. As a matter of first importance, how goes it with you? It took some time for you to reply. Is everything alright?"

He needs to realize how I'm doing, no doubt right. I can hear it in the hindered way he asked me, he doesn't really think often about me anything else than he does different Linus he gotta call around evening time. These calls are most likely observed and he's making an effort not to lose his employment by speeding through this.

"I don't have the foggiest idea how I'm doing." I press my telephone so I don't toss it against the divider painted with minimal white and earthy colored children clasping hands under a rainbow. I investigate my shoulder and Roberto is still face-first on the ground as Alexius and Carlos gaze at me; they better ensure he doesn't flee before we can sort out how we're doing him. "Simply reveal to me my alternatives." This ought to be acceptable.