Denton Little's Deathdate (20 page)

“What is what you have to do before you die?” Paolo asks.

“Be open with people. Do what my dad never did for me. Tell them something honest about themselves that will make them feel good. And help them understand themselves better.”

Ashley Gupta from summer camp wrote:
I'm so sad
.

I comment:
Don't be sad, Ashley. I'm so happy for my life, and I'm incredibly happy that you were my first kiss. Awkward as it may have been
.

There is something magical happening, and I know, for the first time all day, that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.

“So…,” Paolo says. “You're gonna stay on Facebook for the rest of your life, just, like, commenting?”

“Pretty much,” I say.

I comment:
Your blue eyes are incredible, I've always thought that
.

I comment:
You're a natural leader, and that's gonna take you far
.

I comment:
Being around you always made me feel
more comfortable, I don't even know why. You have something special
.

A new comment comes up from Melissa Schoenberg:
Wow, I tota
—

Paolo slams shut my laptop.

“Nope,” he says.

“What the hell, dude?” I say. “This is why I'm here!” I try to open my laptop back up, but he won't let me.

“I will NOT let my best friend die on Facebook. That's almost worse than helping you end your life.”

“You don't understand—”

“I do, actually. And I have a better idea.”

“You have a better idea for conveying love and honesty to all these people at once?”

“What's wrong with you?
Yes
, I have a better idea. But here's the thing: it involves leaving the house.”

“My stepmom made it quite clear that there will be no more of that.”

“Hey, what happened to the baller dude from this afternoon? Look, death is happening one way or the other. This house isn't some kind of death-proof sanctuary.”

“Well, where would we be going?” I figure he'll tell me, I'll shoot it down, and then I can get back to business.

“Where would we be going? Oh, I'll tell you where we'd be going. You want to make people feel good about themselves, right? Connect with people?” Paolo looks so proud of what he's about to say.

“I told you, Pow, I don't wanna go to a strip club.”

“Man, give me a little credit here!”

“Okay.”

“Now you ruined the moment by assuming I'm a sleaze who only wants to go to the strip club.”

“I'm sorry, but in the past you have often wanted to go to a strip club. Please continue.”

Paolo cracks his neck. “Wait, gotta reboot. Get back in the zone.” He jumps up and down in place. “Okay. Where would we be going? I'll tell you.” He flips his collar up. “
P
to the
Rom
, dude.”

I stare at Paolo.

“Prom! We should go to prom!”

Prom. Of course. “Together?”

“No, not together, man. Geez, you sleep together once, this guy wants to go to prom. Think about it. Practically everyone in our grade will be there. You can tell everyone anything you want.”

“Well…”

“And, hey, since you and Taryn are on the splits, maybe you can have one more superhot fling before you kick it. What's more romantic than high school prom?”

“A lot of things, I think.”

“Love will be in the air! People are gonna break out into fully choreographed dance numbers without ever having rehearsed! And everybody gets laid afterward!”

“I don't think you're correct about the dance numbers. And also, I don't have a ticket.”

Paolo crouches down and puts his hands on my shoulders. “I want to slap you right now. But I won't, because I'm scared I'd accidentally kill you. You're not gonna have a life in a few hours! And you're thinking of not going to your own prom because you
didn't buy a ticket
? Come on, D,
let's go down in a blaze of glory, man!
Thelma and Louise
–style! Freeze-frame car in the sky!”

“I only kinda get your reference. I've never seen
Thelma and Louise
.”

Paolo's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You've never seen it? Why not? 'Cause you think it's a chick flick?”

“No, I don't know. I just never got around to watching an old movie about crazy ladies.”

“It's so much more than that, dude.”

“But, okay, assuming I'm on board for this blaze-of-glory, going-to-prom-ticketless idea, you think my stepmom would ever, in a gajillion years, let me go?”

Paolo puts his hand on his chin and does some intense contemplating. “I can be very persuasive,” he says.

“Absolutely not,” my stepmom says.

“Okay, gotcha,” Paolo says. “No prob, Raquel.”

I look to Paolo:
That's you being very persuasive?
He shrugs.

We're downstairs in the family room, a motley crew of Sitting survivors spread out across the couch, the recliner, and the floor: me, Paolo, my stepmom, my dad, Paolo's mom, Felix, Millie, and Grandpa Sid. It's 7:48 p.m. Prom started at seven.

“Um, Mom?” I say.

“Dent, darling, I very much understand what Paolo and now you are trying to say, but, sweetie, how can we possibly let you go to prom? You go three feet outside the front door, and you're almost killed. And you want to drive
fifteen minutes to the prom, where you'll stay for three hours, during which time any number of awful things could happen to you?”

“If I could just jump in here for a second,” Felix says.

“Felix,” my stepmom says. “Not now.”

“But—”

“I said, NOT NOW!” my stepmom shrieks, standing up from the couch. I've heard her yell many times, but never anything like this warped banshee cry.

“Sorry,” she says, taking in our shocked expressions. “Hey, how about I run out and get us some champagne and we can have our own prom here? I know I wouldn't let you have champagne last night, Denton, but I think everyone here would agree you've earned it.”

My heart breaks for my stepmom.

“Mom, that is so sweet,” I say, “but…I really don't want champagne. I want to go to my actual prom. I have something important to do there.”

I watch my stepmom's features crumple into the human equivalent of a sad-face emoticon. The room is silent.

“Let the kid go to his dance!” Grandpa Sid shouts from the reclining chair, startling everyone. “I don't see what the big kerfuffle is.”

“Well, Sid,” my stepmom says, collecting herself, “the big kerfuffle is that today is Denton's last day, so if he goes to the dance, he may very well die there.”

“Don't condescend to me, Raquel. I'm old, not a moron. I know it's his goddamn deathdate. You've all certainly made a big enough deal of it. I think the whole state knows.” Grandpa Sid adjusts his body in the chair, grimacing. “Denton's a good kid, always does everything you've asked of
him, always has a good attitude. I don't see why you can't let him have his dying wish, to go to this promenade.”

I can't believe Grandpa Sid's going to bat for me.

And is that really what
prom
is short for?

“Yes, Sid,” my stepmom says. “Of course Denton is a good kid; he's the greatest kid, which is why we want to be with him when he dies. You can understand that?”

“Then go with him.”

My stepmom laughs. “Well, Sid, we can't just…” She trails off in midsentence, and I realize that she's actually considering it.

“No, that's okay,” I say. “I'd rather not go to prom at all than have to go with my parents.”

“You know what?” my stepmom says. “Yes, if we come along, I don't see why Denton shouldn't be allowed to go to prom.”

“Yeah, Grandpa Sid!” Paolo hoots.

“Who?” Grandpa Sid says.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “I don't even know if parents are allowed in. And you guys don't have tickets.”

“Again with the tickets, this guy!” Paolo says, gesturing at me with his thumb like a Marx Brother.

“Can I come along, too?” Paolo's mom asks.

“Hell no, Mom!” Paolo says.

I silently agree. You know what they say:
Never trust a lady who crushes on your dad
. No one actually says that. But they probably should.

“I'm sure we can get you in, too, Cynthia,” my stepmom says. “Wow, now I'm thinking this might be a lot of fun!” Somebody punch me.

“Mom,” Paolo says, “if you go, people are gonna think I brought my mom to prom.”

“Sounds to me like good material for one of those funny raps you make up,” Paolo's mom says. “ ‘I brought my mom to the prom and I think she's da bomb….' ” She's making terrible attempts at rap gestures and cracking herself up, and my stepmom joins in, the two of them giggling together in that annoying way moms do.

“This isn't helping your case,” Paolo says.

“Fine,” Paolo's mom says. “Then why don't you take someone else as your date? Since it's so offensive to bring me.”

“Did you skip high school or something?” Paolo says. “It's beyond offensive. It's the absolute worst. And I can't take someone else. Seeing as prom started almost an hour ago, I think most people probably have dates already.”

“I don't,” Millie says from the end of the couch.

“Oh,” Paolo says. “Well, yeah,” he stammers, suddenly nervous. “Would you want to go to prom with me?”

“Sure. I brought something to wear just in case.” She takes a yellow-and-purple-striped dress out of her denim purse and places it on her lap.

“Wow, okay.” Paolo nods repeatedly to no one in particular. “Okay.”

“I, for one,” says Felix, “am very much not into this idea. Already did the prom thing nine years ago, and it wasn't even that fun then.”

“Wait,” I say. “We're seriously doing this?”

“Sweetie, it was your idea,” my stepmom says. “If you'd rather we all stay home, that's fine, too.”

“No, I mean, I want to go, but without…Like, Dad, this doesn't sound fun to you, right?”

My dad squirms and adjusts his glasses. “Whatever your mother thinks is best is what we should do.” Damn you, Dad!

All eyes in the room are on me. I think about staying at home, clicking around on Facebook, eating chips and salsa with my parents.

“All right. Let's go to prom.”

“Blaze of glory, baby!” Paolo says.

If you'd told me yesterday that the evening portion of my deathdate would involve me, my parents, and four others driving to prom together in the family minivan, I would have asked you what you were smoking.

It's a little humiliating that my stepmom refused to let me drive my own car. Pulling up to the prom in Danza sounds way cooler than arriving in our red minivan, but no one is gonna see us show up anyway, seeing as it's almost nine and prom started two hours ago.

“Please slow down, Lyle,” my stepmom says.

“Okay, sorry about that,” my dad says, understandably a little befuddled, as he hasn't gone faster than twenty miles an hour the whole ride and every other car is passing us.

I'm wearing an old, light blue suit of my dad's. When I realized I had already worn the only nice outfit I own to my funeral, my dad took me to his closet and told me I could
wear this. It's a little big on me but fits way better than I would have expected.

“It's, uh, actually what I was wearing when I married your mother,” my dad said.

“Oh wow. Wait, Mom or Cheryl?”

“Cheryl. Last time I wore it was a long time ago.”

“That's crazy. You sure I can wear it tonight? I mean, if you'd rather—”

“I'm sure.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Sure.” I started to leave the room when he stopped me. “And, Denton…”

“Yeah?”

My dad just stood there, staring at me.

“You okay?”

He cleared his throat. “Before your mother left us, she, uh, gave me a, uh, letter, which was written for you, that she—”

“What?”

“She'd written you a letter.”

“I heard what you said. You're saying my biological mother, who I've spent my whole life, not to mention the past twenty-four hours, wanting to know more about, wrote me a letter and you never told me?”

“I know, I know, I realized I should give it to you, that you might need it.”

“Need it?”

“Well. Want to see it. So, lemme just…” He reached up to the top of his closet, shifted some things around, and pulled down a shoe box, which he began rummaging through. “I think I know where it is.”

I wanted to be angry at my dad, but he's a tough guy to stay mad at. He always seems like he's barely keeping up. “Is this whole box filled with letters from Cheryl?”

“This? No, these are old pay stubs. I can probably get rid of them now. Need a shredder. Ah, here it is.” He was holding an old envelope, staring at it. It looked like tears were forming behind his glasses, but I couldn't tell for sure. He passed the letter to me. My name was scrawled on the envelope in my mother's happy, ladylike hand. “She wrote that to you at the beginning of her Sitting, the same day you were born.”

“You already knew my name?”

“We did. But if you had been a girl, you would have been Dentona.”

“Really?”

“No. Not really.” My dad smiled. “We knew you'd be a boy.”

“Oh. Dentona. That's funny, Dad.”

“I'm sorry I never gave you that letter. It was shitty of me.” Let the record show that was the first time I had ever heard my dad curse. It was pretty cool.

“We're leaving in five!” my stepmom shouted from downstairs.

“Woo!” Paolo shouted from another part of the house.

“I guess I should go get ready,” I said to my dad, the unopened letter still in my hand.

“Dent,” my dad said, massaging the knuckles of one hand with the other. “You've made me so proud.”

It was like pushing a button that instantly made my eyes tear up.

“I can't imagine my life without you,” he said.

“Thanks, Dad,” I choked out. It was almost strange how much his words meant to me, like not realizing how thirsty you are until you've had a sip of water. “I…” Opening your heart is harder in person than it is online, so this was a good warm-up for the prom. “I can't imagine having a better father. Really. I love you.”

My dad looked down, then away, then back to me. “I love you, too, Denton.” I gave him a hug. It felt like a goodbye.

The letter's in my pocket now, still unread. My hand is resting on the rumpled paper of the envelope, which is oddly comforting. I should have read it when I was alone, but it seemed too important to rush through. I barely had time to change and say bye to Grandpa Sid (“You did good, Denton. Now pass me the clicker”) and the house (“Goodbye, house. I've loved living in you”) before my stepmom was rushing all of us into the minivan.

“Lyle, red light, red light, slow down!” my stepmom says, referring to the traffic light at least a hundred yards away from us.

“Yup, I see it,” my dad says. “Don't worry, Raquel, you can relax.”

“I really can't,” my stepmom says.

“Driving too slowly is also a hazard, you know,” Felix calls out from the way back. “We don't want someone rear-ending us.”

“That's what she said,” Paolo says.

“Fine,” my stepmom says, leaning around her seat and looking back to Felix. “Lyle, maybe you should at least drive the speed limit.” The car speeds up to a blistering twenty-five miles per hour.

Millie's in the bucket seat next to me, wearing her yellow-and-purple-striped dress. It's got a big purple bow on the front of it. She's also wearing a bracelet of purple and yellow beads, and she's got her ponytail up in this bun thing. She looks surprisingly attractive.

“You can touch my bow if you want,” Millie says to me.

“I'm good, thanks,” I say, realizing I was staring at her. I find some lint to brush off my pant leg.

I'm starting to have second thoughts about tonight. I've more or less signed up for being forever known as “the purple kid who died at prom.” I guess there are worse ways to be remembered.

I peer outside the window and realize we are pulling into the parking lot of Haventown Gardens.

“Okay, nobody take your seat belts off until the car has come to a complete stop, please,” my stepmom says.

We slowly crawl into a parking spot. We come to a complete stop. We take off our seat belts. We get out of the car. We walk toward the entrance. As we get closer, we hear the faint sound of music coming from the building, the thumping bass line of some wonderfully crappy pop song.

And then I know.

I can feel it: this is my destiny.