Denton Little's Deathdate (3 page)

Cut to early October, the school variety show. Taryn had mentioned once in passing that she'd be performing a song in it, so I decided I would, too. “You can be in one of the big numbers,” Ms. Donatella said when I stopped her in the hallway, “but I can't just give you a solo number. I've never even seen you before.” And then I told her when my deathdate was.

I sat up there with my guitar, singing and playing a ridiculous song I'd written just for the occasion, something designed to be airtight in its ability to charm and garner immense sympathy: “I'm Gonna Die This Spring (So Let's Make Out Tonight).” As I left the stage, I bumped right into Taryn, who was waiting there in the wings, smiling nervously and looking at me in a way she never had before.

“I very liked that,” she said.

We made out that night.

And many other nights.

Because of my deathdate, it got real serious and real committed real fast. Like, we've talked about the wedding we'll never have, about possible kids' names we'll never use. And I'm into that.
Have a monogamous relationship
was high on my bucket list. But, even so, now that I'm almost dead, part of me wonders if the sow-my-wild-oats route might have been the way to go. It's probably the same part of me that thought it would be okay to make out with Veronica last night.

“Dentoooon!” My stepmom's shouting from downstairs pierces our cell-phone bubble. “Have you showered yet? Come on! We need to eat!”

“Okay, I'll be right down!”

“You have to go,” Taryn says, with more tears in her voice.

“Yeah. To be continued.”

“I have to go back to Spanish class, so I won't be able to pick up if you call.”

“Oh right, you're in school right now.”

“Yeah, we don't all get to skip today.”

“Taryn, I get to skip because I'm gonna be dead tomorrow. Geez.”

“Sorry…I'm sorry. I'm just…sad.”

“I know, I know, we'll talk at the funeral.”

“Okay…I love you.”

That's the first time she or I have ever said that.

We always said we'd only say it if we really meant it. I should say it back, but how do I know if I'm truly in love with her?

“I love you, too.” I think I mean it.

She says nothing, but I hear the sounds of smiling on the other end of the line.

“Really?” she says finally.

“Really. I'll talk to you later, Tar.”

“Bye, Denton.”

I hang up. I am simultaneously impressed and disgusted with myself. After one phone call, I'm able to cross three things off a bucket list I never would have written.

Act like a drunken asshole? Check. Cheat on a girlfriend? Check. Say “I love you” without being sure I even mean it? Check.

I do realize that approximately zero percent of this should matter to me right now.

I'm going to
die
tomorrow. According to my death counselor, around now is when I should be feeling either profoundly depressed or beginning to exhibit signs of reckless, life-endangering behavior.

So why the hell am I still invested in these small, ordinary, seemingly insignificant details?

I'd say it's probably an attempt at keeping myself distracted from the dark chasm looming in my future. But with all this Taryn business, I feel terrible and guilty and unworthy and generally like I do want to die. So maybe I'm on the road to depression after all. I head to the shower.

I've only been to four funerals, but that's enough to know that I don't want my self-eulogy to be like the ones I've seen: weepy, nostalgic, and self-congratulatory, sort of like a cringe-inducing Oscar speech. So I've constructed one that I think is sharp and funny, with a lot of heart toward the end. I've also thrown in some advice to the human race to appreciate what they have. Because no one really does. I figure if a sweet guy like me gets a little intense, it'll be very effective. “Oh wow,” they'll say. “That was a real wake-up call.”

I'm running through it during my Last Shower Ever, trying to get the delivery just right, when I see something weird on my thigh.

It's a reddish-bluish-purplish Rorschach splotch of a bruise, and it makes my breath catch in my chest.

It looks like I've bumped into a desk or table really hard, but I don't remember doing that. Maybe last night
during SchnappsFest. But under closer examination, it doesn't look like a normal bruise; it's peppered with electric red dots. “It's okay, it's okay,” I say to myself as I scrub at the splotch, not actually expecting it will do anything.

But it does do something. In one swift but orderly motion, the red dots shift around on my thigh, like the rotation of players in a gym class game of volleyball. I poke again, entranced by this touch screen on my leg. I dig in a little harder with my fingers, trying to will some pain out of the splotch; if it hurts, then I can convince myself it's just a strange bruise.

But it doesn't hurt.

I am panicking.

If it's not a bruise, then it's probably the first visible sign of some blood disorder that, even at this moment, is deploying troops throughout my body, gumming up the works, making me almost dead.

After so much time devoted to thinking about how I'm going to die, I now have a very legitimate scenario staring up at me from my thigh. You'd think I'd be relieved, but instead I'm in a state of shock, with one message circulating through my brain, pounding in time with the water thumping against my back:

This is it
.

This is it
.

This is it
.

The beginning of the end.

This is actually happening.

I stare at blue tiles.

I breathe.

As if from another galaxy come the medium-frequency
tones of my stepmom's voice, and I know I'm running later than late.

Shower off.

Suit on.

I stare at myself in the mirror.

This is what dying looks like.

I adjust the knot on my lucky purple tie. I fork my fingers down either side of my head, first flattening and then messing up my dark brown hair. I always thought my nose was a little too big, but now I've come to enjoy the added character it brings to my face. I look good, and I can suddenly see myself the way I imagine everyone at this funeral will see me.

Denton Little. Funny, sweet Denton Little. Handsome but not too handsome. So charming and likable that in seventh grade, he technically won Most Likely to Succeed before teachers decided it seemed like a cruel joke to print that in the yearbook. He would have grown up to do so many great things….

My capacity for self-pity is growing by the minute.

I take out my phone and search for
purple splotch on thigh
.

I'm greeted by scores of message boards, linking my condition to everything from burst capillaries to food allergies to an underground conspiracy to thin skin to a bad tanning bed experience to leukemia to, as was my suspicion, a blood disorder. None of the entries mention red dots, though, and a lot of them mention symptoms I don't have, like itchiness. My splotch is not itchy. Yet.

My stepmom calls up to me once again, and this time her voice has anger around the edges. I haven't made much
progress on a self-diagnosis, but let's be real: it might be more helpful not to know.

Downstairs, the mood is a bit frantic. Felix and my dad are already sitting at the kitchen table, looking fancy and suited, and my stepmom is flitting around the kitchen in one of her nice green dresses. This is the Last Meal we will have together, just us, and my tardiness has dictated that it will be a quick one.

Surveying the landscape of the table, I notice all of my favorite foods ever. Even though this is a universal pre-funeral tradition, I'm surprisingly touched.

My dad stares at me as I devour a stalk of my stepmom's famous broccoli with curry powder (it's good, trust me). “How you doin', bud?” he says, pushing aside the newspaper he'd been reading.

“All right,” I say. “This is weird.”

“Really? I watched your mom make it, same recipe as always.”

“What? No, not the broccoli. I mean
this
, today…Everything.”

“Oh right, right.”

Should I be upset that my dad seems less alarmed about my dying than he does about the possibility that my stepmom's broccoli might not be up to par? My dad is great, but he's always had an inability to process and acknowledge upsetting things. I've only seen him cry twice in my life: once, nine years ago, when a few stealth tears trickled down through his gray stubble during Felix's high school graduation and another time when he messed up his knee real bad during a game of tennis. (That second one might not even count because those were pain-tears.)

“Mom, this food is awesome,” I say, mouth full of mac and cheese, and hummus, as she continues Tinkerbelling around the kitchen. “Why don't you sit down?”

“What dressing do you want?” she asks. “Balsamic? Oriental sesame?”

I can't express how incredibly little I care about salad dressing at this moment. Seeing that splotch has brought me into this strange headspace where I'm noticing more things. Like my dad's glasses are dark brown and not black, as I'd always thought. Maybe these are new? And the kitchen table is so solid. I spread out my fingers, like I'm palming a basketball, and push against it.

“Your hand okay?” asks my dad, with a small, labored chuckle thrown in for good measure. It's my least favorite habit of his, fake-laughing at things he doesn't understand.

“No, this table…” Someone made this. “It's just really cool.”

“I brought them all,” says my stepmom, finally sitting down with us, too many stupid salad dressing bottles in her hands. “What's this about the table?”

“Denton thinks the table is cool,” Felix says.

“Well, thank you, Denton, I agree,” says my stepmom, ignoring or missing the snarky tone in his voice in favor of being genuinely touched that the table she chose more than ten years ago has finally been validated.

“This whole kitchen is great.” In this moment, it's like the nerdy-girl best friend who the protagonist abruptly realizes is, in fact, his superhot dream girl. Why did I never appreciate this kitchen?

“It really is!” my stepmom says, looking around like a kid in Disneyland. “Oh! By the way”—she grabs an
envelope off the counter behind her—“this came for you.” She slides it toward me. “No address. Someone must have left it in the mailbox.”

“Ooh, nice, that's old-school,” I say. Possibly my Last Piece of Mail Ever.

The envelope is blank except for a small typewritten
To Denton
on the front. I'm thinking it's from Taryn or Paolo. “If this is a love note,” I say as I open it up, “I'm not reading it out loud. FYI.”

It's not a love note.

I'm staring down at a huge-fonted message that reads:

DENTON

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. SOON.

WATCH OTT

My brain stops.

I'm not sure what's more unsettling, the message's content or the choice of Comic Sans font. I hold it up for all to see.

Everyone is silent and still.

“Ohmigod,” my stepmom says, one hand to her mouth.

“Yeah,” I say. “Kinda messed up.”

“Kinda? What— Who do you think would send this?” she says. “Do you have enemies?”

“I mean…”

“Well, look, it's true, right?” my dad says. “This message is just stating what we already know, really.”

“This is a death threat, Lyle!” my stepmom says.

“But he already knows he's going to die soon. That's not news.”

“It says, ‘Watch out'!”

“No, technically it says, ‘Watch ott,' ” Felix says. “A nine-word message, and this person couldn't be bothered to spell-check. I love that.”

On the plus side, this means the splotch on my thigh might not be what's going to kill me after all.

On the minus side, I might be murdered.

“Oh, Dent,” my stepmom says.

I liked it better with just the splotch.

“I don't know if you should be leaving the house anymore, sweetie.”

“Mom…I have to. It's my funeral.” But part of me thinks she might be right. Silence hovers for a solid five seconds.

“It's gonna be okay, Raquel,” Felix says. “Dent will be okay.”

“I will,” I say. Though tomorrow is, in fact, the one day that's fated to be very Not Okay.

“We love you so much, Denton,” my stepmom says, in tears now.

“We really do, bud,” says my dad.

“Thanks, guys,” I say, pushing aside the death letter. I try to eat another bite of stuffing, but it won't go down, so I spit it into my napkin.