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I crouch over one pay phone, and in blue Sharpie there’s a message by where the receiver used to be: I MISS YOU, LENA. CALL ME BACK.
Pretty damn hard for Lena to call you back, Person, without an actual phone.
“This is a crazy find,” I say, mad lit as I move on to the next pay phone. “I feel like Indiana Jones right now.” Mateo smiles my way. “What?”
“I watched those movies obsessively as a kid,” Mateo says. “Forgot about it until now.” He tells me stories about how his dad would hide treasure around the apartment—how the treasure was always a jar of quarters they used for laundry. Mateo would wear his cowboy hat from his Woody costume and use a shoelace as a lasso. Whenever he got close to finding the jar, his dad would put on this Mexican mask a neighbor bought him and he would throw Mateo onto the couch for an epic fight.
“That’s awesome. Your pops sounds cool.”
“I got lucky,” Mateo says. “Anyway, I hijacked your moment. Sorry.”
“Nah, you’re fine. It’s not some huge, big, worldly moment. I’m not about to go off on how removing pay phones from street corners is the start of universal disconnection or some nonsense like that. I think this is just really dope.” I snap some photos with my phone. “It is crazy, though, right? Pay phones are gonna stop being a thing. I don’t even know anyone’s phone number.”
“I only know Dad’s and Lidia’s,” Mateo says.
“If I was locked up behind bars, I would’ve been extra screwed. Knowing someone’s number isn’t gonna matter anyway. You’ll no longer be a quarter away from calling someone.” I hold up my phone. “I’m not even using a real camera! Cameras that use film are going extinct too, watch.”
“Post offices and handwritten letters are next,” Mateo says.
“Movie rental stores and DVD players,” I say.
“Landlines and answering machines,” he says.
“Newspapers,” I say. “Clocks and wristwatches. I’m sure someone’s working on a product for us to automatically know the time.”
“Physical books and libraries. Not anytime soon, but eventually, right?” Mateo is quiet, probably thinking about those Scorpius Hawthorne books he mentioned in his profile. “Can’t forget about all the endangered animals.”
I definitely forgot about them. “You’re right. You’re totally right. It’s all going away, everyone and everything is dying. Humans suck, man. We think we’re so damn indestructible and infinite because we can think and take care of ourselves, unlike pay phones or books, but I bet the dinosaurs thought they’d rule forever too.”
“We never act,” Mateo says. “Only react once we realize the clock is ticking.” He gestures to himself. “Exhibit A.”
“Guess that marks us next on the list,” I say. “Before the newspapers and clocks and wristwatches and libraries.” I lead us out through the fence and turn around. “But you do know no one actually uses landlines anymore, right?”
TAGOE HAYES
9:48 a.m.
Death-Cast did not call Tagoe Hayes because he isn’t dying today, but he’ll never forget what it was like seeing his best friend receive the alert. The look on Rufus’s face will haunt Tagoe far longer than any of the gore he’s seen in his favorite slasher films.
Tagoe and Malcolm are still at the police station, sharing a holding cell that is twice the size of their bedroom.
“I thought for sure it was gonna smell like piss here,” Tagoe says. He’s sitting on the floor because the bench is too shaky, creaking every time he shifts.
“Just vomit,” Malcolm says, biting his nails.
Tagoe plans on throwing these jeans out when he gets home. He removes his glasses, letting Malcolm and the desk officer blur. He’s been known to do this every now and again, so everyone knows when he wants a time-out from whatever is happening around him. The only time it ever pissed Malcolm off was when Tagoe did this during a game of Cards Against Humanity; Tagoe never admitted it was because the card he’d drawn from the deck was making fun of suicide, which made him think about the man who’d abandoned him.
Thinking about if Rufus is alive and well makes Tagoe’s neck ache.
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Tagoe suppresses his tic often because his neck jerking around every other minute is not only uncomfortable, but it also makes him look unapproachable and wild. Rufus once asked him what that urge feels like, so Tagoe got Rufus, Malcolm, and Aimee to hold their breath and not blink for as long they could. Tagoe didn’t have to do the exercise with the Plutos to know the relief they were in for once they breathed out and blinked. His tic was as natural to him as breathing and blinking. But as his neck pulls him in directions, Tagoe feels little cracks, and he always imagines his bones crumbling with every turn.
He puts his glasses back on. “What would you do if you got the call?”
Malcolm grunts. “Probably same thing as Roof. Except I wouldn’t invite my ex-girlfriend whose boyfriend I just jumped to my funeral.”
“That’s no doubt where he went wrong,” Tagoe says.
