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I take a photo of the sign for Clint’s Graveyard and upload it to Instagram in full color.
PATRICK “PECK” GAVIN
5:05 p.m.
“Got him,” Peck says, hopping off his bed. Clint’s Graveyard. He puts the loaded gun in his backpack. “We gotta be fast. Let’s go.”
PART FOUR
The End
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
—Steve Jobs
MATEO
5:14 p.m.
This day has some miracles.
I found a Last Friend in Rufus. Our best friends are joining us on our End Day. We’ve overcome fears. And we’re now at Clint’s Graveyard, which receives high praise online, and this could be the perfect stage for me if I outgrow my insecurities—in the next few minutes.
From all the movies I’ve seen, bouncers are normally stubborn in their ways and absolutely intimidating, but here at Clint’s Graveyard there’s a young woman wearing a fitted cap backward welcoming everyone.
The young woman asks for my ID. “Sorry to lose you, Mateo. Have fun in there, okay?” I nod. I drop some cash into a plastic donations container and wait for Rufus to pay his way in. The girl eyes him up and down and my face heats up. But then Rufus catches up to me and pats my shoulder and the burn is different, like when he grabbed my hand back at the Travel Arena.
Music is booming from the other side of the door and we wait for Lidia.
“You good?” Rufus asks.
“Nervous and excited. Mainly nervous.”
“Regret making me jump off a cliff yet?”
“Do you regret jumping?”
“No.”
“Then no.”
“Are you gonna have fun in there?”
“No pressure,” I say. There’s a difference between jumping off a cliff and having fun. Once you jump off a cliff, there’s no undoing it, there’s no stopping midair. But having the kind of fun that seems daring and embarrassing in front of strangers requires a special bravery.
“There’s no pressure,” Rufus says. “Just our last few hours left on this planet to die without any regrets. Again, no pressure.”
No regrets. He’s right.
My friends stand behind me as I pull open the door and walk into a world where I immediately regret not having
spent every minute possible. There are strobe lights, flashing blues, yellows, and grays. The graffiti on the walls was marked by Deckers and their friends, sometimes the last piece of themselves the Deckers have left behind, something that immortalizes them. No matter when it happens, we all have our endings. No one goes on, but what we leave behind keeps us alive for someone else. And I look at this crowded room of people, Deckers and friends, and they are all living.
A hand closes on mine, and it’s not the same one that grabbed mine less than an hour ago; this hand carries history. The hand I held when my goddaughter was born, and the many mornings and evenings after Christian died. Traveling that world-within-a-world with Lidia was incredible, and having her here in this moment, a moment I couldn’t buy, makes me happy despite every reason to be down. Rufus comes up beside me and wraps an arm around my shoulders.
“The floor is yours,” Rufus says. “The stage, too, when you’re game.”
“I’m getting there,” I say. I have to get there.
