“Mateo, kindly confirm this is indeed you. You’re Mateo Torrez, right?”Īnd just like that, my last hope is obliterated. Timothy is the gentleman I just got off the phone with he didn’t take the news very well, poor thing. Now I can, if having a kid is a thing that happens for me.Ĭomputer keys are tapping on her end, probably correcting the entry or something in her database. “My name is Mateo.” I got the name from my father and he wants me to pass it down eventually. My heart settles down, even though I feel for this Timothy person. “You’ve got the wrong person,” I tell Andrea. I just breathe because I have fewer than twenty-eight thousand breaths left in me-the average number of breaths a nondying person takes per day-and I might as well use them up while I can. The caller ID reads DEATH-CAST, of course. I’m like a zombie moving toward my desk, slow and walking-dead. I slide my laptop off my crossed legs and get up from my bed, swaying to the side, feeling really faint. The phone rings for what’s got to be the thirtieth time, and I can’t avoid it any more than I can avoid what’s going down sometime today. I’d rather run into Dad’s bedroom and curse into a pillow because he chose the wrong time to land himself in intensive care, or punch a wall because my mom marked me for an early death when she died giving birth to me. But the noise in my head is quieting down and there’s a Death-Cast herald on the other end of the phone waiting to tell me I’m going to die today at eighteen years old. Dad has even been drilling it into my head that I should pretend I’m the main character of a story that nothing bad ever happens to, most especially death, because the hero has to be around to save the day. Not forever, obviously, but long enough so I could grow up. I don’t know why I thought this would jinx it from actually happening. One minute ago I was reading yesterday’s blog entry from CountDowners-where Deckers chronicle their final hours through statuses and photos via live feeds, this particular one about a college junior trying to find a home for his golden retriever-and now I’m going to die.

I bet this chaos is what a first-time skydiver feels as she’s plummeting out of a plane, or a pianist playing his first concert. I’m freaking out already, a hundred thoughts immediately drowning out everything around me. The alert, a distinctive and endless gong, like a church bell one block away, is blasting from my phone on the other side of the room. Forget that, “warning” is too strong a word since warnings suggest something can be avoided, like a car honking at someone who’s crossing the street when it isn’t their light, giving them the chance to step back this is more of a heads-up. To live is the rarest thing in the world.ĭeath-Cast is calling with the warning of a lifetime-I’m going to die today.

At the end we both die