Aimee already misses going on runs with Rufus while he rides his bike.

And she’ll always think back to the time when she taught him to do a proper push-up.

And she has no idea what comes next.

MATEO

7:22 a.m.

I keep running down the block, far away from Rufus.

I’m Last Friend–less, but maybe dying alone is an okay End Day for someone who lived his life pretty alone.

I don’t know what Rufus was involved in that led to his friends being arrested. Maybe he was hoping to use me as some alibi. But now I’m gone.

I stop to catch my breath. I sit on the stoop of this daycare and press my palm against my aching rib cage.

Maybe I should go back home and play some video games. Write more letters. I even wish I was still in high school and attending one of Mr. Kalampoukas’s classes because he always made me feel seen. Though sharing a chemistry lab with kids who were always texting while mixing chemicals was terrifying, even last fall when it wasn’t my End Day.

“MATEO!”

Rufus is riding his bike down the block, his helmet swinging from the handlebars. I get up and keep moving, but it’s no use. Rufus pulls up next to me, swinging his left leg behind the seat, and then hops off his bike. The bike falls to the ground as Rufus catches me by my arm. He looks me in the eyes, and when I realize he isn’t pissed, but instead frightened, I’m absolutely certain he isn’t how I end.

“Are you crazy?” Rufus asks. “We’re not supposed to split up.”

“And you’re not supposed to be a total stranger,” I say. We’ve been together for several hours now. I sat down with him at his favorite diner, where he told me who he wanted to be if he had years ahead of him. “But you’re apparently running from the cops and you never mentioned that once.”

“I don’t know if the cops are actually looking for me,” Rufus says. “They gotta know I’m a Decker, and it’s not like I robbed a bank, so they’re not gonna send the entire force looking for me.”

“What did you do?”

Rufus lets go of me and looks around. “Let’s go somewhere and talk. I’ll give you the full story. The accident that killed my family and the stupid thing I did last night. No more secrets.”

“Follow me.”

I’m choosing the place. I mostly trust him, but until I know everything, I don’t want to be completely alone with him again.

We walk in silence into Central Park, passing early risers as we do. There are enough cyclists and joggers around that I feel comfortable, especially since Rufus is keeping his distance by staying on the grass, where a young golden retriever is chasing its owner around. The dog reminds me of the CountDowners story I was following when I received my alert, though I’m sure this dog and that one aren’t one and the same.

I maintain the silence at first because I wanted us to settle in before Rufus explains himself, but the deeper we go into the park, the quieter I get because of pure wonder, especially as we stumble onto a bronze sculpture of characters from Alice in Wonderland. Dark green leaves crush under my feet as I approach Alice and the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter.

“How long has this been here?” I’m embarrassed to ask. I’m sure it’s not new.

“I don’t know. Probably forever,” Rufus says. “You never seen it?”

“No.” I look up at Alice, who’s sitting on a gigantic mushroom.

“Wow. You’re like a tourist in your own city,” Rufus says.

“Except tourists know more about my own city than I do,” I say. This is a completely unexpected find. Dad and I prefer Althea Park, but we’ve spent a lot of time in Central Park too. He loves Shakespeare in the Park. Plays aren’t really my thing, but I went with him to one, and it was fun for me because the theater reminded me of coliseums in my favorite fantasy novels and gladiator matches in Rome from movies. I wish I’d discovered this piece of Wonderland as a kid so I could’ve climbed on top of the mushrooms with Alice and imagined adventures of my own.

“You found it today,” Rufus says. “That’s a win.”

“You’re right.” I’m still stunned this has been here all along, because when you think of parks, you think of trees and fountains and ponds and playgrounds. It’s sort of beautiful how a park can surprise me, and it gives me hope that I can surprise the world too.

But not all surprises are welcome.

I sit down on the mushroom beside the White Rabbit. Rufus sits next to the Mad Hatter. His silence is an awkward one, like those times in history class when we reviewed monumental events from the BDC days. My teacher, Mr. Poland, would tell us “how good we got it” for having Death-Cast’s services. He’d assign us reports where we reimagined periods of significant deaths—the plague, the world wars, 9/11, et cetera—and how people would’ve behaved had Death-Cast been around to deliver the warning. The assignments, quite honestly, made me feel guilty for growing up in a time with a life-changing advancement, sort of like how we have medicine to cure common diseases that killed others in the past.

“You didn’t murder anyone, right?” I finally ask. There’s only one answer here that will get me to stay. The other will get me to call the police so he can be detained before killing anyone else.

“Of course not.”

I’ve set the bar so high it should be easy enough for him to stay under. “Then what?”

“I jumped someone,” Rufus says. He’s staring straight ahead at his bike, parked by the pathway. “Aimee’s new boyfriend. He was mouthing off about me and I was pissed because it felt like my life was ending in a lot of ways. I felt unwanted, frustrated, lost, and I needed to take it out on someone. But that’s not me. It was a glitch.”

I believe him. He’s not monstrous. Monsters don’t come to your home to help you live; they trap you in your bed and eat you alive. “People make mistakes,” I say.

“And my friends are the ones being punished,” Rufus says. “Their last memory of me will be running out the back door from my own funeral because the cops were coming for me. I left them behind. . . . I’ve spent the past four months feeling abandoned by my family dying, and in a split second I did the same damn thing to my new family.”

“You don’t have to tell me more about the accident if you don’t want,” I say. He feels guilty enough as it is, and just like I wouldn’t ever push a homeless person into sharing their story so I can determine whether or not they deserve my charity, I don’t need Rufus to jump through any more hoops to keep my trust.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Rufus says. “But I have to.”

RUFUS

7:53 a.m.

I’m lucky to have a Last Friend, especially with my boys locked up and my ex-girlfriend on block. I get to talk about my family and keep them alive.

The sky is getting cloudy, and some strong breezes come our way, but no drops of rain yet.

“My parents woke up to the Death-Cast alert on May tenth.” I’m gutted already. “Olivia and I were playing cards when we heard the phone ring, so we rushed to their bedroom. Mom was on the phone and keeping it together while Dad was across the room cursing them out in Spanish and crying. First time I ever saw him cry.” That was brutal. It’s not like he was mad macho, but I always felt like crying was some little bitch move, which is freaking stupid.