I don’t know how Keith died. I don’t know if Turbo made it out alive or if he died with Keith. I don’t know what would’ve been preferred for Keith or Turbo. I don’t know. I could look into any muggings or murders in Central Park yesterday around 5:40 p.m., when the feed stopped, but for my sanity this is better left a mystery. Instead I open up my music folder and play Space Sounds.

A couple years ago some NASA team created this special instrument to record the sounds of different planets. I know, it sounded weird to me too, especially because of all the movies I’ve watched telling me about how there isn’t sound in space. Except there is, it just exists in magnetic vibrations. NASA converted the sounds so the human ear could hear them, and even though I was hiding out in my room, I stumbled on something magical from the universe—something those who don’t follow what’s trending online would miss out on. Some of the planets sound ominous, like something you’d find in a science fiction movie set in some alien world—“alien world” as in world with aliens, not non-Earth world. Neptune sounds like a fast current, Saturn has this terrifying howling to it that I never listen to anymore, and the same goes for Uranus except there are harsh winds whistling that sound like spaceships firing lasers at each other. The sounds of the planets make for a great conversation starter if you have people to talk to, but if you don’t, they make for great white noise when you’re going to sleep.

I distract myself from my End Day by reading more CountDowners feeds and by playing the Earth track, which always reminds me of soothing birdsong and that low sound whales make, but also feels a little bit off, something suspicious I can’t put my finger on, a lot like Pluto, which is both seashell and snake hiss.

I switch to the Neptune track.

RUFUS

1:18 a.m.

We’re riding to Pluto in the dead of night.

“Pluto” is the name we came up with for the foster home we’re all staying at since our families died or turned their backs on us. Pluto got demoted from planet to dwarf planet, but we’d never treat each other as something lesser.

It’s been four months that I’ve been without my people, but Tagoe and Malcolm have been getting cozy with each other a lot longer. Malcolm’s parents died in a house fire caused by some unidentified arsonist, and whoever it was, Malcolm hopes he’s burning in hell for taking away his parents when he was a thirteen-year-old troublemaker no one else wanted except the system, and barely even them. Tagoe’s mom bounced when he was a kid, and his pops ran off three years ago when he couldn’t keep up with the bills. A month later Tagoe found out his pops had committed suicide, and homeboy still hasn’t shed a tear over the guy, never even asked how or where he died.

Even before I found out I was dying, I knew home, Pluto, wasn’t gonna be home for me much longer. My eighteenth birthday is coming up—same for Tagoe and Malcolm, who both hit eighteen in November. I was college bound like Tagoe, and we’d figured Malcolm would crash with us as he gets his shit together. Who knows what’s what now, and I hate that I already have an out to these problems. But right now, all that matters is we’re still together. I got Malcolm and Tagoe by my side, like they’ve been from day one when I got to the home. Whether it was for family time or bitching sessions, they were always at my left and right.

I wasn’t planning on stopping, but I pull over when I see the church I came to a month after the big accident—my first weekend out with Aimee. The building is massive, with off-white bricks and maroon steeples. I’d love to take a picture of the stained-glass windows, but the flash might not catch it right. Doesn’t matter anyway. If a picture is Instagram worthy, I slap on the Moon filter for that classic black-and-white effect. The real problem is I don’t think a photo of a church taken by my nonbelieving ass is the best last thing to leave behind for my seventy followers. (Hashtag not happening.)

“What’s good, Roof?”

“This is the church where Aimee played piano for me,” I say. Aimee is pretty Catholic, but she wasn’t pushing any of that on me. We’d been talking about music, and I mentioned digging some of the classical stuff Olivia used to put on when she was studying, and Aimee wanted me to hear it live—and she wanted to be the one who played it for me. “I have to tell her I got the alert.”

Tagoe twitches. I’m sure he’s itching to remind me that Aimee said she needs space from me, but those kinds of requests get tossed out the window on End Days.

I climb off the bike, throwing down the kickstand. I don’t go far from them, just closer to the entrance right as a priest is escorting a crying woman out the church. She’s knocking her rings together, topaz, I think, like the kind my mom once pawned when she wanted to buy Olivia concert tickets for her thirteenth birthday. This woman has gotta be a Decker, or know one. The graveyard shift here is no joke. Malcolm and Tagoe are always mocking the churches that shun Death-Cast and their “unholy visions from Satan,” but it’s dope how some nuns and priests keep busy way past midnight for Deckers trying to repent, get baptized, and all that good stuff.

If there’s a God guy out there like my mom believed, I hope he’s got my back right now.

I call Aimee. It rings six times before going to voice mail. I call again and it’s the same thing. I try again, and it only rings three times before going to voice mail. She’s ignoring me.

I type out a text: Death-Cast called me. Maybe you can too.

Nah, I can’t be a dick and send that.

I correct myself: Death-Cast called me. Can you call me back?

My phone goes off before a minute can pass, a regular ring and not that heart-stopping Death-Cast alert. It’s Aimee.

“Hey.”

“Are you serious?” Aimee asks.

If I weren’t serious, she’d certainly kill me for crying wolf. Tagoe once played that game for attention and Aimee shut that down real fast.

“Yeah. I gotta see you.”

“Where are you?” There’s no edge to her, and she’s not trying to hang up on me like she has on recent calls.

“I’m by the church you took me to, actually,” I say. It’s mad peaceful, like I could stay here all day and make it to tomorrow. “I’m with Malcolm and Tagoe.”

“Why aren’t you at Pluto? What are you guys doing out on a Monday night?”

I need more time before answering this. Maybe another eighty years, but I don’t have that and I don’t wanna man up to it right now. “We’re headed back to Pluto now. Can you meet us there?”

“What? No. Stay at the church and I’ll come to you.”

“I’m not dying before I can make it back to you, trust—”

“You’re not invincible, dumbass!” Aimee is crying now, and her voice is shaking like that time we got caught in the rain without jackets. “Ugh, god, I’m sorry, but you know how many Deckers make those promises and then pianos fall on their heads?”

“I’m gonna guess not many,” I say. “Death by piano doesn’t seem like a high probability.”

“This is not funny, Rufus. I’m getting dressed, do not move. I’ll be thirty minutes, tops.”

I hope she’s gonna be able to forgive me for everything, tonight included. I’ll get to her before Peck can, and I’ll tell my side. I’m sure Peck is gonna go home, clean himself up, and call Aimee off his brother’s phone to tell her what a monster I am. He better not call the cops though, or I’ll be spending my End Day behind bars, or maybe find myself on the wrong end of some officer’s club. I don’t wanna think about any of that, I just wanna get to Aimee and say goodbye to the Plutos as the friend they know I am, not the monster I was tonight.