Denton Little's Deathdate

by Lance Rubin

  “Okay, I’ll be right down!”

  “You have to go,” Taryn says, with more tears in her voice.

  “Yeah. To be continued.”

  “I have to go back to Spanish class, so I won’t be able to pick up if you call.”

  “Oh right, you’re in school right now.”

  “Yeah, we don’t all get to skip today.”

  “Taryn, I get to skip because I’m gonna be dead tomorrow. Geez.”

  “Sorry…I’m sorry. I’m just…sad.”

  “I know, I know, we’ll talk at the funeral.”

  “Okay…I love you.”

  That’s the first time she or I have ever said that.

  We always said we’d only say it if we really meant it. I should say it back, but how do I know if I’m truly in love with her?

  “I love you, too.” I think I mean it.

  She says nothing, but I hear the sounds of smiling on the other end of the line.

  “Really?” she says finally.

  “Really. I’ll talk to you later, Tar.”

  “Bye, Denton.”

  I hang up. I am simultaneously impressed and disgusted with myself. After one phone call, I’m able to cross three things off a bucket list I never would have written.

  Act like a drunken asshole? Check. Cheat on a girlfriend? Check. Say “I love you” without being sure I even mean it? Check.

  I do realize that approximately zero percent of this should matter to me right now.

  I’m going to die tomorrow. According to my death counselor, around now is when I should be feeling either profoundly depressed or beginning to exhibit signs of reckless, life-endangering behavior.

  So why the hell am I still invested in these small, ordinary, seemingly insignificant details?

  I’d say it’s probably an attempt at keeping myself distracted from the dark chasm looming in my future. But with all this Taryn business, I feel terrible and guilty and unworthy and generally like I do want to die. So maybe I’m on the road to depression after all. I head to the shower.

  I’ve only been to four funerals, but that’s enough to know that I don’t want my self-eulogy to be like the ones I’ve seen: weepy, nostalgic, and self-congratulatory, sort of like a cringe-inducing Oscar speech. So I’ve constructed one that I think is sharp and funny, with a lot of heart toward the end. I’ve also thrown in some advice to the human race to appreciate what they have. Because no one really does. I figure if a sweet guy like me gets a little intense, it’ll be very effective. “Oh wow,” they’ll say. “That was a real wake-up call.”

  I’m running through it during my Last Shower Ever, trying to get the delivery just right, when I see something weird on my thigh.

  It’s a reddish-bluish-purplish Rorschach splotch of a bruise, and it makes my breath catch in my chest.

  It looks like I’ve bumped into a desk or table really hard, but I don’t remember doing that. Maybe last night during SchnappsFest. But under closer examination, it doesn’t look like a normal bruise; it’s peppered with electric red dots. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I say to myself as I scrub at the splotch, not actually expecting it will do anything.

  But it does do something. In one swift but orderly motion, the red dots shift around on my thigh, like the rotation of players in a gym class game of volleyball. I poke again, entranced by this touch screen on my leg. I dig in a little harder with my fingers, trying to will some pain out of the splotch; if it hurts, then I can convince myself it’s just a strange bruise.

  But it doesn’t hurt.

  I am panicking.

  If it’s not a bruise, then it’s probably the first visible sign of some blood disorder that, even at this moment, is deploying troops throughout my body, gumming up the works, making me almost dead.

  After so much time devoted to thinking about how I’m going to die, I now have a very legitimate scenario staring up at me from my thigh. You’d think I’d be relieved, but instead I’m in a state of shock, with one message circulating through my brain, pounding in time with the water thumping against my back:

  This is it.

  This is it.

  This is it.

  The beginning of the end.

  This is actually happening.

  I stare at blue tiles.

  I breathe.

  As if from another galaxy come the medium-frequency tones of my stepmom’s voice, and I know I’m running later than late.

  Shower off.

  Suit on.

  I stare at myself in the mirror.

  This is what dying looks like.

  I adjust the knot on my lucky purple tie. I fork my fingers down either side of my head, first flattening and then messing up my dark brown hair. I always thought my nose was a little too big, but now I’ve come to enjoy the added character it brings to my face. I look good, and I can suddenly see myself the way I imagine everyone at this funeral will see me.

  Denton Little. Funny, sweet Denton Little. Handsome but not too handsome. So charming and likable that in seventh grade, he technically won Most Likely to Succeed before teachers decided it seemed like a cruel joke to print that in the yearbook. He would have grown up to do so many great things….

  My capacity for self-pity is growing by the minute.

  I take out my phone and search for purple splotch on thigh.

  I’m greeted by scores of message boards, linking my condition to everything from burst capillaries to food allergies to an underground conspiracy to thin skin to a bad tanning bed experience to leukemia to, as was my suspicion, a blood disorder. None of the entries mention red dots, though, and a lot of them mention symptoms I don’t have, like itchiness. My splotch is not itchy. Yet.

  My stepmom calls up to me once again, and this time her voice has anger around the edges. I haven’t made much progress on a self-diagnosis, but let’s be real: it might be more helpful not to know.

  Downstairs, the mood is a bit frantic. Felix and my dad are already sitting at the kitchen table, looking fancy and suited, and my stepmom is flitting around the kitchen in one of her nice green dresses. This is the Last Meal we will have together, just us, and my tardiness has dictated that it will be a quick one.

  Surveying the landscape of the table, I notice all of my favorite foods ever. Even though this is a universal pre-funeral tradition, I’m surprisingly touched.

  My dad stares at me as I devour a stalk of my stepmom’s famous broccoli with curry powder (it’s good, trust me). “How you doin’, bud?” he says, pushing aside the newspaper he’d been reading.

  “All right,” I say. “This is weird.”

  “Really? I watched your mom make it, same recipe as always.”

  “What? No, not the broccoli. I mean this, today…Everything.”

  “Oh right, right.”

  Should I be upset that my dad seems less alarmed about my dying than he does about the possibility that my stepmom’s broccoli might not be up to par? My dad is great, but he’s always had an inability to process and acknowledge upsetting things. I’ve only seen him cry twice in my life: once, nine years ago, when a few stealth tears trickled down through his gray stubble during Felix’s high school graduation and another time when he messed up his knee real bad during a game of tennis. (That second one might not even count because those were pain-tears.)

  “Mom, this food is awesome,” I say, mouth full of mac and cheese, and hummus, as she continues Tinkerbelling around the kitchen. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “What dressing do you want?” she asks. “Balsamic? Oriental sesame?”

  I can’t express how incredibly little I care about salad dressing at this moment. Seeing that splotch has brought me into this strange headspace where I’m noticing more things. Like my dad’s glasses are dark brown and not black, as I’d always thought. Maybe these are new? And the kitchen table is so solid. I spread out my fingers, like I’m palming a basketball, and push against it.

  “Your hand okay?” asks my dad, with a small, labored chuck
le thrown in for good measure. It’s my least favorite habit of his, fake-laughing at things he doesn’t understand.

  “No, this table…” Someone made this. “It’s just really cool.”

  “I brought them all,” says my stepmom, finally sitting down with us, too many stupid salad dressing bottles in her hands. “What’s this about the table?”

  “Denton thinks the table is cool,” Felix says.

  “Well, thank you, Denton, I agree,” says my stepmom, ignoring or missing the snarky tone in his voice in favor of being genuinely touched that the table she chose more than ten years ago has finally been validated.

  “This whole kitchen is great.” In this moment, it’s like the nerdy-girl best friend who the protagonist abruptly realizes is, in fact, his superhot dream girl. Why did I never appreciate this kitchen?

  “It really is!” my stepmom says, looking around like a kid in Disneyland. “Oh! By the way”—she grabs an envelope off the counter behind her—“this came for you.” She slides it toward me. “No address. Someone must have left it in the mailbox.”

  “Ooh, nice, that’s old-school,” I say. Possibly my Last Piece of Mail Ever.

  The envelope is blank except for a small typewritten To Denton on the front. I’m thinking it’s from Taryn or Paolo. “If this is a love note,” I say as I open it up, “I’m not reading it out loud. FYI.”

  It’s not a love note.

  I’m staring down at a huge-fonted message that reads:

  DENTON

  YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. SOON.

  WATCH OTT

  My brain stops.

  I’m not sure what’s more unsettling, the message’s content or the choice of Comic Sans font. I hold it up for all to see.

  Everyone is silent and still.

  “Ohmigod,” my stepmom says, one hand to her mouth.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Kinda messed up.”

  “Kinda? What— Who do you think would send this?” she says. “Do you have enemies?”

  “I mean…”

  “Well, look, it’s true, right?” my dad says. “This message is just stating what we already know, really.”

  “This is a death threat, Lyle!” my stepmom says.

  “But he already knows he’s going to die soon. That’s not news.”

  “It says, ‘Watch out’!”

  “No, technically it says, ‘Watch ott,’ ” Felix says. “A nine-word message, and this person couldn’t be bothered to spell-check. I love that.”

  On the plus side, this means the splotch on my thigh might not be what’s going to kill me after all.

  On the minus side, I might be murdered.

  “Oh, Dent,” my stepmom says.

  I liked it better with just the splotch.

  “I don’t know if you should be leaving the house anymore, sweetie.”

  “Mom…I have to. It’s my funeral.” But part of me thinks she might be right. Silence hovers for a solid five seconds.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Raquel,” Felix says. “Dent will be okay.”

  “I will,” I say. Though tomorrow is, in fact, the one day that’s fated to be very Not Okay.

  “We love you so much, Denton,” my stepmom says, in tears now.

  “We really do, bud,” says my dad.

  “Thanks, guys,” I say, pushing aside the death letter. I try to eat another bite of stuffing, but it won’t go down, so I spit it into my napkin.

  Here’s what you can expect to experience at your funeral:

  You will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of people there. You will see friends you haven’t seen in years, including Randy Regan, who moved away in second grade to Colorado. Your family and extended family and extended family’s family will be there, and they will shower you with attention and praise and pity and love. Everyone else will shower you with these things, too. You will be the star, but not in a way that you’ll be able to fully enjoy.

  Your girlfriend will try to get a moment alone with you, but it will only last three minutes before you’re interrupted by an oblivious cousin and forced to head back to the celebration. Your girlfriend will seem angry with you, but you’ll know she’s really just upset about the whole death thing, and you’ll promise her that you’ll have time alone after the funeral, which you do genuinely want. You will wonder if you’ll get to sleep with her during that time alone. You will wonder if you’ll die a virgin. You’ll wonder if you’re a jerk for thinking about sex right now.

  You will be thankful your best friend is there; he is supportive and great without acting like a freak about it, which makes him something of an oasis in the desert of people surrounding you. As expected, you will see almost everyone from your high school class, and it will weird you out, because you can’t ever imagine another occasion where you would invite literally every person from school. You’ll remember, for an instant, that in less than a month, your best friend will be going through this exact same thing. You will feel bad for him. You will feel bad for yourself. Occasionally, that death threat from earlier will pop into your head, and you will stare around the room in a paranoid fashion, trying to figure out who wrote it. You will search the crowd for your best friend’s older sister, both dreading and fiercely anticipating the run-in, as if she were the result of an important quiz you took last week that you honestly have no idea how you did on.

  You will quickly realize that one-on-one conversations at your own funeral—or, as many will choose to call it, your Final Celebration—are largely unsatisfying, especially when they’re with Willis Ellis, the biggest stoner in your grade. (“Hey!” “Hey!” “I’m so sorry about today, my brother. I’m really gonna miss you.” “Thanks so much, man.” “Always crackin’ your funny jokes in class and stuff.” “Yeah, thanks, I’m glad you’re here.” “Yeah, of course, dude. How have you been?” “Oh, fine, I guess. You know, school, hanging out, getting ready for this.” “Yeah, yeah, it sucks so much. You going to prom? Gonna be crazy!” “Nah…” “Oh, right, yeah…Sorry, man.”)

  You will use the restroom, and, after peeing, you will check out the reddish-bluish splotch on your thigh and see that it has gotten bigger. Or has it? You won’t be quite sure; maybe it’s expanding, maybe you’re imagining things. Ultimately, you will push thoughts of the splotch out of your head so that you can try to enjoy this funeral without having a full-on panic attack. You will have a bizarre encounter with Don Phillips, the vaguely slimy man running the show at the Phillips Family Celebration Home, and he will engage you in a matter-of-fact discussion about your coffin until you kindly redirect him toward your parents and wonder how a man in charge of funerals could be so lacking in social grace.

  After the requisite amount of mingling, people will be asked to please sit down in the hundreds of chairs set up in the celebration home’s huge ballroom. You will be seated with your family at a table at the head of the dance floor, and the official ceremony will begin. Your family is not very religious, but they are somewhat spiritual, and the service will be conducted by Bert Hemling, an old college friend of your dad’s, who is now some kind of respected Buddhist priest or something. Bert will talk about you and what a great kid you are and the story of how, when you were five, for about three or four months, you carried around an eggplant wearing construction paper clothing, which you had named Charles. You will think, This is a story that gets told at my funeral? Then things will get deeper as Bert explains that your body will die, but you will not; your energy will never die, and you may be back, even a week from now, in the body of a rabbit or a chipmunk or a squirrel (you will wonder if there’s a reason Bert has limited your reincarnation possibilities to three fairly similar rodents), and even though you know he’s talking about you, you will have trouble connecting these concepts with yourself, trouble believing that those ideas will be highly relevant very soon. You also will have trouble embracing the idea that coming back as a chipmunk is a good thing.

  People will begin their eulogies. You will find yourself enjoying what ever
yone has to say about you but not fully recognize the portrait that is being painted. You will know that a certain amount of hyperbole comes with these speeches, but everyone will sound so genuine that you will truly believe you have touched all these lives and that you will be Remembered Forever. And maybe you will. Your girlfriend will deliver the fifth eulogy, and, though she’ll be a bit over-the-top dramatic (“This is going to be the biggest loss I’ve ever experienced”), you’ll be glad the crowd gets to see this charismatic girl say such loving things about you.

  By the ninth or tenth eulogy, you will find yourself getting antsy, thinking that there should be a limit to how many of these there are; even Millie Pfefferkorn, the sweetly odd girl who lives down the block and who you’re barely friends with these days, will take the mike. If you’re feeling restless, you can’t imagine how everyone else is feeling. As if in response to this thought, your best friend will get up and, like a breath of fresh air, deliver a eulogy that is closer to a stand-up set. (“Do you know this guy actually flosses every day? I’ve always been so intimidated by that.”)

  Then your brother. His eulogy will be sweeter than you expect but will still leave much to be desired; certain parts will seem embarrassing in their lack of specificity, as if this were the mailman and not your brother speaking about you. Just as it dawns on you that your self-eulogy will be coming up soon, your parents will take the microphone and wreck you. Your dad will, of course, be keeping it together, but your stepmom will be struggling to get out any words, and you will understand for the first time how very hard this will be for the two of them, how maybe you have it the easiest out of everyone. Soon you will be sobbing, and it will occur to you that this is the most emotional you’ve been since the family dog died five years ago, when everyone sat together in that tiny room in the animal hospital, completely losing it as Dash, already in some far-off place, was injected with a lethal something in front of you. You will remember how you thought at that time that Dash’s death was especially painful because you didn’t know his deathdate in advance. Since it’s so expensive to determine deathdates for animals, your family hadn’t the slightest idea when he’d be gone. If we knew this was coming, you’d thought, we wouldn’t be so sad right now. But now, here, you’re thinking that maybe knowing wouldn’t have made any difference. Your parents will be wrapping up their speech, saying how proud you have made them, how much you will be missed, what an incredible person you are, how happy they are to have known you, and how they are sure you will always be with them. It will be almost too much to take, and you will be focusing all your energy on reining in the sobs that are trying to escape your throat when you will realize you are being called up to give your self-eulogy. You will stand up a little shakily and walk toward the microphone, fumbling in your pocket for your speech, which you will realize is not there. It will not be in your left pocket either, or in your back pockets, and you will then remember exactly where you left it: on the dresser in your room. You will stand at the microphone, staring into the faces of almost everyone you have ever known, your mind swimming with fragments of your speech, and you will prepare to speak.