Denton Little's Deathdate

by Lance Rubin

  It makes my heart ache, and not just because my stepmom has the texting abilities of a five-year-old.

  “Who is it?” Taryn asks.

  “My stepmom. She said maybe me and my dad can talk later.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  I tried to talk to my dad at the celebration home, but he was settling money stuff with Don Phillips, and I had to get going to stay on schedule. The rest of my pre-Sitting evening has been carefully planned and divided: Taryn time, then Paolo time.

  “It would be pretty annoying to die and never know what that guy meant.”

  We hear a plane fly overhead.

  “Isn’t it crazy that that’s how it used to be?” Taryn says. “Before people knew?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like…before people knew when they’d die, it could just happen anytime. And you had no idea. Probably so many unanswered questions. And you could be anywhere: in the supermarket, in school taking a test, or, like, in the bathroom even. No prep time whatsoever.”

  “Yeah.” Though I’m not convinced all this prep time is a helpful thing.

  “And then you couldn’t even go to your own funeral.”

  “Yeah…” I’m also not convinced I really needed to be at mine.

  “It’s just weird to think about.”

  “Definitely.” My arm is still around Taryn, my hand rubbing her shoulder.

  Here’s the funny thing about my state of mind right now: in spite of the immense guilt I feel about Veronica, I am still very much hoping that Taryn and I will have sex. Maybe that makes me an even bigger asshole, but there it is.

  Now is probably the moment to make my move.

  Problem is, I can’t get all that stuff Phil said out of my head. I’m sure most of it is untrue, but it’s kinda gnawing at me.

  “What’s up?” Taryn says, sensing something’s wrong and looking up at me. There’s glitter on her lips.

  “Well…” Ah, fuck it. There’s no time. I go in for the kiss, surprising Taryn, who lets out a pleased little yelp.

  We make out. Lots of tongue wrestling and deep nose inhales. It’s good.

  I will ask her about Phil when we’re finished. Definitely.

  I guide Taryn over from the passenger seat onto my lap, pulling the little bar underneath the driver’s seat so it slides back to give us more room.

  It’s not that big a deal that Taryn was with Phil instead of slow-dancing with me. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.

  My hands find their way to Taryn’s legs. I trace a path up and under her dress.

  “Oh, Denton,” she says.

  “Oh, Phil,” I say.

  Taryn abruptly pulls back and stares at me.

  “What’d you just say?”

  “What?”

  “You totally just called me Phil.”

  Oh my holy shit, I did.

  “No, I…” Whoops. “Yeah, okay, I guess I did.”

  “That’s really weird,” Taryn says, awkwardly crossing back over to the passenger seat, bumping her head. “Ow.”

  “I know,” I say. “But Phil said some stuff to me at the party. About you. And it’s kinda driving me nuts.”

  “Oh no,” Taryn says, slowly leaning forward with her forehead cupped in one of her hands. “I’m sorry, Dent. He’s being…really difficult.”

  “Yeah, well, he said you guys were getting back together after I died. And that you were with him when I couldn’t find you for our slow dance.”

  “Okay,” Taryn says, rising back up, looking into my eyes. “I promise you, Phil and I are not getting back together. We’re just not. As for the slow-dance thing, I was with him for some of that, but I feel horrible about it. You don’t deserve that, Dent.”

  Not gonna lie, my stomach drops when she says she was with Phil.

  “It’s just, well, first of all,” she continues, “you embarrassed him in front of, like, two hundred people. Which I get because he can be a dick, so that’s whatever, but he’s already in a bad place to begin with. Because of his dad and everything. So I was trying to be there for him, just for a few minutes.”

  “He looked like he was in a great place to me, laughing and joking all over you.”

  “His dad has pancreatic cancer, Denton. He dies—”

  “In two months, I know, Tar. May I remind you that I die TOMORROW!” I surprise myself with how loud I am, like when you start a car and the stereo is still blaring from the last time you drove it. “Maybe even in a few hours.”

  “Whoa. Okay. Sorry.” Taryn stares out the passenger-side window.

  The proverbial clock ticks.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “You’ve never yelled at me before.”

  “I know.” I have almost no experience with sexual intercourse, but I’m guessing this doesn’t count as foreplay.

  “Denton, I love you, okay?” she says into the window, emotions in her voice.

  “I know. Could you look at me? Please?”

  Taryn slowly turns back to me, eyes wet.

  “I just have a lot going on in my mind right now,” I say, “and it’s all getting mixed up and intense. But I love you, too.” The more I say it, the more it feels like I really do mean it. “And I just want to be with you. Is that okay?”

  Taryn silently nods. I lean over and touch her cheek as I kiss her.

  She kisses me back, and we are at it again, even more charged than before.

  I start to pull Taryn back over to my seat. Her hands fumble around with the button of my pants.

  There is a tap tap tap at my driver’s side window.

  It startles the crap out of both of us. I turn my head to find a policeman peering in.

  Talk about a boner killer.

  I push the window button, but it does nothing, and I remember that the car has to be on first.

  Car on.

  Window down.

  “Hello, sir,” I say into the scraggly face of this white-haired cop.

  “Evening, kids,” the cop says, with an annoying grin. “License and registration?” I fish around in my pocket for my wallet and ask Taryn to get the registration out of the glove compartment.

  “Um, hi,” Taryn says, ignoring my request as she leans forward and tentatively waves at the cop. I hope she’s not trying to seduce him to get us out of a ticket, because that could get awkward.

  “Oh.” The cop looks worried for a second, then his wrinkly face lights up. “Look who it is! Phil-Phil’s little girlfriend!”

  “Hey there,” Taryn says, radiating discomfort. “Um, Phil and I actually broke up, a while ago.”

  The cop looks at me and scrunches up his mustache in thought. “Hwell…on to the next, right? Heh heh!” He seems disingenuous, like he’s putting on some kind of performance for us. “Philip is my grandson,” the cop explains in my direction, all of the mirth instantly drained from his voice. “Damn good kid.”

  Are you kidding me? Of all the cops in town, we get the one who’s the grandfather of my girlfriend’s ex?

  “Of course,” I say, angling my head in GrandpaCop’s direction without making full-on eye contact. “Yeah, we, uh, run together. Ran together. Like…on the team…” I trail off pathetically.

  “May I?” he says, grabbing the license I’ve been holding this whole time. “Dinton Little…” He pronounces the e in my name like it’s an i. “Hey, you’re that kid who’s dying tomorrow, aren’t ya? Yeah, here’s your deathdate, tomorrow. Sorry to hear that.”

  I wonder if Phil has told him all the mean things I said at the funeral. “Thank you, sir,” I say.

  “And you, my sweet,” he says, hitching his head to get a better look at Taryn, “are looking lovely as ever. Like a daisy in the summertime.”

  “Thanks, Grandpa Ford.” Ew, she called him Grandpa. And his name is Ford.

  “Now. I’m gonna have to ask you to get out of the car, Dinton.”

  I stop breathing for a few seconds.

  “What? Why?”


  “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna bite ya.”

  I look over at Taryn. She shrugs.

  “I just, uh…Don’t you need, like, a reason? Or a warrant or something?”

  “Well, the government has the deathdate statute, surely you know about that. Gives me the right to search someone within seven days or less of their deathdate, ’case they’re planning on committing some crimes before they go. You know, steal some money for their family, that sort of thing. You can look it up on the Net.”

  “I promise you, I’m not planning—”

  “Or,” GrandpaCop says, flipping my license through his fingers like in a bad card trick, “you can stay in the car, and I’ll take you to jail, spend the night. Maybe you’ll die there.”

  This man is officially horrible. Taryn looks mortified.

  I open the door and step out. “Just stand right over here,” GrandpaCop says as he shines his light in my eyes, then down my body. “So, got any theories on how you’re gonna die?”

  “Not really,” I say. My eyes land on the gun holstered at his waist.

  Trust no one.

  “You feeling anything strange now?” GrandpaCop asks, flashing his light around more, giving me a pat-down. “Got a fever or anything?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “’Cause sometimes people get sick, get a virus or something, that’s how they die.”

  Is he referring to my splotch? How could he possibly know?

  I feel suddenly brave. “Nope, other than being frisked by a cop for no apparent reason, feeling great.”

  “Huh.” GrandpaCop stares at me. “Phil was right about you. Think you’re some kind of rebel.” So Phil did tell him about me. Great.

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, li’l rebel boy…” His hand slowly moves down to his holster. “You seem clean.” He rests his hand on his hip. Phew. “You’re gonna have to go somewhere else, though, to do whatever it is you two were doing up here—don’t worry, I won’t tell Phil-Phil.” This guy is gross. “’Cause you’re trespassing on private property.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, getting back in the car, eager to get as far away from here as possible.

  “Have a good last night, Dinton,” HorribleGrandpaCop says as he hands me back my ID, all soiled with his fingerprints. “A pleasure seeing you, young lady. Drive safe now.”

  “Bye,” Taryn says quietly.

  I want to yell, “Suck it, Ford!” as we pull away, but instead I just nod.

  The old couch in Taryn’s basement isn’t quite big enough for both our bodies to lie down on, so my legs are draped off the side. Her legs extend out into the air as she lies on top of me. We are kissing. Passionate, sloppy, end-of-the-world kisses.

  Taryn’s parents are upstairs watching an NBA playoff game, and we know that they know what we’re doing down here. It’s not as good as “our spot”—where parents are not within a twenty-foot radius—but it’ll do. Taryn’s mom insisted we take down some ruffled potato chips and a bowl of onion dip, both of which sit untouched on the coffee table.

  That unsettling run-in with Phil’s grandfather certainly didn’t help my attempts to clear Phil from my mind-palate. Taryn seemed genuinely shocked by the whole thing (“His grandpa always seemed so sweet…”), but my paranoid thoughts are running rampant. Did Phil sic his grandpa on me? Was Taryn involved in setting me up? Or is GrandpaCop one of the people Brian Blum was warning me about?

  “You okay?” Taryn says, lifting her face up away from mine. The welt I gave her earlier is almost gone, just a small raised pink circle.

  “Yeah, of course, why?”

  “You seem a little out of it. Should we not do this?”

  “No, we should, we absolutely should.” I pull her face back into mine, but she resists.

  “Dent. I really am sorry about Phil.” I can tell she means it.

  “I know,” I say. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.” And we’re making out again.

  In our messing around up till now, Taryn and I have pretty much done everything except for sex. But we were both in agreement that we didn’t want my death to rush or pressure us into having sex early, that it should happen organically.

  In retrospect, this seems really dumb.

  We should have had sex, like, one week in, and then maybe we would have had time to get good at it and right now the prospect of doing it wouldn’t seem so terrifying. Another plus to this idea is that I would have lost my virginity to Taryn and not to Veronica.

  “Whoa,” Taryn says. She’s just slid my pants off and is staring wide-eyed at my purple, dotted leg.

  “Oh. Yeah. That’s what I was telling Paolo about in the bathroom.”

  “What…what is it?”

  “I dunno. Maybe a blood disorder? I completely understand if you’re turned off and don’t want to—”

  Taryn pushes me back down on the couch and kisses me harder than ever. I feel like that’s partly to erase the image of my splotchy leg from her brain, but that’s okay.

  She takes my tie off as I unbutton and take off my shirt.

  I help Taryn slide her dress up and over her head.

  I run my fingers up her bare back.

  We are nearly naked. I am once again in the present moment.

  “Should we…,” I ask.

  Taryn nods solemnly.

  “Okay, let me just…” I grab my pants off the floor and dig around until I find my wallet. When I was twelve, I had a camp counselor named Eli who showed us how he always kept a condom in his wallet, and this struck me as the most badass thing ever. This guy was ready to have sex whenever. I later learned that it’s usually the guys who don’t have sex a lot who keep condoms in their wallets, but I could never quite erase from my brain the idea that this is an awesome thing to do.

  However, the condom that’s been in my wallet for months is no longer there. Because, duh, Denton, you probably used it last night. Feck.

  “What are you getting from your wallet?” Taryn asks in a jokingly coy voice. She knows exactly what I’m getting (or trying to get), because she found it in there once, and it’s become a running joke between us. Like “Why don’t you take your wallet out?” or “Let’s go inside and…have a look at your wallet.”

  “I am getting…” Stall with a joke! “My school ID out. I’d like one student-priced ticket, please.”

  Taryn laughs, even though I realize it sounds like I’ve made some weird prostitute joke.

  “What else is in your wallet?”

  “Well,” I say, “I…don’t know. What else there is. I, ah, this sucks—I think I just threw out the condom last week because it had expired.”

  “Oh,” Taryn says.

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you mean, you think?”

  “No, I mean, I know. I threw it out, and I meant to buy a whole box of new ones to replace it, but then I…didn’t.”

  “It’s the last night of your life, and you don’t have a condom on you to have sex for the first time with your girlfriend?”

  I make what I believe to be my most charming, adorable face. “No?”

  “Denton,” Taryn says, and I think she’s about to grill me on where that condom actually has gone. “You are incredibly lucky that I happen to have acquired a couple of condoms in case of an emergency not unlike this one.” She digs into her purse and pulls one out. “You’re an idiot, but you’re lucky.”

  “That’s…amazing,” I say. “Where did you get those?”

  “The back of my dad’s sock drawer.”

  “Ew.”

  “I know, let’s not think about that.”

  “How did you know where your dad keeps his condoms?”

  “Eh. Accidentally found them when I was little. Same spot ever since.”

  “Well.”

  “Well.”

  It takes me way too long to open the condom package, and even longer to figure out which side of the condom goes facedown (dickdown?), but four and a half minutes later, we have a
wkward, sloppy, stupid, extremely exciting (to me, at least) sex, me trying hard not to think about a lot of things, like the purple that consumes my entire right leg, down to and including my toes, and the fact that the prophylactic on my penis was intended to be used by Taryn’s dad. Incidentally, I find that thinking about the latter is a wonderful antidote for those moments when I think the sex is on its way to ending too quickly.

  It does end too quickly. But I think I’ve done better than most of the first-time teen dudes in every sex comedy ever, in that I’ve made it past the two-minute mark. Sweet.

  Taryn and I sit side by side on the couch. Naked.

  “Well.”

  “Well.”

  “That was pretty cool,” I say. “Right?”

  “Yeah. Really cool, definitely.”

  I want to ask if I was better than Phil, but that seems really stupid, and I think it would kill the mood.

  “You wouldn’t know that was your first time at all,” Taryn says.

  “Oh, cool. Yeah. First time.”

  SECOND TIME!

  “You know, in French,” I say, “they call an orgasm la petite mort, which is ‘little death.’ It’ll be pretty great if my death feels like that.”

  I am realizing that when I feel guilty, I start talking nonsense.

  “Yeah…” Taryn picks up her underwear from the floor and starts getting dressed. I was hoping we’d get to sit naked on the couch a little longer; it’s fun. Though maybe gross for the couch.

  “So, did you…”

  “What?”

  “Well, did you, like, have a petite mort?”

  “Oh. No, but I never do.” Taryn shrugs, and she slides her dress on over her head.

  “What were all those noises you were making, then?”

  “Noises?”

  “No, I mean, the sounds you were making while we were doing it?”

  “Oh, I dunno.” Taryn turns slightly red. “I didn’t realize they were annoying you.”

  “They weren’t, they weren’t. I just thought the sounds meant you were into it.”

  “I was feeling into it; I just didn’t orgasm. It’s not a big deal.”

  But it feels like a big deal, like we haven’t done it properly.

  “Let’s try again,” I say. “I can do better.” If I really and truly satisfy her, maybe she’ll never forget it. Maybe she’ll never forget me.