Denton Little's Deathdate

by Lance Rubin

  The next time my eyelids raised—what could have been minutes, seconds, or hours later—Taryn had made her way under the crook of my right arm, snuggled up against my chest. I registered her presence like I do sunlight, aware of a pleasant, warm feeling without thinking too much about its source. My eyelids lowered.

  And then: indecipherable, aggressive shouts from the front lawn.

  And now: I am awake, my dreams have evaporated, and I am confused.

  “Wha?” Taryn says as she stirs.

  “Did you hear that?” I say.

  “Hear what?” Her eyes have the look of someone who is only sixty percent awake.

  “I don’t know, it sounded like Phil shouting.”

  “You heard that, too?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” she says. “Oh no.”

  My stepmom appears in the doorframe, looking concerned. She lifts the dimmer switch on the family room lights, which has, at some point in the past hours, been lowered. I can see Veronica and Millie just behind her in the kitchen, also seeming freshly awakened by the garbled ramblings outside.

  “What is this, Denton?” my stepmom asks.

  “I don’t really know, Mom.”

  My dad, Paolo, Felix, and Grandpa Sid must still be asleep.

  “You awake in there?” Phil slur-yells from outside. “Wait, no, I mean: you ALIVE in there?”

  In her semi-alert state, Taryn slumps forward on the couch, face in hands. “Ohmigod,” she says.

  “If you aren’t dead yet, come out here and face me,” Phil yells. “Like a man!”

  “I’m so sorry,” Taryn says through her hands.

  Is Phil actually outside challenging me to a duel? Maybe I’m still dreaming.

  Something hard, maybe a rock, plings off one of the front windows of the living room. “COME AWN!”

  I’m not dreaming.

  “Do you know who that is?” my stepmom asks.

  “I do, yeah. It’s Phil, from my cross-country team.”

  “Ooh,” my stepmom realizes. “He’s the one you talked about during your eulogy, isn’t he? The one you called a tooler?”

  “A tool, yeah.”

  “And he used to be going with you, right, Taryn?”

  “Well, yeah,” Taryn says, letting her hands slide back down to her lap. “I guess you could say it like that.”

  “Okay,” my stepmom says, decisive and sure as she strides across the family room toward the front door.

  “Whoa, whoa.” I’m up on my feet and blocking her path to the door. “Come on.”

  “I’m going to tell him to leave.”

  “Well, that’s great, but…”

  “But what?” my stepmom says.

  “I dunno, it’s a little, like, embarrassing that my mom has to go out and fight my battles for me.”

  “Denton. You’re the one person in this house guaranteed to die in the next few hours. This is just common sense.” I was gonna suggest that none of us should go out there, but now this feels like a challenge. “Please move, sweetheart,” my stepmom says. “This’ll be quick.” But my adrenaline faucet is on, and I’m feeling fairly ferocious.

  “No, Mom, sorry.”

  She looks at me with a brew of anger, defiance, and shock that I’m not instantly deferring to her.

  We stand face to face, neither of us willing to budge.

  “HEL-LOOOO?” Phil shouts. “Are you dead or just deaf?”

  “I’ll go talk to him,” Taryn says, rising from the couch. “This is my fault anyway.”

  “Yeah, like I’m gonna let you go out there alone with him,” I say. “We can both go.”

  “Dent—”

  “Don’t argue with me on this, Tar.”

  My stepmom, in a masterful feat of agility, wriggles behind me to block the front door. She bolts it shut as a new shower of rocks cascades against the house.

  “More where that came from,” Phil says, followed by some angry muttering, which, under other circumstances, would crack me up.

  “No no no,” my stepmom says. “None of us are going out there, ’kay? We’re going to pick up the phone and call the police.”

  Yay, that’s what I wanted to do in the first place! “Cool. Good idea, Mom,” I say.

  “That’s not necessary, Mrs. Little. He’s just drunk.” I hate hearing Taryn talk that way, like she knows him so well. “Really, I can go out there.”

  “Nope. Sorry, Taryn.” My stepmom smiles sympathetically as she slowly shakes her head side to side.

  “I guess the LITTLE in your name is because you’re a LITTLE PUSSY BOY!”

  I’m officially outraged that this guy is even a small part of my last night in the world.

  “Sorry, Mom,” I say. “Come on, Taryn.”

  I lead the way toward the back door.

  “Denton! No! No!” my stepmom calls after me as we pass through the kitchen, through the laundry nook, and out the door.

  “Where’s he going?” I hear my now-awake dad say.

  “You are a coward, dude!” Phil yells from the front yard, his words getting louder as we curve around the side of the house. “Taryn! Are you still in there? Send your boy out! Unless he’s DEAD!”

  “I’m not dead, dude.” We emerge from the shadows next to the house as the sun is just beginning to rise. I imagine it looks pretty cool. “Calm down.”

  Phil, however, is visibly jolted by my emergence from somewhere other than the front door. He staggers a couple of steps to regain his balance. He’s about as drunk as I’ve ever seen another human being. Probably a pretty close approximation of where I was at two nights ago.

  “Taryn, get back inside!” he yells. “This is about me and…” He points messily at me.

  “Phil, you shouldn’t be here,” Taryn says in her sweetest voice.

  “GET THE HELL INSIDE!” Phil says, bending over and awkwardly fumbling around in the grass. As Taryn and I exchange a confused look, Phil rises up, his hands gripping a rifle.

  My stomach drops.

  Whatthefuck.

  “Yeah, okay?” Phil says, pointing the long neck of the big brown rifle at me. “See why you should go inside, baby?”

  “Ohmigod, Phil,” Taryn says, panic-breathing. “Don’t, stop, don’t.”

  “Go.”

  Taryn’s eyes are drenched in apology as she slowly backs up.

  “Yeah, go inside, Tar,” I say, surprised I’m able to find words.

  “Shut up, man!” Phil yells. “I’ll use this!”

  “Whoa!” My hands involuntarily fly up into the air. “Okay, okay, chill out, dude.”

  “Oh, Mr. Cool over here. ‘Be chill, man.’ ” Phil’s face is a sweaty mess. He looks mildly insane. “ ‘I’m Denton, and I’m so chill, dude.’ ”

  The front door swings open, and Taryn slides in.

  “I don’t want anybody else coming out here either!” Phil says.

  It’s just the two of us now. I can’t believe this is how it’s going to happen.

  “I could kill you right now, you know,” Phil says. “I could be the reason today is your deathdate.”

  I feel like we’re playing a game of pretend, reenacting something we’ve seen in dozens of movies. We stand in the early-summer air on my front lawn, me with my hands up and him with his gun pointed at me, awkwardly tremoring as he tries to keep it steady. It’s the first gun I’ve seen in real life. A subtle breeze grazes my scalp and the back of my neck. I hear Phil breathing.

  I make a split-second decision to apologize for declaring Phil a tool during my eulogy.

  “Look, Phil, I just want to—”

  “You guys have sex?” Phil asks.

  The question catches me off guard, and at first I think I’ve misheard him.

  “What guys?”

  “Did you and Taryn have sex? Do it? Have intercourse?”

  So this isn’t about being shamed in front of his classmates. It’s about Taryn.

  Well. Which an
swer will get me the least shot?

  “No, man, no.”

  “You did! I know you did!”

  “Look, Phil, I’m gonna be dead one way or the other in the next eighteen hours, so I mean—”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “Phil,” my stepmom says from the front porch.

  “I said for no one to come out!”

  “I’ve called the police, and they’ll be here any minute,” she continues, her voice trembling.

  I’m looking into Phil’s eyes, and I think he’s crying. It’s hard to tell; they may just be bloodshot.

  “I can’t believe she had sex with you. I was with her for three years before we had sex. And with you guys it’s, like, six months and then good to go.”

  “To be fair, we were working to a pretty strict deadline. So to speak.”

  Phil grunts. “Whatever.”

  “Please don’t hurt him, Phil.” Taryn has stepped outside now, with my stepmom lingering in the doorway behind her.

  Phil springs back into shooting form. “Why shouldn’t I? I can’t believe you did it with him!”

  “We broke up! I can do whatever I want. Look, Denton will be dead soon anyway. What’s the point of you going to jail for it?”

  Her phrasing almost makes it seem like she’s on his side, but maybe that’s the point. As Phil takes in what she says, a couple of things happen at once:

  I see a cop car driving up the block behind Phil, out of his line of vision.

  Paolo appears, also behind Phil, creeping out from the side of the house with a frying pan in his hand.

  Both things are potentially good, but it’s a delicate crucible of a situation, which could implode if handled poorly, the scene in the movie where just as the bad situation is defused, some idiot who isn’t paying attention tries to help and inadvertently makes everything terrible again.

  Not that Paolo’s an idiot per se, but seeing him holding a frying pan flashes me back to our brief stint freshman year as a doubles pair on the tennis team. It ended tragically during a match against Haventown South when Paolo lost his grip on his racket, sending it soaring over the net into the forehead of one of our opponents (seventeen stitches).

  Paolo, getting closer, makes a slow swinging motion with the frying pan and shrugs at me: Should I hit him with this?

  I slightly raise my hand: Not yet.

  The cop car’s siren isn’t on, but you can hear the sound of an automobile moving toward us. Phil is amply distracted by his conversation with Taryn and doesn’t seem to notice.

  “We have something special!” he says. “That’s the point.”

  The cop car pulls up to the curb.

  “I know, Phil, we did. But we’re not together anymore.”

  Phil turns his head slightly toward Taryn, away from me, for the first time. Paolo is five or six steps away. I prepare to signal him or to charge at Phil myself.

  “I know,” Phil says, “but— What the hell happened to your chest?”

  “What?” Taryn says, voice rising.

  I wasn’t expecting that, and I can’t help turning to look at Taryn, illuminated by a beam of sunlight as she stares down at the uncovered patch of skin around her collarbone. Which is purple.

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod,” Taryn says, rushing back into the house.

  Rising to a challenge during a crisis was never her strong suit.

  “What the hell was that?” Phil says, laughing a little as he turns his head back to me, slackening his hold on the big rifle. I laugh a little, too. I might survive this yet.

  But then Phil does a quick double take, as if he’s caught a foreign body in his peripheral vision. Suddenly he’s back in shooting form, his rifle sights set on Paolo.

  “Whoa, whoa!” Phil shouts. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Paolo stands still, a few feet from me and Phil, frying pan by his side. “I…thought maybe…I’d cook myself an omelet.”

  “Like hell you were. What the hell, man? Go stand over there by your gay lover.” He gestures with his gun, violently and cinematically, to the spot where he wants Paolo to stand. “Go!”

  I look to the police car, thinking that any second a cop will be emerging to save the day. Not sure what’s taking so long.

  Paolo shuffles over next to me, and now we are a pathetic twosome. With a gun trained on us. Though I do feel better with him here.

  “So this one over here thinks he can sex up my girlfriend ’cause he’s dying. And his little butt boy over here thinks he can hit me with a pan. I should shoot you both.”

  “Yeah, we know, you’ve made that very clear,” I say. “And I got your death threat letter yesterday, so thanks for that, too.”

  “What death threat letter?” Phil says.

  “Oh. Shoot, no, dude,” Paolo says quietly. “I sent that to you.”

  “You?” I say. “What? Why?”

  “I thought it would be obvious it was a joke! I put it in the dumbest font!”

  “No, it completely freaked my shit out! Your deathdate is a very vulnerable time, you’ll see.”

  “Aw, man, I was wondering why you hadn’t mentioned it yet. I thought ‘Watch ott’ made it very clea—”

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Phil shouts.

  We do.

  “Sorry,” I say, still feeling bold. “It’s just, there are better ways I could be spending my last hours than standing here. Really.”

  “Easy there, D,” Paolo says. “It’s not all of our last hours.”

  And then I realize that, with Paolo dying in a month, both of us side by side on the execution line isn’t so confidence-inducing after all. We are screwed. I will die instantly, while Paolo sticks it out through his injuries for a month before biting it.

  What is that cop waiting for?

  “Oh, better things you could be doing? Like my girlfriend? You’re right, time’s up.” Phil cocks the gun and adjusts one last time, aiming squarely at me. “Denton Little, you’re dead.”

  He fires.

  All that stuff they say about your whole life flashing before your eyes in your final moments is such a cliché that I almost don’t even want to go there.

  But my life did flash. In the second between realizing that Phil was indeed going to pull the trigger and the actual pulling, stuff was flashing all over the place. Not events, just quick, vague snapshots.

  FLASH: My stepmom in the kitchen.

  FLASH: My dad reading in his favorite chair.

  FLASH: Taryn holding my arm and laughing.

  FLASH: Paolo on his bike.

  FLASH: Veronica kneeling below me in the woods.

  FLASH: Felix, in football gear, charging out of the house.

  Hmm. That final flash seemed out of place. I couldn’t think of a single time Felix and I had ever played football together.

  Maybe it’s because it wasn’t a flash.

  Felix barreled out of the front door wearing a football helmet, shoulder pads, and one of those fencing bodyguard things, and as I watched him full-on tackle Phil at the precise moment Phil’s rifle fired, shoving the gun barrel toward the sky, I realized it wasn’t a memory. It was actually happening. Right here and now. Holy shit.

  My body tenses. My toes curl.

  The bullet’s new upward trajectory steers clear of me and Paolo, and the bullet blasts harmlessly into the sky.

  I am still alive.

  Because of Felix.

  SQUAWK! A screeching noise erupts from the tree behind us.

  Guess it wasn’t entirely harmless.

  The creature-squawk is followed by the sound of a gazillion birds dispersing throughout the sky. Felix has Phil pinned to the grass and is forcing him to hand over the rifle. Taryn and my stepmom and my dad and everyone else in the house are rushing out the front door toward us, shouting my name. I am surprised how happy I am not to be dead. I thought I was ready for it.

  “Philip,” an all-too-familiar voice says from my left.

  I have a sinking feeling, and sure e
nough, when I turn to face him, I discover that it’s my buddy from last night. Phil’s grandfather. Aka HorribleGrandpaCop. Of course. He lumbers out of his police car toward us, finally deeming the moment appropriate to intervene.

  “I was hoping you weren’t gonna fire that gun off, son.” He’s holding his sunglasses, polishing them with part of his blue police shirt. “I was giving you the benefits of the doubt, ’cause you’re my own flesh and blood, but—”

  Phil, pinned below Felix, begins to bawl. “Oh no, don’t tell Dad, Grandpa, please,” he says, mush-mouthed and teary-eyed.

  “That’ll be Officer Corrigan, Phil-Phil. I’m on duty.”

  I’ll stick with HorribleGrandpaCop, thank you very much. Maybe just HorribleCop for short.

  “I didn’t think it was loaded, I swear!” Phil bawls. “I just wanted to scare him! I just wanted to scare him….”

  “Well, that’s all well and nice, but it was loaded, son, and I don’t think your daddy’s gonna like knowing you took his gun out the house to scare people with.”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry, please, don’t take me to jail.”

  “Absolutely take him to jail, Officer!” my stepmom shouts from her spot on the lawn, not too far from where we’re standing.

  “All right, all right, I have this handled, ma’am. No need for the peanut gallery to intervene.”

  “I think there is a need, Officer, seeing as I called you almost a half hour ago and you proceeded to sit in the car as my son and his friend were held at gunpoint by your grandson. Are you insane? We could have you fired for negligence!”

  “I had it under control, ma’am.”

  “Did you? Seemed like the only thing under your control was your nepotism. If my older son hadn’t gone out there to save him, my younger son would be dead! Is that what you wanted?”

  “With all due respect, ma’am, isn’t it this young man’s deathdate today anyway?”

  My stepmom is temporarily rendered speechless. I’m surprised, too. Was Phil’s grandpa really going to let me die like that?

  “Well…What?” my stepmom stammers. “How do you know that?”

  HorribleCop looks like he’s been caught off guard for a second. Then he regains his composure. “Oh, ’cause I encountered your son earlier today. Or yesterday, I should say. Isn’t that right, Dinton?”