This Is How You Die

by Matthew Bennardo

  Kiss Graham for me.

  Love,

  Leah

  Julia swallowed a lump and then fished out the two pieces of paper. She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment, and then opened the first.

  Kidney operation, it said.

  Julia felt her eyes brim with tears and allowed herself to cry. She opened the second.

  It said, Old age, surrounded by loved ones.

  “Thank you,” Julia whispered, and then went to kiss her son.

  * * *

  Story by ’Nathan Burgoine

  Illustration by Danica Novgorodoff

  ROCK AND ROLL

  “OKAY, KIDS, IT’LL BE JUST another five minutes or so. You just sit tight, now.” The man flashed a hurried smile to the three young teens before disappearing once again. His unnaturally dyed hair portrayed an almost pitiful desire to look much younger than he was, to fit in with these kids who were easily thirty years his junior. His hair was matched by his shiny leather vest and spastically accessorized pants.

  The man’s words made Amanda suddenly aware that the three of them had been sitting in complete silence the entire time. She had been gazing at the laminated badge she had been given, attached to a green fabric neck strap. “Backstage Pass,” it read in bold letters at the top, with the logo of the tour printed beneath it. The colors of the logo didn’t quite line up, making the graphic appear as though it had purple shading on the left side and bottom.

  The girl next to Amanda seemed to have the same realization and turned quickly to Amanda. “I’m Julie,” she said, sticking out her hand.

  “Amanda,” she replied, clasping Julie’s hand. Amanda blushed a little as she realized that her hand was sweaty because she was so nervous, especially compared to Julie’s oddly cold palm. She let go perhaps a little early, embarrassed, and was flustered when Julie held on for another awkward second. Amanda thought she saw the hint of a smirk in Julie’s face.

  “I’m Austin,” said the boy on the other side of Amanda. He was in a wheelchair and wore thick-framed, yellowish-tinted glasses. As Amanda turned to shake his hand, she was thrown off a little by his eyes, one of which seemed to focus on a point a little behind her. His hand was a little warmer than Amanda’s, which felt a little weird—but she held on this time, determined not to have the same problem she had with Julie. She looked back at Julie, expecting her to reach over and shake hands with Austin, but she didn’t; Julie just looked at him as if to acknowledge his presence while still holding on to the faint smile from before.

  “I like your purse,” Amanda offered, turning again toward Julie and trying to regain some of the power that the handshake faux pas had taken from her. She didn’t really feel strongly one way or the other about the purse, but it did seem to be an expensive designer bag, or at least a knock-off. Either way it struck Amanda as being something Julie must be proud of.

  “Thank you,” Julie said politely, although without the glow of appreciation that Amanda was hoping for. Julie regarded the flawless black leather of the bag in her own lap as if it were the first time she had really noticed it and then opened her mouth as if to respond in kind. As she glanced over to Amanda’s slightly worn cream-colored purse, though, she seemed to think better of it and instead looked up at Amanda with the same hint of a smile.

  “So how many of Stephen’s concerts have you been to, Amanda?” Julie had a devious sparkle in her eye. Amanda felt a knot form in her stomach, realizing that she couldn’t answer the question honestly and still maintain any pretense of holding the upper hand. She resigned herself to her place, knowing at least that Stephen would not want her to lie about it.

  “This is my first,” she replied, mustering her confidence. “But I’ve been a huge fan since Death by Rock and Roll.” She made sure to name-check Stephen’s first album, if only to prove her devotion.

  Austin chimed in, leaning forward to try to stake a claim in the conversation. “Did you know the slip on the album cover was his actual slip from his first reading in Portland?” He seemed to overemphasize the words to be more dramatic, but Amanda wondered if it was just the way he normally talked.

  Julie rolled her eyes. “From Tim’s Broken Cup coffeehouse, yes. And he played his first concert there one year later.” She turned back to Amanda. “So you have all his albums?” It was phrased less as a question and more like a statement of obvious fact.

  “Yes!” Finally, a chance to prove herself.

  “And the bootlegs?”

  Amanda wished she could go back to the silent sitting from before. “Um—”

  “My dad got me bootleg recordings of all the concerts from the Fate tour.” Julie sat back in her seat. “They’re very high-quality recordings.”

  “Wow… that’s great,” Amanda replied, fighting to keep a smile on her face, looking down at her purse.

  “When did you win your ticket?” Austin spoke to Amanda in a quieter tone, as if to form a united front with her against Julie.

  Amanda turned to Austin with a smile. “Just yesterday. My friend Mimi and I had been calling the radio station since the contest started! Two times, we were caller number four, and then one time we were number seven. We figured we had missed our chance, and then the deejay said they had one more ticket and backstage pass available!”

  “Wow, no kidding?” Austin seemed genuinely interested. Amanda smiled in appreciation, finding his lazy eye less creepy now.

  “Mimi said we should go for it, and if we were caller number nine, she would let me have them.” Amanda felt a lump in her throat. “I couldn’t ask for a better friend. She loves Stephen too, but she knows how much he means to me.”

  “That’s awesome! And so you won! That’s so great!” Amanda’s eyes were just starting to tear up, and she nodded. She didn’t want to speak for fear of breaking down, both out of love for Mimi and out of the anticipation of meeting him.

  Stephen. Stephen Conrad. She had seen him onstage from the fourth row and it seemed like a dream—it all went by so quickly. She sang along with every word of every song, soaking up every bit of the experience. She had stretched out her hands to the stage to be nearer to him but knew that she needed only to wait: fate had arranged for them to meet, and that meeting was only minutes away.

  She wanted to tell Austin. She wanted him to know that she was special. The arena had been full of thousands of screaming fans tonight, but Amanda was different. She wanted to tell him that, but how would it sound? Every teenage girl felt that way… but tonight she and Stephen would meet, and everything would change.

  She sat back in her seat and opened her bag to get a tissue. As she rifled through the contents with her right hand she carefully laid her left hand over the top of the purse to keep the others from seeing inside, and when she found the small plastic pouch she pulled a tissue out quickly, deftly pulling the strap to cinch the opening with a single smooth motion. As she blotted the corners of her eyes, she noticed Julie looking in her own purse, and Amanda caught a glimpse of a strange-looking device inside, occupying most of the bag’s small volume.

  Amanda looked up at Julie with a quizzical look on her face, but Julie was already starting to talk. “I don’t listen to the radio,” she said condescendingly, without turning to look at either of them. She grasped her badge and held it up. “My dad bought me this for my fifteenth birthday, which is next week.”

  Austin leaned forward to look at the badge, which was identical to his and Amanda’s. “I didn’t know you could just buy them.”

  The smirk returned to Julie’s face, much more obvious now than before. “Anything is for sale when you have enough money.”

  “What does your dad do?” Amanda asked, realizing now that the purse was probably not a knock-off. Knowing that she had bought her way in somehow made Julie seem so much less of a true fan. For Amanda, it was destiny. For Julie, it was just another soulless purchase.

  “He’s the CEO of Mortech, the leading manufacturer of death predictors,” she replied with a mixture of con
descension and pride. “You know, it was a Mortech machine that Stephen used at Tim’s Broken Cup.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened and she could feel her pulse speed up a little. She wasn’t sure what to say and was relieved when Austin spoke instead.

  “Whoa… so what do you think will happen to him? Do you think he’ll die onstage sometime? I mean, his slip says ROCK AND ROLL, right? How else could it happen?”

  Julie sneered a little. “Or drugs. That’s how most rockers die, you know.”

  Austin looked confused. “But his slip doesn’t say DRUGS…”

  “Drugs and rock and roll are practically the same thing. It’s the rock-and-roll lifestyle.”

  Amanda felt insulted. Stephen didn’t do drugs… She had read in a magazine interview that Stephen hated drugs and alcohol. He didn’t need them to be happy, the article had said, because playing his music gave him all the happiness he needed.

  Austin seemed to have been following some other train of thought. “Do you think he’ll have his prediction slip with him? You think he’ll show it to us?”

  Julie looked over at Austin with her smirk and directed her answer instead toward Amanda. “It won’t matter if he has it or not, because I’m going to get my own.” With a grand gesture, she opened her purse and pulled out the device, which looked similar to one of those electronic ear thermometers that Amanda had seen at her doctor’s office, but a bit larger.

  “What is that?” Amanda asked.

  “This is a portable death predictor. Battery operated, and works just like the larger units.”

  Austin was keenly interested and wheeled forward a few inches to get a closer look. “Whoa… I didn’t know they made them like that!”

  “They don’t—at least, not yet. This is a prototype.” She looked around and quickly tucked it back into her purse. She seemed a little worried about passersby seeing it; Amanda guessed that she had probably taken it without her father’s permission.

  As Amanda thought about Julie’s apparent plan, she clutched her own purse a little more tightly, feeling flushed with nervousness. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

  Julie looked at Amanda with a fire in her eyes. “I’m going to get the ultimate souvenir—my own slip that reads ROCK AND ROLL.” She put her hands up as if the words were on a marquee in front of her. “Maybe he’ll autograph it for me. Either way it’ll be one of a kind—I have a blank slip loaded in that already has his picture embossed on it.”

  Amanda was mortified, partly out of jealousy, but mostly because it threatened to overshadow her fated meeting with Stephen. Why did there even have to be other winners? She had heard the deejay give away another backstage pass but daydreamed that somehow this moment would be just her and Stephen—no managers, no stagehands, no other winners.

  “What if he doesn’t want to?” Austin asked. Amanda nodded and gazed back at Julie. It wasn’t Stephen’s style! Even Austin knew.

  “I already told you—anything is for sale when you’re rich.”

  Amanda’s concern was turning to anger. Julie shouldn’t get to be here, she thought. Stephen wouldn’t approve of this. She was mustering the courage to speak up, to put Julie in her place, when she was interrupted by the man from before, suddenly poking his head through the doorway into the small waiting area.

  “All right, kids! Stephen’s waiting for you. Follow me!”

  “Stephen.” The man looked at the paper he held in his hand and read each name carefully, pointing at each of the teens in turn. “This is Austin Chavez, Julie Morhardt, and… Amanda Thiessen. The contest winners!” Amanda gave an awkward wave when her name was called. She was relieved that the man had introduced them, since she had offered to push Austin’s wheelchair and became worried halfway down the corridor that Stephen might think that she was just Austin’s aide or something.

  Stephen Conrad was there in the room, sitting backward on a rolling swivel chair and looking every bit as beautiful as he did in the magazine pictures and on the album covers. His brown, tousled tresses glistened with the sweat from the stage lights, and he still had on the tight-fitting white T-shirt and black jeans that he wore onstage. His acoustic guitar leaned up against the wall to his left, and a few people sat chattering on cell phones behind the three visitors. Stephen sucked on a white plastic water bottle as they walked in, then pulled it out with a smack and let the air hiss back into it.

  Amanda’s knees felt weak and her mouth felt dry as Stephen motioned for the girls to sit down in two of three folding chairs that had been placed in an arc a few feet away from the musician. As Austin wheeled himself closer, Stephen put his foot out and sharply kicked away one of the chairs, glancing up at the man who had brought them in, smiling and rolling his eyes. Austin chuckled as the folding chair went skittering across the tiled floor.

  “I’m so glad you could come to my show tonight,” he told the three eager fans. “It really means a lot to me.” He extended his hand to each of them: first Julie, who seemed less confident than she had in the waiting room. Then Austin, and finally Amanda. Shaking his hand took her breath away; it felt so strong, so comfortable. He felt just as she had always imagined he would feel. It was as though the sincerity she heard in his music was there in his touch. She smiled at him, melting inside as he smiled back.

  Does he know? she wondered. Can he feel the connection?

  Julie spoke, either trying to interrupt the moment or just blind to anyone else’s matters but her own. “Stephen, I loved ‘Breakaway’ tonight… It reminded me of the way you played it in your show in Indianapolis a few years ago.”

  The rocker was taken aback a little but kept a warm smile on his face. “Oh, were you at that show?”

  Julie stammered a little. “Ah, no, but I heard, uh, I have a recording of it. It’s one of my favorite versions.”

  “Oh, I see.” Stephen looked down and chuckled. “To be honest, they start to blur together after a while.” He looked back up at Julie. “But I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s a special tune, I think. You know, it’s about trying to escape your fate. Something our generation has had to confront more than anyone else, I think.”

  Austin piped up, much in the same way he had in the waiting room. “Stephen, do you have your slip with you? Can we see it?” Amanda was a little disappointed in Austin. Why was he here: to see Stephen or his card?

  “Oh, ha-ha… no,” Stephen responded, in a way that was simultaneously considerate and well rehearsed. “The road is a pretty dangerous place, so I have it framed back home in my studio. It helps me remember that rock and roll is my life; it’s what I was put here to do.” He reached around to grab his guitar. “How about a song, huh? I think I’ve got one more encore in me for my superfans here.”

  The teens nodded expectantly. Amanda’s heart raced as Stephen strummed a quick chord and then tuned one of the strings as he spoke. “This is a new song… something I’ve been working on in the tour bus. You know, all the extra time on the bus gives me a lot of opportunity to do songwriting.”

  Julie opened her mouth as if to speak, but Stephen continued. Amanda wasn’t sure if Stephen knew he was cutting her off but found a wicked pleasure in it regardless.

  “This one is about finding your soul mate. It’s inspired by a dream I had a few nights ago.” He played a few bars as an introduction, his fingers intricately combining melody and strummed chords, and then began singing.

  Amanda felt dizzy as he sang of wandering through lonely days and then having his companion appear to him, first in a dream, and then in real life. As he played, he looked down at his guitar and only occasionally looked up, often closing his eyes to deliver the high notes. His enraptured audience drank up every note, not moving even to keep time with the impassioned performance.

  After an expertly played and melodic bridge, Stephen launched into a third verse with a much thinner accompaniment, ratcheting up the emotion in his voice but singing more softly, more intimately. As he did so, his eyes locked with Amanda’s.

&nb
sp; She felt as though she were being transfigured by his words. She could feel his gaze and expected at any moment for him to turn away, to look down at the fingerboard of his guitar to change chords, to turn instead to Julie or Austin or anyone else in the room. But he did not, even as he moved into the final chorus.

  She was in the clouds and knew that he had suddenly felt the connection. The connection that she had felt so long ago, that she knew he would feel when they finally met. He was acknowledging it, caught up in it, as if she had taken his hand and was gently guiding him toward his unforeseen future. He was no longer a face on a poster or a voice coming through iPod earbuds. He was her peer, her friend, her—she was afraid to say it, even in her mind, for fear of jinxing the heaven she had finally found.

  He had barely strummed the final chord when Julie, who must have noticed the connection between the two, let out a gasp of angry frustration. Amanda turned just in time to see Julie swing the device that she had already gotten out of her purse, causing the now uncovered needle to pierce through Stephen’s jeans and into his thigh. Stephen’s face turned to surprise and to horror, and he let out a yelp as he instinctively swatted it away with his left hand, nearly dropping his guitar in the process. The device went sliding across the tiled floor behind the three teens, stopping in a corner where one of the cell phone people had been but which was now empty.

  There was a sudden pause in the room as everyone absorbed what had just happened. After a second, the apparently still-functional device began beeping, and Julie dove toward it just as a small slip of paper emerged from the slot on the end. Stephen’s face changed to a look of horror. The man who had brought the youths into the room, realizing now what the device was, rushed over to Julie, who was squatting next to her device and had already flipped the card over. Her expression changed to one of disgust as she turned back to look at Stephen.

  “THYROID CANCER!?”