Still Not Dead, page 15
I back away from her. “No. Thank you, but no. You’re not nice, Haley.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Haley says. “Nice is boring. Who wants to be nice when you can be memorable instead?”
One of her terrible friends says, “Amen!”
“I think that’s actually the official motto of the Serial Killers Club,” I say, wiping a drop of water out of my eye. “So, congratulations: you’re a psychopath.”
“Fuck you, Frank!” Haley says, getting right up in my proverbial grille. I’ve hit a nerve. “You don’t know what it’s like to die young, so shut the hell up! People with long lives can afford to be nice. Good for them! But I don’t have time for that.”
“Oh, I don’t know what it’s like to die young?” I say, realizing as it’s coming out of my mouth that I shouldn’t be saying it. “Well…maybe not, but I do know you can die young and still be a nice person. Your argument is bullshit.” This girl is the opposite of everything I stand for. She’s making me question my life choices once again, which makes me feel self-conscious and horrible.
Haley stares at me, her blue eyes unreadable. “You’ve got some fire in you, Frank,” she says. “I like that.”
But I’m done trying to make this happen. “Why do you talk like you’re a powerful queen in a fantasy movie? Speak like a normal person.”
“You have any more advice for me?” Haley says, making a heinous sexy face at me.
“We have to go. Come on, Pao…der.”
I start to walk away, and Paolo follows, but as he does, he’s giving me a look that says, Dude, the door is completely open for you to go make out with her and pass her the virus. And I know that he’s right. I turn back.
“Actually,” I say, gesturing to the string orchestra, which is currently playing an infinitely undanceable song, “I don’t have any advice, but…do you want to dance or something?”
All of Haley’s friends again wait in suspense for her response.
“I thought you’d never ask.” Haley smiles in a way that seems evil, though I don’t think she’s going for that. “I don’t want to dance. But I could definitely go for some ‘or something.’ ”
“Ooh, yeah, girl!” Skinny Green-Dress Friend says.
“Come on.” Haley holds out her hand to me. I look to Paolo. He nods. Internally I sigh as externally I grab Haley’s hand. It’s very soft, which might be her only positive characteristic.
As Haley leads us toward the double doors of the reception hall, we receive a series of surprised looks and wolf whistles. Just before we walk out the doors, we pass Haley’s father. “Oh,” he says.
“Are we good to leave your party like this?” I ask.
“It’s my funeral,” Haley says. “And I’ll leave if I want to. Besides, we won’t be gone long.”
I’m glad to hear that. I want this make-out to be quick.
We walk down an empty hallway of the huge celebration home. The air-conditioning is blasting, and since my hair and shirt are still wet, I’m shivering. Haley pushes on various doors as we pass them to see if any are open. Finally one swings inward. Haley peeks in. “This works,” she says, pulling me into the room.
It’s some kind of chapel office, with a big desk, a few bookshelves, and lots of crosses and candles everywhere. I’m suddenly nervous. I’ve never made out with someone I barely know, let alone someone I actively dislike.
Haley pushes me up against the desk. Here we go.
“So, am I making one of your dreams come true right now?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, in spite of the screaming desire to leave emanating from every bone in my body.
“I know you’re such a big fan of mine.” She strokes her fingers down my chest, and it gives me chills. The bad kind. “Bet you never thought you’d be touched by me like this.”
“Totally, yeah. Never thought it.”
“Oh, you’re shivering like a little puppy dog.” She strokes my hair. “I love that.”
I don’t. I hate all of this. Why am I about to make out with this girl? For my mom? How messed up is that?
“Hey,” I say, putting one hand on Haley’s cheek.
“Be careful of my makeup,” she says.
“Sorry.” I move in to kiss her.
“No,” she says, putting her hand over my mouth. “No kissing.”
“Huh?” I say through her hand.
“Let’s just touch, okay?” She takes her hand off my mouth and moves it down toward my belly. It’s the tiniest bit arousing—just because—but mainly it’s not. Because she is a demon lady.
“I really want to kiss you, Haley,” I say, not sounding all that convincing to my own ears.
“Sorry,” she says, shrugging like she’s trying to be all cute. “This is something else I’ve always wanted to do. Doesn’t it make it so much hotter?” She caresses my shoulders.
“Not really,” I say.
“You don’t know; you’re just a dumb boy. Have you ever seen this old movie called Pretty Woman?”
Oh man, this is where she’s going with this? “Yeah, parts of it.”
“Well, me and my best friend, Hayley, watched it once during a sleepover back when we were in middle school, and—”
“Your best friend is also named Haley?”
“Yeah, but she’s Hayley with a y in the middle. Let me finish my story, Frank.” Now she’s touching my thighs. “So, there’s this one scene in the movie where Julia Roberts won’t let Richard Gere kiss her, and it was…the sexiest…thing…either of us had ever seen.” She’d been touching my back, and now she’s moved her hands down to my butt. “It still is. And I’ve never gotten to do that with anyone. Touch me, Frank.”
“Um, okay…”
I put my hands on her waist, but she grabs them. “No, here,” she says, placing them on her chest. “Yes, that’s soooo good,” she says. “Don’t you think I deserve this before I die, Frank?”
“Absolutely you do. But it’s worth mentioning that, in the movie you’re talking about, Julia Roberts was playing a prostitute.”
Haley takes my hands off her. “What’s your point? You think I’m some kind of slut for being here with you?”
“No, not at all, not in the slightest,” I say, realizing this whole thing could fall apart at any moment. “Just that that’s why she didn’t want to kiss him. Because she didn’t want to develop, like, an emotional connection to her clients.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Frank?” Haley takes a step back toward a bookshelf and puts her hands on her waist. “Do you want to mess around with me or not? I’m doing you a favor here.”
“Yes, of course I do. Totally. But, please, I get nervous, so can we just make out a little first before we do the no-kissing thing?”
“We can’t make out and then not kiss. Are you stupid or something?”
“Yeah, no, I mean, I realize that.” I’m running out of options. But I know I can’t stay in this office touching someone I’m repulsed by for much longer. “I’m a really good kisser, though.”
“I don’t give a shit how you kiss, asshole. Have you listened to a word I’ve said? I’m asking to touch you, okay? Most guys would kill to have these hands on their dick.”
I don’t think that’s true. And did she seriously just say that?
I don’t have time to contemplate any further because Haley reaches down and grabs my crotch. Naturally I’m soft down there, and Haley is not pleased.
“Ohmigod,” she says, her face stone cold. “I should have known.”
“Known what?” I say, panic rising. “There’s nothing to know.”
“You’re not turned on at all!”
“I was, I totally was, but then we were going on and on about movie logistics—”
“You like boys, don’t you?” And then, much to my surprise, Haley’s eyes start to get teary. This is not going well. “You’re just another closeted loser trying to use me as a beard. How could you waste my time like this? I’m going to die. This was supposed to be special….” She begins to sob.
“This is special, Haley,” I say, putting a hand on her face. “I like you. You’re one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen.” I can almost sell that lie.
“Really?” Haley says through tears. She’s showing vulnerability for the first time all day, and it actually does make her look prettier.
“Really,” I say.
“Thanks, Frank.” Her mouth slightly opens, her lower lip quivering. Somehow I’ve righted the ship. This is my moment.
I lean in, my hand still gently stroking her pronounced cheekbone. Her eyes close, still wet with tears. Our mouths are millimeters away from each other, and my tongue is prepped and ready to invade.
Just as we’re about to make contact, though, Haley’s knee slams into my crotch like a wrecking ball.
I’m seeing stars and swirls as I fall back against the desk.
“Suck it, Frank!” she shouts in my face. “You’re still not even hard. That hurts my feelings, okay?”
The pain radiates up to my stomach, an all-encompassing throb. I slide down against the desk and find my way into the fetal position on the floor. “I’m just…trying to…save…your…life,” I grunt.
“Oh, get over yourself,” Haley says from the doorway. “Romo will be in shortly to escort you out. Hope the rest of your life is brief and terrible.”
I try to say, You, too, but it comes out as a moan. Her footsteps click away down the hall.
“I don’t understand. How hard is it to deliver a glass of water?”
As expected, my mother is not pleased that our operation this afternoon was a complete bust.
The usual crew is gathered once again in the living room of her apartment: me, Paolo, my mom, Felix, Dane, and Yuri, whose head is buried in a book about a well-dressed robot. The coffee table is covered with bags filled with our dinner, delicious-smelling Indian food that we’re not allowed to eat until we’ve discussed what happened today.
“It’s my fault,” Felix says. “I should have had Dent—I mean, Frank—drink the water outside the main reception hall. I got careless.”
A few minutes after Haley left me huddled on the floor of the chapel office, Romo did indeed show up, gripping Paolo by the arm. He lifted me up to my feet, and within moments, Paolo and I were out on the street. I peeked back into the lobby and almost made direct eye contact with my cousin Tiffany, who was sitting on a fancy chair, looking at her phone, at which point I made the executive decision that our mission was concluded.
“Sure, it’s not like you to goof up like that,” my mom says. “But Frank and Paolo were still inside. It seems like, between the two of them, they should have been able to figure out a way to get the dying girl some water.”
“There really wasn’t,” I say.
“This is not to be believed,” Dane says.
“We tried everything,” Paolo says. “Dent was even ready to get nasty with this girl, but she kicked him in the nuts.”
“What?” my mom says. “Did you try replacing her glass of water on the table with a new glass of water that you had spit into? While she wasn’t looking?”
Not sure why that didn’t occur to me. “It was hard to tell which seat was hers…,” I say, trailing off.
“Well,” my mom says, tapping her nose as she stands up to pace around us. “I’m gonna be honest: I’m disappointed. I expected more from the three of you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though I’m totally pissed off. We’re the ones out there in this impossible situation, while she gets to stay here and then judge us when we get home.
“No, I’m sorry,” she says. “I feel like I haven’t really told you why all this means so much to me.” She continues pacing around, then takes an overly theatrical pause to look out the window. “Frank, did I ever tell you why I didn’t want to know my deathdate?”
I can’t deal with another lesson or story or sermon from this woman. “I think so,” I say, trying my best to be curt. “Because you felt it was unfair that it was a government decision based purely on money.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She turns away from the window and perches on the arm of the couch. “When I was sixteen, my mom had a heart attack and died. She was thirty-nine.”
“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.” I guess that woman was my grandmother.
“Of course you didn’t; Lyle barely even told you my name.”
“Dad’s ridiculous,” Felix says.
“You don’t get to speak right now,” my mom says. Felix looks down, clearly embarrassed. I feel bad for him. “So I lost my mother. She was the best—so funny, so loving—and then one day she was just gone.” My mom shakes her head. “The worst part is, I’d grown up hearing how her father had died of a heart attack at age thirty-seven, when she was just seventeen.”
“That blows,” Paolo says.
“So you might understand why it was always in my head that maybe I, too, would be dead sometime in my thirties. Then, not even two years after my mom died, I was a freshman in college, and the government was suddenly saying that it was mandatory for us all to learn our deathdates. I panicked. It was bad enough imagining I might die young, but I didn’t want definitive proof.”
Even if I am still kinda pissed, I can’t help but be completely captivated.
“Brian and I organized a series of protests, but in the end, it didn’t matter. We were forced to get ATG kits and learn our deathdates. Brian was undated—the lucky bastard—but I was going to die at thirty-two, even earlier than my mom and grandfather.” My mom hangs her head, as if she’s just found out the news all over again.
“I was so depressed. For years. I mean, what was the point of anything? I didn’t want a career, I didn’t want to date anyone, and I definitely didn’t want to have kids. I would just die and abandon them, the way my mom did me.”
I am feeling so many things as I listen to this story, but the predominant one is sadness that I never knew any of this until now.
“Brian was the one who finally snapped me out of it. He’d done research on what it was that made people undated, and he was pretty sure it had to do with a specific gene that factored hugely in the ATG kit readings. I’d never given two shits about chemistry before, but suddenly it was the only thing getting me through the day. I thought, Screw it, what do I have to lose? Maybe I can find a way to live. That’s how I ended up in grad school for pharmaceutical science. Where I fell in love with my professor. Lyle Little.”
“Whoa, cool twist,” Paolo says quietly.
“I told Lyle I didn’t want kids, and he was fine with that. But then, well, things happened, and three months after we started dating, I was pregnant.” She’s talking about Felix. “I didn’t want to keep him, but Lyle wore me down, convinced me that nine years with a child would be better than no years. And I’m so glad he did.” My mom looks at Felix, and she’s tearing up. It’s the first time I’ve seen her cry. “I’m sorry I snapped at you before, Feel. You know I love you.” She walks behind the couch to where Felix is sitting.
“I do, Ma,” Felix says.
She leans over and kisses him on the forehead. It’s the most she’s seemed like a mom since I got here. “Once I had him in my life,” she says, draping her arms on Felix’s shoulders, “then I really didn’t want to die. That’s why Brian and I, and some others we enlisted from my grad school class, worked to create the virus.”
“For this, we will always thank you,” Dane says.
“Yes, thank you,” Yuri says, briefly lifting his attention from his book.
“And, yes, I lived, but that means it’s my responsibility to see this thing through,” my mother says, pacing again. “To make the world how it once was, a place where we can choose to not know when our days will end, where we can live each day to the fullest without being driven mad by knowledge we never asked for in the first place.
“Frank knows what I mean, right?” She turns to me.
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “Totally.” But the thing is, as moved as I am by all this, I’m also confused, because if I’m going to be honest, I was never driven mad. I mean, it was always a complete bummer that I was going to die at seventeen, but it also just was what it was. I never knew anything different.
“And that is why we do this,” my mother says. “That is why today was so important.”
“Absolutely,” Felix says.
“Now, I’m tempted to send you back out to have another go at saving that girl’s life, but it’s also fine if we move on. Because today’s funeral was just a warm-up for the main event. You’re going to have quite the chance to redeem yourselves.”
I’m one part excited, eight parts uneasy.
My mom again smacks a folded newspaper onto the coffee table. This time, there’s a photo of an older woman wearing glasses and a pantsuit. It seems like she’s at a press conference or something. The headline above her reads, Corrigan Funeral to Be Held at Plaza Hotel.
“Who’s Corrigan?” I ask.
“Karen Corrigan,” my mom says with a wicked grin. “She’s the head of the USDLC. Do you know what that is?”
“The United States Department of…”
“Lady Cougars?” Paolo asks earnestly.
“Life Conclusions,” I say.
“Correct,” my mom says as I start to put the pieces together. “The USDLC is the organization responsible for everything deathdate-related in this country. The DIA is a part of the USDLC.”
“Oh wow. Are you saying you want me to save her next?”
“It’s too perfect, right?” my mother says, her eyes shining maniacally. “I mean, you couldn’t pick a better person to help make a statement than the very face of what you’re fighting against. And the funeral is this Monday.” That’s the day before Paolo’s funeral. “It’s fate, Frank.”
“Truly,” Dane says. “This has made me to believe in fate.”
“Huh,” I say. On the plus side: I get a chance to redeem myself. On the negative, though: is secretly delivering my spit to powerful government officials and/or their kids really my fate?
