The Deathday Letter

  “Turn right,” says Shane through gritted teeth. Seriously, the kid’s gonna crack a tooth if he’s not careful.

  I turn onto Military and gun it. I shove the pedal to the floor and Miss Piggy, as if sensing my slow march toward death, gives me everything she’s got. It’s not a lot but it’s still pretty effing awesome. It’s like I’m flying without a safety net. The road blurs under me and the sunny trees wave as I pass. This is driving. This is what it feels like to have total freedom. To know that you can go anywhere and do anything. This is what I’m gonna miss.

  It’s like the steering wheel is showing me my future. Showing me all the zany road trips Shane and I aren’t gonna be able to take. We’ll never drive three hours just because. We’ll never go fishing down in the Keys. We’ll never spend a summer washing dishes at a greasy diner in some shithole town because we didn’t bring enough money to fix Miss Piggy when she breaks down, and end up bringing together an entire town through the power of song and friendship.

  All we have is this.

  We roll up to a red light. I’m wind-whipped and smiling. Shane’s smiling. I think we’re both faking it a little, though. I think Shane knows what we’re losing out on too.

  I start to feel like I don’t want to drive anymore but Shane nudges me and motions out his window. Stopped next to us is a blue Toyota something or other. The driver’s not bad. A cute Latina with these sparkly white shades on. She looks over at me and I detect a little smile. I sure wouldn’t kick her out of bed, even with that mole.

  My heart beats a little faster and I grip the steering wheel a little tighter. I wink at her as the light turns green.

  I don’t even wait to find out if she smiles or winks back. I put the pedal down. I shift Shane’s stick like it’s butter. First to second to third to fourth to fifth. Each time, Miss Piggy roars as I clutch and shift. She’s feeling what I’m feeling, and it’s spectacular.

  I howl at the wind as it tangles my hair, and fly down the road like Speed Racer. It’s the most free I’ve ever felt. Even more than when I burned my schoolbooks.

  Until I see the cop.

  And the cop’s flashing lights.

  Oh, shit.

  “This is gonna be bad, isn’t it?” I ask Shane, and try to slow down, but it’s too late.

  Shane glares at me like he doesn’t have the words to describe how bad it’s gonna be.

  “Oh my God, am I still high?” As I slow down and pull to the side of the road, I try to look into the rearview mirror to check my eyes but they don’t look any different to me. “I can’t go to jail, I can’t go to jail, I can’t go to jail, I can’t—”

  The blue and red lights are hypnotic. Every time they flash, a different image of my parents appears in front of my eyes. What are they gonna say about their little boy ditching school and doing drugs and getting arrested for speeding? Maybe they’re the ones who actually kill me. Like in some sort of Twilight Zone episode. If I hadn’t gotten my letter, I wouldn’t have skipped school and they wouldn’t have taken turns strangling me. In another nightmare, my parents let my sisters eat my liver while riding their ponies. And in yet another vision, they simply leave me in jail where I’m shivved by a fat guy ironically named Tiny, for calling him a puto, which I only do because one of the other kids dares me two rolls of toilet paper to do it. TP is mad currency in the clink.

  By the time the cop gets to my open window, all those scenarios are swirling around in my head so fast that I just start to sob. Please don’t tell anyone.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be driving but I got this letter and it says I’m gonna die and I don’t wanna die and Shane said I should ditch school and I didn’t want to but I didn’t have a choice and then Ronnie came and we burned my books and I got really high and almost had sex with a fat chick named Hurricane because she blows hard and she does blow but not in the way I was hopin’ and then Shane let me drive ’cause Ronnie’s mad at me and he thought it would cheer me up and I don’t wanna go to jail.”

  The officer stands at the window, eyes like lasers, searing my skin off in tasty strips. Only I can’t see his eyes ’cause of his shiny silver sunglasses. And he might be laughing, I’m not sure. But I think he is. Which is kind of annoying. Jail is no laughing matter. Unless it’s a clown prison. No. Not even then.

  “Sir?” I say with a whimper.

  “Let me see your letter, son.” His voice is gravelly and I can’t help thinking about the cop from Terminator 2 who goes on a psychotic, yet surprisingly emotionless, rampage.

  I dig my letter out of my pocket as fast as I can, and hand it to him. He reads the letter over and looks at Shane. “Are you the Shane he babbled about?”

  Shane nods. He hasn’t said anything since I saw the cop and I’m afraid he’s maybe gone catatonic, only catatonic people don’t nod, so maybe he’s just gone mute.

  “Can I see both of your licenses?”

  Shane moves faster than I’ve ever seen. He’s got his license and insurance card out before I can even manage to mumble that I don’t have a license. The cop just nods and looks over Shane’s license.

  “And how old are you?” the cop asks me.

  “Fifteen,” I say. “But I’m almost sixteen. I have a learner’s permit but I don’t have it with me ’cause I didn’t think I’d be driving. I lose stuff sometimes so my mom keeps it in her purse. But I’ll be sixteen in a couple of weeks. I would’ve been sixteen in a couple of weeks, which is why Shane let me drive. Because I’ll never be sixteen.”

  The cop clucks his tongue sympathetically. “Sad,” he says. “But I can’t let you drive around without a license, letter or not. I’m sure you understand.” The cop cocks his head to the side. “How’d you get the black eye?”

  “There was this really hot mom,” I start, but Shane smacks me on the back of my head.

  “I did it,” says Shane. “Got mad at him for dying.”

  The cop nods like it’s perfectly normal for your best friend to sucker punch you on the day you find out you’re gonna croak. “Looks pretty bad.”

  “He punches like a girl.”

  “Well,” says the officer, “that may be, but you should probably let him drive anyway.” He opens the door for me to get out and flinches at the screeee!

  “I’m really sorry, Officer Todd,” says Shane. I didn’t even notice his name badge.

  “Just don’t let your friend drive anymore. Got it?”

  Shane crawls over the parking brake and into the driver’s seat. “Absolutely, sir. Ollie will never drive again. I swear. On my mom’s life. Promise.”

  “All right then,” says Officer Todd. “Good luck, kid,” he says directly to me, and heads back to his car.

  I just stand there on the side of the road in front of Miss Piggy, watching Officer Todd drive away with his words bouncing around in my head like a game of Pong.

  “Good luck?” I can’t breathe. “First Ronnie, now him. Why do people keep wishing me luck? Is there something I don’t know?” I feel like I’m gasping. I don’t know if I am but it feels like it. It feels like every time I take a breath, someone’s sucking the air right back out of me.

  “It’s just something people say.” Shane’s far away. He’s on the other side of the planet. But his hand’s on my back. “Are you okay?”

  I try to suck in a great big breath but all I get is a snatch of one. “No! I’m not fucking okay! I’m dying. I’m dead. My best friend is keeping secrets from me and the girl I love hates my guts.” BREATHE! I put my head between my knees and try to slow down, but my blood’s racing like the Indy 500, and there ain’t a yellow flag in the world that can slow it.

  Shane’s voice is nothing but bees. Bees underwater. Except that bees would drown underwater. Whatever. It’s all just buzzing.

  Shane dives in and pulls me to the surface.

  “Maybe we should just go home.”

  I shake my head.

  “Then what?”

  “I gotta fix things with Ronnie.
”

  “Ollie—”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t try to talk me out of it. Help me for once.”

  Shane folds his arms over his chest and I think for a second that I’ve lost him, that I’ve pissed him off for the final time. But he surprises me. It does happen sometimes.

  “You have to show her that sex isn’t the only thing you think about. You have to show her that you care about her. That you listen to her.”

  And then it hits me. I catch my breath. I feel the sun. I’m standing in a halo of light and that light is the most brilliant idea ever conceived. I know how to win Ronnie back.

  “Let’s go,” I tell Shane. “I know what I have to do.”

  12:26

  This is an awesome plan.”

  “This is a terrible plan. Worse than the time you filled your mom’s hot tub with blue food coloring.”

  “She got over that. Anyway, this is different. This plan is guaranteed to work.”

  Shane looks in the backseat and says, “Any plan that involves a car full of pudding cups is a bad plan.”

  It took a huge chunk of the money Dad gave me, but I bought every pudding cup in three grocery stores. They’re in the backseat and the trunk and every little space they can fit. On the way here I almost crashed because one got wedged under the brake.

  On the upside, I didn’t stall once. Awesome, right?

  “Just help me unload these, Shane.” I get out in front of Ronnie’s house and try to keep the door from screeeeing, which is a big fail.

  Ronnie’s house is a skinny, cookie-cutter mini-McMansion in one of those neighborhoods where the Home Owners Association dictates the colors of the houses and how high your hedges can be. You know the kind. They’re like tiny pockets of fascism.

  I don’t know if she’s actually home or not. I didn’t call first because I didn’t want to tip her off that something might or might not be going on. Her dad’s not home, that much I know by the lack of his car in the driveway.

  Shane gets out of Miss Piggy and faces me with a cup of pudding in each hand. “Ollie. This plan is ridiculous.”

  “For the last time, no it’s not. It shows Ronnie that I pay attention to her. That I’m about more than just sex. That I’m sorry.”

  “Uh, no. This plan doesn’t say that you’re sorry you tried to hook up with another girl while Ronnie was in the next room crying her eyes out over you and your fast-approaching demise. All it says is that you’re trying to overcompensate for something you did eight years ago that you don’t even freaking remember.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, dude. You’ve never had a girlfriend.” I reach into the back and grab more pudding. “Now help me or shut up.”

  It’s broiling outside as Shane and I get the pudding cups from the backseat and trunk, and pile them on Ronnie’s front lawn. I wonder how long the pudding can survive in the heat? I mean, they’re in their little individually sealed containers and everything, so they should probably be okay. Anyway, it’s not like I’m expecting Ronnie to eat all this pudding. I mean, she could. But I don’t think she will.

  And Shane’s wrong. This has to work. I haven’t got another plan. It seemed so clear when I was standing on the side of the road with my head between my knees trying to keep from hyperventilating, but Shane’s words are like tiny brain-eating worms in my ears. What if he’s right? What if Ronnie doesn’t get that I’m just trying to prove something to her. I’m not sure what I’m proving but I know that this, what I’m doing, proves something.

  “That’s a lot of pudding,” I say at the pile. Shane just grunts. The kid’s got sweat bleeding out of his pores, soaking into his stolen shirt.

  I’m trying to think about what I’m gonna do once we get all the pudding unloaded. Maybe I’ll write an apology on her front lawn. In pudding. You know, something like: Ronnie, I’m really sorry about the pudding. Mostly for not remembering about the pudding incident until today when you told me about it in the lighthouse, which was a lot of fun. Not hearing about the pudding. That was actually kind of embarrassing. The lighthouse was fun. You know what I mean. Or something else. I can’t make up mind. I know I’ll come up with something. My finger is actually in an open pudding cup when I hear a door slam followed by, “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  “Oh shit,” whispers Shane, and he backs away from me. “I was just a silent partner in this fiasco,” he calls out to Ronnie.

  “Thanks a lot,” I toss back in his direction.

  “Oliver Aaron Travers. What? Why? How?”

  “Maybe I should start?” Ronnie gives me a steely death glare, so I continue posthaste. “I’m not sorry I almost crossed thirteen—”

  “And fourteen,” calls Shane.

  I nod. “And fourteen off my list. I am sorry you had to see it, though.”

  “So basically what you’re telling me is that you’re sorry you got caught?”

  Now I’m sweating. I honestly believed that Ronnie would see the pudding cups and run out of her house happy to see me, happy to know that I’d remembered, and we could get back to having last day fun. Things are not going at all like I planned.

  “When you say it like that, it sounds so douchey.”

  “That’s because it is, you idiot! You tried to hook up with another girl.”

  “We’re not a couple, Ronnie. You made that abundantly clear. This is my day. My. Last. Day. Is this how you want it to end?”

  Ronnie’s red. She’s magma. She’s a shaken, stoppered bottle of champagne. And I think I just popped her.

  “Is this how I want it to end? Are you kidding me? I don’t want it to end at all. When I thought about you and I and the future, I never once imagined it ending on my front lawn surrounded by pudding cups.” She pauses. “I should have never come along today.”

  I reach out to take Ronnie’s hand but she pulls away like I’m poison. “Then why did you?” I ask.

  “Because you’re my best friend, you moron.”

  I sit on Miss Piggy’s hood and fold my arms over my chest. “Then I don’t get it. You should be happy I almost got to do . . .

  Hurricane . . . before I died. Look at Shane. He’s not mad. He even taught me how to drive stick.”

  Shane chokes in the background but I’m currently in full-on Ronnie mode.

  “That’d be fine, Ollie, if I were just your friend. But there’s more than that here.”

  “I’m lost.”

  “Duh.” Ronnie sits beside me on the hood. Close enough that I think maybe she’s going to forgive me, which means Plan Pudding is a success! “I came along today because I knew I’d regret not coming. But you’re still the same boy I broke up with. Except you’re not. I know that doesn’t make sense, but there were so many little moments today. On the bridge, in the lighthouse, around the fire, where I thought maybe, finally, you’d gotten it. You’d grown up. Then I had to catch you on top of the first girl who looked at you sideways.”

  “To be fair,” I say, “she was on top of me.”

  Shane groans.

  “You validated my biggest fear, Ollie.”

  “What? That I like girls?”

  “No. That if I didn’t give it up, you’d hop on the first girl who would.”

  “I mean, I guess you’re kinda right.”

  Ronnie gets up. She’s on the defensive again. I know what I meant to say and the words I said were sort of right, but they didn’t have the desired effect.

  “No, Ronnie, listen to me.” I stand up so that I can look into Ronnie’s eyes. “Just ’cause I was trying to cross shit off my list with Hurricane doesn’t mean I didn’t want to cross it off with you.”

  That, apparently, is an even worse thing to say.

  “I knew it,” she says, and stares off over my shoulder like she’s going over our whole week-long relationship and validating every bad thing she ever thought about me.

  “Stop acting like sex is all I’m about.”

  Ronnie looks me in the eye
s. “But it is, isn’t it? Even this lame pudding plan is nothing more than an attempt to get my forgiveness so you can finish what you and Hurricane started.”

  “I thought it would be romantic.”

  “It’s not romantic, Ollie, it’s pathetic.”

  Like all food eventually does, Plan Pudding has turned to crap. I don’t get it.

  “Why are you being such a bitch?” I ask. I can practically hear Shane’s jaw hit the ground, and Ronnie’s ain’t far behind. “Yeah, I wanna have sex before I die. I wanted to have it with you, but I knew you wouldn’t give it up so I took the one opportunity I had. Because I’m dying. That’s the only reason any of this happened today. Jesus, I don’t get you. You won’t sleep with me, but you don’t want anyone else to either. So, even though I shouldn’t feel bad for almost getting with another girl since, oh I don’t know, we’re not dating, I brought you all this pudding to show you that I listen to you and that I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t even like pudding,” says Ronnie, almost snarling.

  “What do you want from me?” I yell. “Why are you so mad?”

  Ronnie looks like she’s gonna cry and I feel like a douche because I’m the one who’s making her look that way. “If you don’t know, Oliver, then I’m not going to tell you.”

  By the way, usually when a girl uses that pearl of freaking logic, it usually means she’s the one who doesn’t know.

  “That’s bull.”

  “I really do wish I’d never come along today,” says Ronnie. “Then you could have died without me finding out what a jerk you really are. At least I could have had my memories.”

  “Ronnie?”

  The tears are really going now, and Ronnie turns away from me. I reach out to grab her hand but she tears it away. “I’m calling the cops. Get this pudding off my lawn and get the hell out of here.”

  I can feel the tears building in my own eyes. Everything’s falling apart. “If I leave,” I say softly, “you’ll never see me again.” It’s not a threat. Just a sad fact.