You stare at the words written on the small slip of paper the oracle gave you. Is she a quack? No- she predicted a whole lot of other things right, things you’ve never told anyone, like the name of the girl you’re in love with and the fact that you know you’re adopted but your parents never officially told you. She’s real. It’s all legit.
So you’re going to die on June 11, in less than six months, at 3:33 pm.
You spend a few days in a state of panic. There’s so much you haven’t done yet, you’re only twenty-three, you’ve just barely graduated college and you still have tons of things you want to do with your life.
And yet you’re sitting on the floor of your small apartment, eating piping hot ramen noodles out of a red plastic cup.
That’s when it hits you- that you can’t sit around moping and dreading June 11th until it comes.
If you’re going to go out, you go out in style.
It’s March 13, 2018 and you make a list. There are 89 days until you die, if you don’t count today or June 11th; there are 50 things on your bucket list. With plenty of time and all the money in your savings account at the ready, you throw your blanket off and stand up, hands on your hips.
Watch out, world, here I come.
The next day you start the search for your adoptive parents, #1 on the list. This one will take the longest so it’s best to start out with it. After sending off a few emails, you look to #2- ask Her out. The two of you met in college. She’s single, and you know this because you totally don’t check Her Facebook page every few days to see Her relationship status. This time, when you log onto Facebook, you do something more. You message Her.
She responds back a few minutes later.
Yeah! Of course. We had so much fun in psych. What’s up? :)
A smiley face, that’s a good sign. You take a deep breath and tap out the letters on your phone keyboard.
I was wondering if you’d like to go out on a date sometime. To get coffee or see a movie or something.
Your finger hesitates over the send button, but then a little voice in the back of your head shouts out at you:
What are you waiting for? You’re dying in less than a hundred days! It’s now or never!
She texts back almost immediately.
Sounds good to me! ;) Would next Wednesday work for you?
Any day works for you, at least until June 11th, but She doesn’t know that.
You have your first date next Wednesday, at a local coffee shop. Mostly you catch up, since it’s been almost a year since you’ve last seen each other (at graduation). You walk Her back to Her apartment a few blocks away, the two of you stopping quickly at a cute cupcake store to get a little something sweet. She gets frosting on Her nose, and when you try to point it out, She just laughs and puts a matching dab on your nose. It’s little things like this you always liked about Her in college- this girl could make anything (like Professor Livingston’s boring psych lectures) fun.
She kisses you on the cheek outside the door to Her apartment building, too. You’re pretty sure She got some frosting on your cheek, and you have just over eighty days left to live, so you don’t care.
Over the next month, you cross off twenty things from your list, including 6. Eat at a five-star restaurant and 10. See a show on Broadway. And as for Her, there She is. She stands by your side, making you laugh. You kiss Her for the first time on March 29, 2018- 3. Kiss Her. The next day you get an email back from the adoption agency with the name and phone number of your birth mother. They don’t know who your birth father is. You call the number.
Your birth mother picks up. “Hello?”
Whittaker. Your birth surname is Whittaker. You take a deep breath. “Is this Jeanne Whittaker?”
There’s a pause. “Yes, this is she. May I ask who this is?”
You’re not quite sure how to say it but it comes out anyway. “I- I’m. I’m your first child.”
When you say your name, Jeanne Whittaker starts to cry.
You meet her three days later in the same coffee shop in which you had your first date with Her. You have her hair and nose, but your eyes are lighter. She doesn’t know who your father is either, but that’s okay. One parent is enough. Your adoptive parents are thrilled, and they and Jeanne get along quite well when you introduce them the next week. They will have each other to lean on, when you are gone.
As June 11 approaches, you become obsessed with the idea of doing more, of being more. You take a day trip- 24 hours, nothing more, you don’t have that kind of time- to the Bahamas; you’ve always wanted to travel out of the USA (#11). You take fencing lessons every Thursday night from 5:30 to 7 (#46). You take part in a competitive eating contest on May 3rd (#34) and you get second-to-last place, but hey, it was fun. Your parents are slightly confused but they let you have your fun, especially when you promise them you’ll stop being so weird in a month or two. (You’ll be dead by then. They don’t need to know that.) And your girlfriend- She too is concerned. “Who takes a day trip to the Bahamas?” She asks one day, when you’re settling down on Her couch to watch all eight Harry Potter movies in a row (#27, luckily something She has always wanted to do as well). “And the eating contest? And the sudden drive to be able to do a backflip?” (That’s #38 and you’re so close to being able to do it.) “It’s like you’re trying to cross off everything on your bucket list in a month.”
“Three months, actually,” you correct Her, pulling the bowl of buttery popcorn towards you.
You shrug, not willing to tell her the truth. “I guess Professor Harding’s philosophy classes just got to me- about two months ago, I started thinking about how mortal everyone is, and it just hit me that I wanted to do everything I want to do as soon as I can, in case something happens.”
Her head has been resting on your shoulder but now She sits up straight. “You asked me out two months ago.”
You shrug. “I did. I’d wanted to for a while, but I guess I was too scared.”
She giggles and nuzzles Her head back into your shoulder. “I’m glad you did. I guess I have Professor Harding to thank for this, then!”
You feel a pang of guilt shoot through your chest, as if you just took a shot of really strong alcohol. She doesn’t deserve this. It’s not Her fault. The two of you are falling in love if you’re not in love already, and in one month and one day you’ll be gone and She will have to live with this.
It’s not Her fault that She isn’t the one who’s secretly dying.
The month is a blur. You cross off everything on your list except for two things by June 10th. You try a cigarette (#18)- you’re asthmatic, but now that you know it can’t kill you after all, you’re willing to try. Suffice to say you can still be hurt, and you spend a solid two hours coughing before vowing to never smoke again. You quit your job with two weeks left to live (#9), and the sense of satisfaction you feel when you tell your overly annoying boss exactly what you think of him in the rudest language you can possibly think of is almost the best thing you’ve ever felt, rivaled only by the way your insides twisted and fireworks went off inside your brain the first time you kissed Her. Finally, all you have to do by June 10 is 49. Go skydiving and 50. Die.
You want to spend as much time with Her as you can (you’ve already said goodbye to your parents, as much as you could without actually saying goodbye at least, you did that yesterday) before your eventual death, so you invite Her to go skydiving with you. She’s terrified of heights but you are in possession of an excellent silver tongue, and before you know it the two of you are in a plane that is far too high for Her liking, each strapped to a skydiving specialist.
She grabs your arm, fear filling up Her eyes. You know She won’t back out unless you do as well, but you won’t back out. “Please,” She says loudly over the roar of the airplane engines. “You don’t have to do everything on your bucket list. You’ve done so much, sweetie. It’s okay, we can still say no.”
You shake your head. “I want to do this.”
Her mouth turns into a thin line. “You and your damn bucket list. I’ll be so glad when this is over.”
It’s time for Her to jump. She and Her specialist ready themselves at the lip of the plane.
You call out to Her, “You’re going to do great. I love you.” And you do.
She rolls her eyes, but a faint smile appears on her red lips. “I love you too.”
Then they jump, hurtling out of the plane at top speed.
You follow their lead a few minutes later. It’s exhilarating. You breathe in a little bit of cloud and you cough, but you’re hardly worried about your lungs as you hurtle through the blue sky with the lush green fields opening up far below you.
It’s exhilarating until your parachute is open, and you look over to your left to see that Her parachute hasn’t.
The next day you stand on the roof of your apartment building, looking down at the busy street below.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
She was the one who was supposed to comfort your grieving parents, all three of them. It wasn’t supposed to be you giving Her sobbing father a hug this morning, letting him cry into your shirt.
She was going to be the one to remember you. Not the other way around.
In a way you’re kind of relieved; She won’t ever fall in love again and therefore forget all about you. But you loved Her, you loved Her more than anything, and you’d have rathered She survived and loved again than died.
You walked up way too many flights of stairs to get to where you are right now.
Someone notices you, way down below. A shout goes up. There are ants pointing, and those ants are people. You hope that they’ll move out of the way, because you’re not going to be saved by any fire department or sweet-talker. Your time was set three months ago, and your time is in two minutes.
As you take a deep breath, you hear Her last words echo in your brain. I love you too.
“Watch out, world,” you whisper to no one but yourself, your watch ticking to 3:32. “Here I go.”
She died falling, and so will you.
By the time you hit the ground, it is 3:33 on June 11, 2018.
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