If I Die

remember a fading dream. “Speaking of which, did you just do what I think you just did? Back there?” She nodded toward the building, and Beck’s classroom.

“If you think I implied that you and I would have a three-way with our evil math teacher…then yeah. That’s what I did.”

“Imply, nothin’!” She dug her keys from her purse with one hand. “You practically promised! Damn, Kaylee, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Things have changed.” I started walking again, and she jogged to catch up with me.

“What things?”

“Nothing…” I pulled my own keys from my pocket as we neared our cars, at the back of the lot.

“Nuh-uh. Don’t even try that.” She clicked the bauble on her key chain to unlock her doors, then pointed at the passenger seat. “Get in. You can tell me all about these changes on the way to the theater. I’ll bring you back for your car after work.” Emma tossed her backpack and purse into the backseat, then stood watching me, waiting.

“I’m not going to work, Em.”

“Okay, that’s it.” Emma slammed her door and folded her arms over the roof of the car. “What’s going on with you? Multiple detentions, no homework, blowing off work, freaking out at lunch, propositioning a teacher on behalf of both of us… I know he’s an evil teacher, but that’s just not your style. You’re acting like…Sabine.”

“That’s not funny.”

“That’s my point. What going on, Kaylee?”

I took a long, deep breath, then met her gaze over the car. “If you want the detailed version, you’re gonna be late for work.”

Emma shrugged. “If you’re not going, I’m not going.”

I started to argue, then changed my mind. Who was I to lecture her about responsibility? So I opened her passenger door and sat down, wedging my backpack between my feet on the floorboard.

“Nash and I just broke up,” I said, as she slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door.

“Again? Why?” Em looked surprised, but not as surprised as I’d expected her to be. But then, she didn’t know everything yet.

“I kind of…kissed Tod.”

“You kind of kissed Tod?!”

Aaaand…there’s the surprise.

“Okay, I really kissed him. Then he kissed me back, and Nash and Sabine saw it. As did most of the Mathletes, several softball players and anyone else who happened to be in the hall. It was kind of a public spectacle. And now I don’t know where I stand with Tod, but I’m sure Nash hates us both, and Sabine’s probably doing mental cartwheels to celebrate. And that’s not even the worst part.”

“It gets worse?”

“Yeah.” I took another deep breath. “I’m gonna die, Emma.”

“You mean eventually, right?” She blinked, and I could tell it hadn’t sunk in. “Please tell me you’re making some kind of big-picture philosophical statement about the inevitability of death and the transient nature of human existence.”

“Not eventually, Em. Sometime on Thursday. I don’t know exactly when, and I don’t know how, and I don’t know where. I don’t even know who’s coming to reap my soul, because Tod just took the reaper who had that job and fed him to Avari. All I know is that it’s hard to motivate myself to go work for a paycheck I’m never gonna cash or do homework that’s never gonna get graded. But I am hell-bent on taking Mr. Beck down before I die.”

Emma leaned back in the driver’s seat, hands limp in her lap, keys dangling from one bent finger. “Okay, I’m going to need a minute. That’s a lot to process.”

“I know.”

She took a couple of deep breaths, then rolled her head on the headrest to face me. “I was only in Beck’s classroom for, like, an hour, right?” she asked, and I nodded, though it had felt like much less to me, in the Netherworld. “And in that time, you dumped your boyfriend, kissed his dead brother and found out you’re going to die?”

I stared at my hands, nervously fiddling with my keys in my lap. “Actually, I already knew that last part.”

“You already knew?” Em’s voice sounded strained, like when her feelings were hurt and she didn’t want me to know. I looked up to find her frowning at me. “How long?”

“Since Friday night,” I admitted, a thick undercurrent of guilt flowing in to supplant my good intentions in not telling her earlier.

“Five days? You knew five days ago, and you didn’t tell me?”

“I’m sorry, Emma. I didn’t want you to have to dwell on it, like I have.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I might want to dwell on it? Or at least know that it was coming?” Her eyes filled with tears, and her lower lip began to quiver. “How serious is this, Kay?” She blinked and wiped tears from her face with one hand, making an obvious effort to compose herself and her thoughts. “I mean, I know it’s death, but you’ve already died once, and I’ve died, and, hell, even Sophie’s died, so that’s less of a permanent state than I used to think it was.”

“This time it’s permanent.” And just saying the words triggered a new wave of fear inside me, beating at my spirit like waves against the cliffs, constantly eroding until there would soon be nothing left of me.

Emma shook her head, denying the inevitable. “But Tod? He can use his reaper connections to get you another extension—or whatever. Right?”

“No, Em.” I gripped the door handle so hard my fingers ached. “He can’t get me another exchange. No one gets more than one exchange. No exceptions.” And even if there were exceptions, Tod wasn’t in any position to secure one. He was still a rookie reaper, only two years dead, and still on the bottom rung of his afterlife.

“Wait, Tod can’t fix this?” Her bottom lip shook, and I knew that the reality was starting to sink in. “You’re seriously telling me you’re going to die in two days? For real? Like, gone forever?”

It wasn’t any easier to hear coming from her mouth, but I nodded, fighting to keep the facts closed off in some dark corner of my head with the other mental cobwebs I didn’t want to deal with. And suddenly I realized that my mind was becoming a very messy place.

“Does everyone else know? Nash and Tod?” she asked, and I nodded miserably. “Sabine?” Em demanded, and when I nodded again, a new layer of hurt swept over her features, like the curtain on a stage.

“I had to tell her to get her to help me with Mr. Beck,” I tried to explain, but I knew nothing I could say would help.

“So, I’m the only one you left out?”

“I wasn’t leaving you out. I was trying to spare you from anticipating it. And I didn’t tell Nash—my dad did. And Tod’s the one who told him. So, really, the only person I’ve told is Sabine.”

“What part of that is supposed to make me feel better?”

“None of it. None of it can make either of us feel better, which is why I didn’t want you to know. Hell, I wish I didn’t know. Em, I’m getting scared.” And suddenly there were tears. From nowhere. I’d known Emma longer than anyone else in my life, other than my uncle. I’d known her longer than I’d known my own father, and somewhere in the process of telling my best and oldest friend that I was going to die, I came to understand the truth of it for myself.

“Oh, Kaylee…” She dropped her keys in the center console and pulled me into a hug that shoved her water bottle into my ribs and my knee into the gear shift, but I wouldn’t have let go for anything in the world.

“I’ve been trying not to think about it, and that’s mostly been working, because nothing ever seems normal around here anymore,” I sobbed, half-choking on my words as they ran together and my tears soaked into the shoulder of her shirt. “But every time I close my eyes, or take a deep breath—every time things get quiet for just a second—there it is again. Waiting for me. It’s like my heart is a watch, and I know it’s going to stop ticking on Thursday, and every single beat shoves me a second closer to death, and I try to dig in, or grab on to something,