Before We Go Extinct Read Free

time.
    I wonder when The King stopped breathing.
    If he thought, What happened?
    When he fell, there was a whoomp as the wind filled his white school shirt. It billowed so big, a cleanly laundered sheet against the clouds, like a parachute in cartoons. For a split second, I thought he might be lifted back up into the sky.
    For a split second, he looked beautiful.
    But that thin white shirt didn’t even slow him down. He was gone so fast, he couldn’t have really thought anything. He probably didn’t even hear me screaming. He probably couldn’t even see me standing there, helpless, doing nothing.
    He didn’t know there wasn’t anything I could do to save him.

 
    3
    The phone in my hand vibrates.
    Daff: R U there?
    I squeeze my eyes shut like you do when you’re a kid and you don’t want anyone to see you. I half wish I had a blanket fort to crawl into, to hide away in for good. Maybe with a glass of milk and some cookies and some Lego guys and a video game and a life that is not this life.
    Not my life.
    Non , I type. Je ne suis pas ici maintenant.
    French seems to be the only way I can type back to her without saying anything, the only way I can answer without being myself.
    I put the phone in the sink and turn on the tap, hard, water splashing off it and onto the mirror, onto me. But it’s one of those phones that are waterproof, which, as it happens, The King gave me for my birthday. He said my old flip phone was embarrassing to everyone. “Seriously,” he said. “No one needs to see that.” Like my flip phone was actually insulting people’s eyes. I’d taken it, but the gift stung. Did my phone matter? What else mattered? That I didn’t have anything and that he was as rich as Trump? How soon was it going to be that money mattered more than all the other stuff we had, all the other stuff we did? Our dusty footprints that were twin shadows up on the brick walls, the jokes that no one else got, the way we moved through the school like it was ours, and so, we owned it. We got each other. That was a pretty big thing. Not everyone gets you in life. Not everyone understands. But we were tight and we were untouchable: me, Daff, and The King. Undisputed royalty of the School of the Sons and Daughters of Rich Pricks (and me).
    I wonder who is going to pay the monthly phone bill now that he’s gone, how long it will take his dad’s accountant to realize that The King couldn’t possibly be using it anymore. The water sluices off the screen, leaving the greasy path of my fingerprints behind.
    The gulls on the Steins’ roof laugh cruelly. Someone on the street yells in hard-edged language and there’s the sound of something heavy and metallic falling, a silence, then a barking laugh. Then a honk and a squeal of tires. The roar of a bus going by. More laughter. (How dare you laugh , I think. How dare you. The King is dead. Are you stupid? Don’t you know ?) That’s how I feel about all of it, like the whole world should stop laughing, even the seagulls. Don’t they get it? We are all on our way out.
    Music with too much bass reverberates from the window across the gap. I read once somewhere that so much bass eventually does something to the muscles in your colon and people who listen that way will end up in adult diapers sooner or later. I make a mental note to stick some coupons for Depends on the guy’s front door. Jerk. He deserves it.
    I turn the water off and pick up my phone and wipe it on my pant leg. I like the heft of it in my hand. That stupid phone makes me feel connected to everything and everyone, even to the people it can’t connect me to anymore.
    It makes me feel safe.
    There are footsteps in the hall, then Mom knocks. I shove the phone into my pocket, quick, like she can see through walls and doors, like she knows I’m texting a dead guy like someone who is too stupid to understand that dead is dead is a