Page 65 of Death
I look away, my eyes brimming.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way because I...” His fingers twitch around mine. “Well, if you can’t tell how I feel about you by now, then you never will.”
I close my eyes, swallowing hard.
“I’ll return tonight for your answer.”
Ari lets go of my hand. My gut lurches as if I suddenly found myself in a moving elevator shaft but it ends as quickly as it began.
When I open my eyes again, Ari is gone. I’m back on my front porch, standing exactly where we started. A dizzy spell washes over me. I place a hand on the porch railing to keep myself upright and turn my head down to block the bright sun from my burning eyes.
Dammit. How have I been so naïve?
The front door opens behind me. “Tannis?”
I discreetly wipe my eyes. “Yeah, Mom?”
“Are you okay?” she asks, glancing around. “Where’s Ari?”
“Uh, he...” I clear my throat. “He left.”
She furrows her brow. “After two minutes?”
Two minutes? But we were gone much longer than—
You know what? Nevermind.
It’s not important.
I’m going to die today.
“Yeah,” is all I can say.
“Well, come back inside. It’s getting chilly...”
I don’t move. I’m not sure I can even go back inside. How can I sit down at the breakfast table with my parents and pretend like it’s not the last time I ever will?
I take a step down off the porch. “I’m going to take a walk, actually,” I say, avoiding my mother’s eyes.
“... All right.” I hear the concern in her tone. “We’ll be here.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I walk off down the street, not really watching or caring where I’m going. My thoughts bounce around my head, each one as cold and bleak as the autumn chill around me.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to leave this world. I want to travel and go to school. Take vacations. Have children, maybe. Honestly never gave it much thought but I always figured that someday I would have the choice. Now, that choice, and every other one, has already been made... except this one.
A survival instinct clenches my gut, churned by fear. I want to live. Every breath I take sudden seems so sacred.
I have to live.
I turn my head up and realize I’ve wandered nearly five blocks into town. People pass around me. Cars drive down the street. Strangers walk in and out of coffee shops and beauty parlors and grocery stores. I don’t know them. I don’t know their names. I know nothing about them.
I could choose one to take my place. Just point at one of them and go home.
A man steps down from a pick-up truck across the street. He looks old, fragile. Probably doesn’t have much time left anyway...