They Know The End

Matt

8:52 pm

After reaching its destination, we had to get off the bus. We went inside the mall and called my parents to come pick us up.

"So. . .what now?" Russell, my boyfriend, asked me. Can't you believe that? I couldn't believe it either.

"I'm going to take you to my parents," I announced confidently. "After that, I don't know."

"You literally just told them right now to pick you up," he said. "Couldn't you have just. . .told them while we were in the bus?"

"We were having a cool conversation!" I protested. "I didn't want to interrupt that with some lame call to my dad."

He raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, I give up. But. . ." He looked around. "now we just have some time to kill."

"We can still do the stuff we haven't done," I replied, with a mischievous glint in my eye.

I took his hand. "Come on."

-

We walked hastily, as if we were going somewhere, but we stopped at the bookstore.

"Have you ever been to one before?" I asked him as we entered the store.

He shook his head. Typical.

Ahead of the entrance, we were greeted by a table of bestselling books. A copy of each book was made to stand upright to showcase the covers.

One of them piqued my interest so I walked closer and grabbed the book to read the title.

"The Book of Life: An Anthology by Deidre Clayton. . ." I muttered. On the cover there were badges of honor: reviews from popular critics and authors, a Pulitzer prize badge, and the usual New York Times #1 Bestseller.

I turned to the back and skimmed through the blurb. Thank God for a blurb on the back; if it were only reviews, he would've put it down without hesitation.

"Can I see?" Russell asked timidly.

"Yeah, sure," I replied, giving him the copy.

I wandered around the bookstore while he slowly read the cover of the book. My eyes darted past colorful covers and. . .their interesting artistic choices. (I'm looking at you, weird romance books with abs on the cover, I thought.)

Russell caught up to me minutes later, with a now-opened Book of Life.

"You're not supposed to rip off the plastic cover!" I hissed, making some people perusing the textbooks aisle look at us.

"Really?" he asked quizzically. He lifted the book. "It has a good first story."

"What's it about?" I asked, genuinely interested this time. I wanted to know, but I wasn't going to open the book.

"It's a different version of Death-Cast called Life-Cast, which tells you who the person dying is going to be reincarnated into."

"That's. . .nice to hear."

"Do you believe in an afterlife now?"

I paused. "I believe in Life-Cast. I believe in reincarnation. Because I want to meet you, over and over and over and over again."

-

9:19 pm

We were holding hands as we rode the escalator up to the highest floor of the mall. On my free hand was the copy of The Book of Life.