Denton Little's Deathdate (5 page)

Of course he's not; he's just reminding me about the huge bucket of candy we set up for the end of my eulogy, to either add to the joyous celebration or save it in case I totally bombed. (“Those things always end on such a sad note, dude. Why does it have to be that way?” “I know!”) I
grab the huge yellow plastic bucket from behind the wooden party divider thing and start lobbing handfuls out into the crowd. They're loving this. I am some sort of demented sugar god, raining gifts upon my disciples. The power goes to my head a bit. I spot Phil, looking like a sullen little boy, and I am inspired. I try to whip a peanut butter cup at him really hard, but my aim is off, and it nails Taryn in the face.

I'm glad the dance party portion of my Final Celebration is limited to two hours, because if it were up to me, we'd bypass it altogether. It's an old-fashioned tradition that was way more popular in the decade or so after deathdates first became mandatory, and my stepmom seems to think that if we don't do it, she'd be depriving me of the full death experience. “I'm telling you,” she's often said, “Sheila Hammer's Final Celebration party—my sophomore year of college—was one of the best nights of my life.” Gonna go out on a limb here and assume Sheila might have had a slightly different take on it.

To add insult to injury, the DJ my stepmom hired is pretty lame. I'm like a pioneer person headed west, except instead of being weighed down with ropes and supplies and rations, I'm buried in plastic novelty crap. And instead of heading west, I'm doing the Cha-Cha Slide. (Hop two times!) I'm wearing a glittery green top hat, extra-large
sunglasses, and—around my neck—two glow-stick necklaces, one disco ball, one neon blue whistle, and one faux-blingy dollar sign. I like to think I'm being hilarious and wearing all of it ironically, but I guess from an outsider's perspective, it's impossible to tell; probably everyone thinks they're wearing this stuff ironically. Whoa, that feels like a profound realization about humanity.

I'm still juiced from my self-eulogy but trying not to think too hard about it. “That was amazing! You said the word
penis
in your eulogy,” Paolo said, standing amongst a sea of people, moments after I left the microphone. “And then you ended it with ‘Denton Little OUT!' So incredible, I might have to steal that next month for mine.”

“I said that?” I asked. “It's kind of a blur.”

“You definitely did, dude, and it was amazing.”

Now Paolo is dancing right next to me, working his classic moves, which have always seemed like a strange but charming parody of how an old, slightly sleazy man might dance. At this moment, they seem to be effective; Lucinda Delgado and Danica Riegel are cracking up at everything he's doing.

Paolo leans over to me. “Are you seeing this?”

I high-five him. “They both seem really into you. You still crushing on Danica?”

“Yeah, I think so. Her breath smells like walnuts!”

“Is that…a good thing or a bad thing?”

“She must have eaten walnuts before your funeral! Maybe during!”

Paolo and I have at least one sort-of miscommunication like this a day, and it is a huge part of why I love him.

“All right, evvvverybody,” the DJ says into his microphone, sweating profusely under the terrible fluorescent
lights, which have remained on the whole time. “We're gonna slow things down a bit now. Dexter and his girlfriend are gonna head to the center of the dance floor, and then I wanna see all you other couples come on out and join them.”

“DEN-ton,” my stepmom shouts. “Not Dexter, DENTON.”

As a poorly written pop ballad starts to play and I wonder why this DJ didn't think to get my opinion on what I'd want to hear for my Last Slow Dance Ever, I look around for Taryn, who told me she was going to the bathroom at least ten minutes ago.

“Come on up here, Dexton, and start us off.”

“Uh…hold on a sec,” I say to SweatyMan as I weave a path toward the ladies' room. There's a line of seven or eight girls and women, but Taryn isn't one of them. Maybe she's inside?

“Hey, guys,” I say as I politely skip to the head of the line. “I mean, ladies.”

“Hi, Denton,” some of them say, in identically sunny, sympathetic voices.

“You can go ahead of me if you really have to go,” says Millie Pfefferkorn, the one closest to the bathroom door. She's wearing a bright yellow headband and a patchwork Raggedy Ann dress. Her parents are both lawyers who make a lot of money, but you'd never know it from her clothes.

“Oh. Thanks, Millie, I don't. Have to go.”

“I thought maybe you'd want the women's room experience before you died.”

“Hmm. Okay. I'm looking for Taryn. Is she in there?”

“Taryn who?” Millie asks, not fully making eye contact. I can't tell if she's joking. I turn to the other females in line, like,
Are you hearing this?
They give me compassionate looks, which probably have more to do with my deathdate than my current interaction with Millie.

“Taryn my girlfriend.”

“Oh, Taryn Mygirlfriend. I've never met her. I thought you meant Taryn Brandt, that girl you've been going out with.” Millie grins in the subtlest way possible, more in the eyes than the mouth.

Millie and I were pretty close friends up until sixth grade, when we drifted apart due to natural causes, so I'm familiar with her strange brand of humor. She means well, but she has a poor handle on what jokes are appropriate for which occasions. Which may have contributed to our drift.

“Yes, all right, but is she—”

“Did you like my eulogy?”

The underwhelming pop song has hit its bridge, and I've pretty much given up hope that Taryn and I will make it in time. I'm in a mild panic.

“I did, I did.” I stare at the bathroom door, willing it to open and reveal Taryn. “But—”

“Did you like the part about the summer of Fog? You remember that?”

I did like that part, and I do remember that. There was one summer, either before or after first grade, when Millie and I used to play outside with the other kids on our block. One afternoon, Ryan, our four-year-old neighbor, found this frog hopping around near the gutter in the cul-de-sac. “Fog!” he called to all of us. “There's a fog over here!” Our gang was instantly charmed by the tiny
amphibian, and the magical part was, Fog kept showing up all summer, as if he genuinely enjoyed our company, too. This magic came to a grinding halt—as most magic does—on a humid, yellow day in August, when Ryan's despicable older sister Marita deliberately ran over Fog with her bike. “Look, now the street's all Foggy!” she said as she rode away. We were devastated, and in a moment of courage and inspiration, I said we needed to have a postmortem funeral for Fog. I led the ceremony and delivered a truly heartfelt eulogy, which remains, to this day, one of the proudest moments of my life. Come to think of it, my eulogy for Fog was probably better than the eulogy I gave for myself. That's sad.

“I really should find Taryn, Millie, and if she's not in the bathroom, then—”

The bathroom door opens, and I am standing face to face with Veronica.

“Taryn's not in there,” Millie says.

Veronica and I stare at each other with the electrifying intensity that comes from sharing an awesome, terrible secret. Her dark hair is in a ponytail, and her waitress getup somehow makes her curvy body look better than ever, in a way that a skinny girl would never be able to pull off. Her brown eyes burn into mine. Something important is happening.

“Nice accessories,” she says as she takes one large step to the side and walks away.

Right. I have completely forgotten that I am dressed like a person who shops exclusively at Oriental Trading.

“Thanks,” I say, following after her and placing my
giant-person shades on the nearest chair. “Wait up, wait up.”

Veronica stops, but she doesn't turn around. I am forced to walk past her, unless I want to talk to her back. Which I don't.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hi,” she says, giving me a look I am not liking, one that is akin to
Why are you talking to me right now?

“Um…I'm glad you're here.”

“Yeah. I came right from work.” She gestures halfheartedly at her apron. I don't know why I'm so charmed by it.

“Yeah, well, thanks.”

Veronica looks at me like,
Can I go now?
I have to admire her consistency; even at my funeral, she's not very nice to me.

“I just wanted to, uh…” I am midstammer when I feel a hand on my shoulder and see a mass of light brown hair out of the corner of my eye.

“Where have you been?” Taryn asks. “You missed our slow song!”

“
I
missed it? I went looking for
you
!” My five necklaces jostle around in the excitement.

“What are you up to?” Taryn says, eyes bouncing back and forth between me and Veronica. I can feel my face starting to turn red. Everything's normal. Behave as if everything is normal.

“Oh, you know Paolo's sister, Veronica, right?”

“Yeah, of course. Hi,” Taryn says, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Hey,” Veronica says. She gives her best attempt at a smile as she fidgets with the pocket of her apron.

“I was actually at your house last night, but you weren't there,” Taryn says, making small talk.

“Oh yeah?”

“It's a nice house,” Taryn says.

“It is, right?” I add, wanting everyone to get along. “Great architecture.”

“I got home later,” Veronica says, her attention drifting off to the dance floor behind us. “Work.”

I bounce along to the music, maybe too enthusiastically. “Okiedokie, well, wanna go dance, Tar?”

“Sure,” she says.

But, even though (or maybe because) she's visibly uncomfortable, Veronica won't let me get off that easily. “It's funny, Denton actually said you guys broke up.” She's laughing a little, but her eyes are aimed at me and doing whatever the opposite of laughing is.

Oh right. Veronica isn't being very nice to me because she sees that Taryn and I are still a couple. Meaning I'm the asshole who tricked her into becoming the Other Woman last night. But I'm not an asshole, I swear! I'm just a moron!

“He did?” Taryn is not pleased. “Yeah, well, he was…confused.”

“I'll say!” I say loudly, in a way that instantly feels inappropriate.

“What do you mean, I'll say?” Taryn asks, alarmed.

“Oh, what? Nothing,” I say. “Just 'cause I was so stupid drunk.”

“Oh. Right.”

“This guy,” Veronica says. She's doing this thing I've seen Paolo's mom (well, her mom, too) do a couple of times: to compensate for anger, she ends up smiling in this big, unnatural, fake-seeming way. It's terrifying.

“Yeah, I'm an idiot,” I say, hoping that something or someone will save us all from this sauna of awkwardness.

And the next moment, an unlikely someone does: Taryn's freckly friend, Melanie, who, for maybe the first time ever, I'm glad to see. (Melanie's hated me ever since I knocked her out of the fourth-grade spelling bee by knowing there are two
c
's in
moccasin
.)

“Hey, girl,” she says to Taryn, adjusting the neckline of her neon pink dress. “Everything okay?”

“Uh-huh, just talkin' about Dent and his shadiness,” Taryn says, mussing up my hair.

“How's your face?” Melanie asks, pointing to the bright red welt I inadvertently inflicted on Taryn's cheek with my poor peanut butter cup aim.

“Oh, it's totally fine.”

“Complete accident,” I say, giving the cheek a quick kiss.

Melanie looks skeptical. “That's what abusive husbands say.”

“You know you're at my funeral right now, right?”

“Whatevs. Let's dance, girly!” Melanie says, pulling Taryn away.

“Are you coming, Dent?” Taryn says.

“Yeah, definitely. I'll be over in a second. Veronica was just…finishing telling me a story.”

Taryn looks at me a beat longer, enough for me to understand that she's frustrated and it's my fault, before she's yanked away by Melanie.

Veronica hasn't walked away, but she isn't saying anything.

“I'm so sorry. I really thought Taryn broke up with me, you have to believe that. I wouldn't have…”

“Wouldn't have what?”

I might be more straightforward about all this if I had a clearer sense of what we did.

“If I had known I was still with Taryn, I wouldn't have…done…what we did…last night.”