
Mateo decides that he wants his headstone to read, “He Lived for Everyone,” and then he downloads the Last Friend, an app designed to help Deckers find friends on their End Day (their last day alive). Malcolm and Tagoe hold off the police while Rufus sneaks out the back and rides away on his bike. Though Rufus’s funeral starts out tearful and meaningful, the police arrive-Peck called them. She agrees to meet the boys at the foster home, but she brings Peck with her. Rufus calls his ex-girlfriend (and former foster sister), Aimee, on the way home. He heads back to his foster home with his best friends and foster siblings, Malcolm and Tagoe, for his funeral. Rufus’s herald, Victor, is kind, but this doesn’t help-Rufus doesn’t want beating someone to be his last act.

A half hour later, 17-year-old Rufus is in the middle of beating up a boy named Peck for stealing his girlfriend when he gets his own call from Death-Cast letting him know he’s going to die today.

Mateo vows to leave his apartment so he can see Dad (who’s in a coma in the hospital), his best friend Lidia, and Lidia’s daughter Penny before he dies. Future Mateo would get out there and live. He panics-he’s an anxious person and has few friends, and he already misses the Mateo of the future. His herald, Andrea, carelessly mixes him up with the last Decker that she called, so Mateo hangs up. when he gets a call from Death-Cast, an organization that gives people 24 hours’ notice of their death.

Patrick “Peck” Gavin, 5:05 p.m.Įighteen-year-old Mateo is scrolling through a blog called CountDowners at 12:22 a.m.
