“Are you sure you got the right person?” I ask. “This has to be a mistake, I’m—” I want to say I’m healthy, but I make eye contact with teary Orion, who doesn’t need to be reminded that between the two of us he’s the one people would vote Most Likely to Receive an End Day Call. Then I remember that being healthy doesn’t matter when a car hits you. My sister almost lost her life because of an accident, and now I’m going to be losing mine?

“I just signed up right before midnight. This has to be a mistake,” I conclude with no evidence to suggest otherwise.

“I’m afraid it isn’t,” Joaquin says.

“But how do I know that? How do you know that? You can be wrong.”

“I’m not wrong, though I wish I were.”

“You might be, Mr. Rosa. Maybe you have me confused with another Valentino Prince.”

Others exist, I know. I’ve been typing my name into Google Images as I’ve done more and more modeling and my pictures have been burying the other Valentino Princes across the country. It felt a bit like winning a popularity contest. There’s supposed to be—there will be more pictures of me for years to come.

“I understand this is difficult news to receive,” Joaquin says. “It breaks my heart to deliver it.”

“I didn’t even know you’ll be making calls.”

“I won’t, but seeing as this is the first official End Day call, it’s mine to make.”

The first.

This is the first End Day call.

The first time Death-Cast is calling someone to tell them they’re going to die.

This is not how I want to go down in history.

“I don’t want to go first,” I say. I must sound like I’m a kid all over again, begging my parents to send Scarlett into the bath or dentist chair before me.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know at what point today you’ll meet your untimely end, but being called first doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily die first.”

I might faint.

I’m actually on the line with Joaquin Rosa, minutes after his Death-Cast program has gone live across the country, and he’s very confident that I—Valentino Prince, the first known Decker—will die today. But he doesn’t know how, or what time. That’s his claim at least, and something tells me that begging for the truth since the secret could die with me won’t go very far.

“Valentino, how may I support you right now? Are you alone?”

No one standing in Times Square is alone, but it feels that way. I’m the only one going through this right now. Then my eyes find Orion again, like magnetism, and he’s more than familiar with this fear of dying.

“I’m not alone,” I say.