Antsy Does Time

So here I am, looking at this very legal-looking piece of paper, and wondering what it means to sign away one month of my life. And then I think, if this was an actual contract—if it was true and somewhere in the Great Beyond a tally of days was being kept—would I still do it, and give Gu

Sure I would.

I knew that without even having to think about it.

So I bit back the creepy step-on-a-crack feeling, got a blue pen, and signed my name. Then, during my first class the next morning, I got Ira to sign as witness.

And that’s when things began to get weird.

4. Photo Ops, Flulike Symptoms, and Trident Exchange in the Hallway of Life

There are very few things I’ve done in my life that I would consider truly inspired. Like the time I e-mailed everyone at school to tell Howie his pants were on backward. After dozens of people pulled him aside to tell him, he finally gave in to peer pressure, went into the bathroom, and turned his pants around, so they really were on backward.

That was inspired.

Giving Gu

I tracked Gu

He read it over, and looked at me with the kind of gaze you don’t want a guy giving you in a public hallway.

“Antsy,” Gu

Which was good, because words might have made me awkwardly emotional, and that would attract Dewey Lopez, the school photographer—who was famous for exposing emotions whenever possible. Such as the time he caught star football jock Woody Wilson bawling his eyes out in the locker room after losing the first game that season. In reality, Woody was crying because had just punched his locker and broken three knuckles, but nobody remembers that part—they just remember the picture—so he got stuck with the nickname “Wailing Woody,” which will probably stick to him like a kick-me sign for the rest of his life.

So here we are, Gu

But instead Gu

“Huh?”

“Well, each month has a different value, doesn’t it? September has thirty days, October has thirty-one, and let’s not even mention February!”

I have to admit, I was a little stu

“Excellent!” Gu

That’s when Mary Ellen McCaw descends out of nowhere, grabs the paper away from Gu

Just so you know, Mary Ellen McCaw is the under-eighteen gossip queen of Brooklyn. She’s constantly sniffing out juicy dirt, and since her nose is roughly the size of Rhode Island, she’s better than a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing. I’m sure she knew about Gu

“Give it back!” I demanded, but she just holds the thing out of reach, and reads it. Then she looks at me like I’ve just arrived from a previously unknown planet.

’You’re giving him a month of your life?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“Giving Gu

This leaves me furtherly stu

“What a nice thought!” she says.

I shrug. “It’s just a piece of paper.”

But who was I kidding? This thing was already much more than a stupid piece of paper. Mary Ellen turns from me to Gu

I look at her, wondering if she’s kidding, but clearly she’s not.

Gu

“Good, then it’s settled,” says Mary Ellen. “Antsy, you write up the contract, okay?”

I don’t say anything just yet, as I’m still set on stun.

“Remember to specify the month,” says Gu

“And,” adds Mary Ellen, “make sure it says that the month comes from the end of my life, not the middle somewhere.”

“How could it come from the middle?” I dare to ask.

“I don’t know—temporary coma, maybe? The point is, even a symbolic gesture should be clear of loopholes, right?”

Who was I to argue with logic like that?

“So what’s it like at the Ümlauts’?”

Howie and Ira were all over me in the lunchroom that day, as if going over to the Ümlauts’ was like setting foot in a haunted house.

“Was there medical stuff everywhere?” Howie asked. “My uncle had to build a room addition just for his iron lung—the thing’s as big as a car.”

“I didn’t see anything like that,” I told them. “It’s not that kind of illness.”

“It must have been weird, though,” Ira said. I considered telling them about Gu

“It was fine,” I told them. “They’re just a normal family. The dad’s always off working. Their mom’s pretty cool, and Kjersten and Gu

“Kjersten ...” Ira said, and he and Howie gave each other a knowing grin. “Did you get some quality time with her?”

“Actually, I did. We all had di

There’s something to be said about being the envy of your friends. They made some of the standard rude jokes friends will make about beautiful girls out of their reach—the same ones I was tempted to make myself, but didn’t. Then the conversation came back to the subject of death, which is just as compelling and almost as distant as sex.

“Were they all religious and stuff?” Ira asked. “People always get that way when someone gets sick—remember Howie’s parents when they thought he had mad cow?”

“Don’t remind me,” says Howie.

I thought about it, but didn’t remember anything like that at the Ümlauts’. They didn’t say grace like we do at my house when someone remembers to. Ira was right—if Gu

“His mom doesn’t talk about his illness at all,” I told them. “I guess that’s how they deal with it. It’s creepy, because there’s always, like, an elephant in the room.”