Anthony and Joey were waiting at the red light on Forest Avenue, the Beastie Boys blaring out of Joey's stereo. It was a beat-up 1995 Buick with dust all over the inside, and the letters on the gears worn down so Joey couldn't see what he was shifting into. The doors didn't close properly, and the car could stall out on a highway. It was the perfect car for Joey.

"Listen to this," Joey said, tapping at the stereo, leaning his left arm out the drivers'-side window. One of the rappers, whom Anthony couldn't recognize by name delivered a verse:

Everybody's rappin' like it's a commercial,
Livin' like life's like a big commercial.

Anthony laughed, and said, "Awesome. That's one of my favorite lines so far."

"They learned to rap when they were three, so they never learned how to speak proper," Joey said.

Joey was sitting back in his seat, patiently eyeing the red light, when a handful of pennies and nickels came through the window. They bounced off the dashboard and around the wheel, and Joey and Anthony sat up and looked behind them. Ricky and Chrissy, two kids from their school, were in the car behind them and to the left, holding handfuls of change and tossing them, laughing like maniacs.

"You're fuckin' kidding me," Joey said. The light turned green.

Anthony grabbed a rubber Livestrong bracelet and shot it out the window, while Joey chucked a half-empty bottle of tobacco juice and hit the gas. The dip juice splattered against the side of Ricky and Chrissy's door, and as Anthony and Joey sped away, hitting fifty miles and hour, they could hear Ricky curse.

"You nailed them," Anthony said. Joey nodded grimly and sped northward past the cemetery, down the long hill up toward Hillsdale. Ricky and Chrissy were right behind them, blowing their horns. Anthony could see them laughing and pointing in the rearview mirror.

It wasn't any malice that started the skirmish, just a friendly but constant culture war between the Irish kids and the Italians at the school. Ricardo Talarico and Christopher Baratta and their friends had raced against Joseph Feeney and his in the past, but this was Anthony Conley's first time in one of his friend's races.

They were hitting ninety miles an hour up through Emerson now, Joey adeptly dodging the cars at the Ridgewood Road intersection. Anthony's heart was racing, and his fingers were clutching onto his seatbelt. An icy hand was touching his chest, and he looked behind the car in the mirror, where Ricky and Chrissy were speeding up to catch them.

"You all right?" Joey asked, noticing that Anthony looked stressed. Ninety-seven miles an hour.

"Just...a bit slower."

Joey eased his foot off the gas, and the speedometer fell to eighty. Ricky and Chrissy shot past them on the left side yelling and cursing out their windows, and made a sharp left on Washington Avenue. The wide road with tall McMansions became quiet suburban neighborhood.

"Shit, they're ahead," Joey said, following their car.

"Sorry, dude," Anthony said.

"Don't worry about it," Joey said, speeding to follow them down Taylor Street. They rocketed over a speed bump and caught hair, and turning onto Hillsdale Avenue. The neighborhood around changed from quiet and rich suburban dwellings to a more open, wider road with a library just a block away.

"There they are," Anthony said, pointing to where Ricky and Chrissy's car was turning onto Saddlewood Road. Joey followed them, and pulled up alongside them, rolling down his windows. The two young men were laughing and flipping off Anthony and Joey.

"I smoked you, you little bitch," Ricky said.

"Eat a bag of dicks, you faggot," Joey said, looking at the house that Ricky and Chrissy had stopped at. "This is where you live?"

"I'm dropping Chrissy off," Ricky said, grabbing a bottle of water. Joey growled and tried to turn up his power windows, but the plastic bottle sailed through, spewing water all over the inside of the car.

"I was about to get hit, I had to slow down," Joey said, rolling his window back down.

"You're a pussy—"

"I'll race you again right now," Joey said. "Back the way we came."

Chrissy and Ricky exchanged a glance, and pulled out of the street and did a U-turn so they were in the same position as Anthony and Joey. Joey shook his hair crazily and nodded at them, and put his foot down on the gas.

They skidded onto Hillsdale Avenue, nearly brushing a white car as they roared back on toward the suburbs. "Close call, dude," Anthony said, a little more worried now. Ricky and Chrissy were five feet behind their bumper.

They hit the speed bump going back even harder, and Scar Tissue was playing on the CD now. Anthony was gripping onto his seatbelt, keeping his eyes focused on the road that was roaring by under them. Ricky and Chrissy were right behind.

Forest Avenue was before them in a long stretch all the way down to the highway, the most dangerous road in the county. Anthony looked at the speedometer—ninety-six miles an hour. Ricky and Chrissy were in the other lane, trying to cut across. They must have been going a hundred and twenty, Anthony thought. A white SUV merged into Ricky's lane from a side street, and Joey looked over in fear.

With birds I share this lonely view.

Ricky's car braked hard and skidded into the back of Joey's, fishtailing it into the other lane. Broken glass burst on all sides. It was quiet all of a sudden.

Anthony realized he was alone, and everything around him was dim. Struggling to think, he realized he could be in a hospital. Or if he wasn't that lucky, he could be regaining consciousness on the ground, or in an ambulance. But everything was still, and the dim grey sky above waved like water.

He stood up with ease, and he looked around him. Shadows and shapes moved all past him, but it was if he was in a dream. If he reached out, he could touch them. Anthony looked up into the watery sky, seeing only darkness, and closed his eyes.

"Anthony," called a soft, calming voice. "Look at me Anthony."

Anthony opened his eyes, and felt an unearthly force pull him up. He blinked, and looked into his own eyes. Standing before him in a cloak of shadows was a mirror image of himself, naked and at peace.

"Are you..." Anthony began, noticing that he was standing above the street, but that there was a strange, dense fog all around him. "Me?"

"You know me."

"Is this a dream?" Anthony asked.

"It depends how you want to look at it," the other Anthony said.

Anthony tried to open his eyes—his real eyes—but he had the feeling that he didn't have them. It was a phantom sensation, as if he was feeling the nerves in an amputated hand. Anthony realized that he wasn't breathing.

"Are you an angel?" Anthony asked.

"I am Death."

Anthony was silent. His mirror image stared at him, holding his hands out to him.

"What happens now?" Anthony asked.

"Will you come with me?" Death asked.

"What if I don't?" said Anthony, becoming aware that Death was slowly being lit from behind by a dim light. All else was falling into shadows.

"You receive the curse, or maybe, the gift of oblivion. Many have embraced death, and have gone on. Many others have refused the embrace of death, and depart into the shadows. They find nothingness."

The thought of nonexistence made Anthony shiver so hard he wanted to vomit. "Take me," he said.

"Do you accept me as your Death?"

"I do."

"Then kiss me."

Anthony embraced his Death, and kissed his mirror image fully on the lips. And as they drew back, Anthony gazed into the face of a skull, as white as chalk, and as cold as the millions of dead and departed that had passed his way.

"Do you love me?"

"I do."

Anthony was awake. He tried to open his eyes, or move his arms, but he felt nothing. His mind was numb, and he was looking into his own thoughts through a haze of gauze. Was he awake? He looked around, but he grew aware that he had no body. Only a mind. Only a soul. Only the slow sleep of death with his memories and thoughts to torment him. It was as if he was trapped in an evil dream.

He tried to remember his last earthly moments—the car race, Ricky and Chrissy skidding into them—and it all came flooding back in a grim, brutal memory. Joey's car had been knocked into the other lane, and they had a ninety-mile-an-hour crash with an SUV. Anthony's neck had been twisted a hundred and eighty degrees in his head. Joey was barely hurt, with just a bruise on his face and a cracked orbital. The SUV had hit the passenger side dead-on.

Was this hell? The grim idea rose onto the surface of his mind...surely he was not unconscious, and that was better than anything else. He wished for some sound, any sound, to reassure him that there was still hope, that he could still exist. All he could sense was his own thoughts and memories, and the uncanny feeling that he was surrounded by forlorn souls.

Had his grandparents died like this, kissing the specter of their Death and finding themselves in this evil place? Had they rejected death and chosen unthinking oblivion? Anthony's thoughts grew frantic, hoping that anyone had braved the passage to this afterlife.

He reached out with his mind, hoping to find anyone, looking for his grandfather, for anyone around him. He was like a bubble unto himself, and other bubbles pressed on him.

All of a sudden a great feeling of warmness and love came over him, and he accepted the fact that the earth was behind him. Is that you, Anthony? something said, but the words were not heard, they were felt. Anthony could sense someone speaking unto him in the deepest, most fundamental part of his soul.

Granddad? Anthony replied, as naturally as walking.

Yes, it's me. I felt you coming in.

And Anthony felt all the memories of his grandfather come back to him, and he soaked in them. Meeting his grandfather in the delivery room, being bounced on his knee, touching his scratchy beard...his life and memories played forth, and he felt that he was seeing the same things his grandfather was seeing.

His grandfather's memories took over for a moment, and Anthony saw a young boy being whipped by a stern-looking man, a boatload of marines surging toward a tropical island with bullets flying in the air, a suburban house with children playing in the front, and seeing Anthony being born.

Will my parents come here too? Anthony said.

If they choose to, came the reply. Every living thing comes here.

Anthony was filled with a strange excitement, but at the same time a kind of lethargic peace. He wasn't alone anymore, and he was dead. He loved death.