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Mello blowing himself up and losing half his face wasn’t even the stupidest thing he’d ever done. You’d think he and Matt were trying to outdo each other, given how often they nearly killed themselves.
It started pretty early; they didn’t wait until they were brainless teenagers to risk their lives on bets and shenanigans.
Mello saw this kid arrive at Wammy’s, all snotty, with messy red hair, and decided they would be friends, just like that. But Mello didn’t want to look soft, so he offered the 7-year-old a deal: he would be his friend if Matt threw himself down the stairs and didn’t break anything. Matt did it because, well, his parents had thrown him down the stairs more times than he could recount, so one more time wasn’t a big deal. He ended up with a broken arm and a new friend who got a concussion while trying to stop his fall.
Number two was the roof. They were eight and nine, old enough to know the tiles were slick after rain, young enough to think that knowing made it more interesting. Mello wanted the rusted weather vane from the south wing. Matt wanted Mello to stop calling him slow. They reached it together, soaked through, knees bruised, hands numb, because they obviously had to do it in the middle of January. On the way back, Mello’s shoe slipped. Matt caught his wrist and dislocated his own shoulder in the process. Mello called him an idiot all the way to the infirmary and sat outside the door until midnight.
Number three was the pond behind the groundskeeper’s shed. The ice had gone white around the edges, which meant death, according to Roger, and therefore challenge, according to Mello. Matt made it halfway across before the surface cracked under him. Mello crawled on his stomach to drag him out, swearing so hard that the younger kids gathered at the windows. Matt spent the night with blue lips and three blankets. Mello spent it pretending he had never been scared.
Number four involved the science room, three stolen bottles with warning labels, and a door they had jammed shut from the inside so they wouldn’t be interrupted. The fumes hit first. Matt laughed, then coughed and dropped to his knees. Mello broke the window with a stool and cut his hand to the bone climbing out. The official report called it curiosity. Matt called it romance. Mello punched him with his bandaged hand before kissing him.
Number five was the dare with the old freezer in the kitchen cellar. Matt said he could get out of anything. Mello said nobody could get out of that because it had a broken handle. Matt climbed in anyway. The door sealed. Mello waited thirty seconds before kicking it, sixty before shouting, ninety before finding a crowbar. Matt came out shaking and grinning, with frost in his eyelashes and no shoes, because he had tried to use one as a tool.
Number six was the cigarette behind the greenhouse, pinched from a tutor’s coat. Neither of them smoked yet. Matt wanted to learn. Mello wanted to look unimpressed. The shed’s curtain caught fire, followed by a stack of dry potting sacks. When Matt’s sleeve caught fire as he tried to put it out, Mello shoved him into the water trough so hard that Matt cracked a rib on the edge. For weeks afterwards, Matt said Mello had saved his life. Mello said he had saved his coat.
Number seven was the road outside the orphanage gates. Matt had found an abandoned bicycle with no brakes. Mello said brakes were for people who planned to stop. They took turns riding downhill into the lane until a delivery truck came around the bend. Matt swerved. Mello grabbed the back of his jumper. Both of them ended up in the ditch, tangled in nettles and mud, while the driver screamed himself hoarse. Matt’s goggles survived. Mello was furious about that.
Number eight was the quarry. They were thirteen, and Mello had decided fear could be cured through repetition. Matt said fear was actually useful because it kept your skull attached to your spine. Then he jumped first. The water knocked him unconscious. Mello jumped after him and hauled him to the bank, spitting quarry sludge and threats. Matt woke up laughing weakly, which earned him three days of silence and one chocolate bar left beside his bed without a note.
Number nine was Near’s fault, though Near had never been present. Mello heard that Near had beaten his record in a logic test by two minutes and decided the only reasonable response was to climb the old chapel bell tower during a storm. Matt followed with a torch, a pack of cigarettes, and no visible survival instinct. Lightning hit the rod while they were still on the stairs. The shock threw Matt down six steps and made Mello’s ears ring for an hour. At breakfast, Mello claimed he had gone up there to think. Matt nodded and said nothing, because his tongue still tasted of metal.
Number ten was the train bridge. They were fourteen and bored, which had always been their most dangerous condition. Mello bet they could cross before the afternoon freight reached the bend. Matt said the timetable was unreliable. Mello said that made it better. Halfway across, Matt’s coat snagged on a bolt. Mello came back for him, swearing, hands shaking so badly he tore the fabric instead of freeing it cleanly. They rolled off the track into the weeds seconds before the train passed. Matt kept the ripped coat for years.
Number eleven was the night they left Wammy’s for twelve hours and came back with mud on their shoes. Matt had stolen a car that he could barely see over the dashboard of. Mello navigated from a map he held upside down out of spite after Matt corrected him. They took a corner too fast, hit a fence, and landed nose-first in a field. Mello’s forehead split open on the dashboard. Matt lost a tooth. Neither of them admitted whose idea it had been. Both of them claimed they had been driving.
Number twelve was the first gun. Mello had left Wammy’s for good, and Matt had followed. The moment Matt appeared at the gate with a bag over one shoulder, goggles pushed into his hair, Mello told him he was an idiot. Matt said yes, probably. Mello told him to go back. Matt asked whether Mello was coming with him. That shut Mello up.
Mello stole the gun from a man who had underestimated him, a mistake people made only once. Matt insisted on taking it apart because machines made sense to him, and Mello did not. Something clicked wrong. The bullet went through the wall between their heads and shattered the cheap motel mirror. For a moment, they stared at their own broken reflections. Then Matt said, very softly, that Mello’s hair looked terrible. Mello laughed, caught himself halfway to fixing his bob, and smacked Matt instead.
There were more after that, obviously. The list grew out of childhood dares and into something bloodier.
Fifteen: Mello picked a fight with three boys twice his size because one of them had called Matt defective. Matt finished it by smashing a bottle against a wall and holding the jagged neck with a hand already bleeding from the glass.
Twenty-two: Matt drove a stolen motorbike through an alley too narrow for the handlebars because Mello had said he lacked nerve. They came out the other side with no paint on either side of the bike and skin missing from both elbows.
Thirty-one: Mello took a knife meant for Matt and spent the whole ambulance ride angry that Matt had ruined his shirt trying to stop the bleeding.
Forty-six: Matt stayed awake for four days straight on a case and collapsed at the wheel. Mello grabbed the handbrake before the car left the bridge. Afterwards, he called Matt useless and slept sitting against the hospital bed.
Sixty: Mello vanished for nine days and came back with a bullet crease along his ribs. Matt looked at it once, lit a cigarette with steady hands, and said he had made worse decisions in arcade tournaments.
Seventy-three: Matt took three hits in a street chase meant to flush out a tail. Mello found him behind a dumpster, bleeding into his own shirt, annoyed because he had dropped his game console somewhere between the second and third impact.
Eighty-eight: Mello wired a room to explode and actually blew himself up. He said victory had always sounded better when you came out of it with battle marks. Matt came in to drag him out by the collar and call him dramatic, but the blast threw him down the stairwell before he could reach him. Mello got his battle mark. Matt spent days cleaning blood and soot from the unburnt half of his face, hands steady until Mello fell asleep.
Ninety-four: Matt walked into traffic without looking because he was watching a surveillance feed on a handheld screen. Mello yanked him back so hard Matt’s shoulder came out again, the same one from the roof. Matt complained about the screen cracking before he complained about the pain.
And then ninety-nine…
The screen in the truck showed Matt’s body jerking under gunfire, leaving too little time for Mello to understand anything except that Matt had gone first. Matt, who had always gone first when the dare needed proving. Matt, who had thrown himself down the stairs at seven years old and earned a broken arm and Mello’s entire life.
The tightness in Mello’s chest sharpened. He gripped the wheel and tried to breathe through it. He could still hear Matt’s voice, lazy and rough around the edges, telling him that ninety-nine was an ugly number to die on, just to taunt Mello because Matt knew he’d hate the imbalance. Mello would reply that he didn’t care. Matt would say Mello had always needed the last word.
The truck rolled on.
Mello realised he didn’t actually want to die, but it was a bit late to have regrets. Too bad they had made a deal to stop at one hundred.
The stupidest thing they had ever done was keeping the promise.