Deadline
“I figure if Doc is right about the time I have left, I should wrap up my adolescence in the next few days, get into my early productive stages about the third week of school, go through my midlife crisis during Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, redouble my efforts at productivity and think about my legacy, say, Easter, and start cashing in my 401(k)s a couple weeks before Memorial Day. I don’t have to worry about making enough money to put kids through college so I can focus on the more philosophical elements of my life.”
Ben Wolf may seem to be taking his impending death in an offhand manner, but his deadpan assessment of his last year alive is a coping mechanism. He’s coping with the death sentence handed to him during a routine physical checkup to clear him for his senior year of cross-country. Instead of clearing him, Ben discovers he has a rare, aggressive, fatal blood disease; he begins to take a hard look at his life and to make some changes.
Instead of just going through the days, Ben wants the final year of his life to be meaningful for himself and others. He decides to tell no one that he’s dying. Ben also refuses treatment for, as he puts it, “…without treatment my chances sucked, but with it they still sucked and somehow I knew my chances aren’t about living, they’re about living well.” In this quest to live well, he quits cross-country and joins his brother on the football field, he speaks up for his beliefs (and for Malcom X) in class, and he befriends the town drunk.
Each character in Deadline helps Ben face his forthcoming deadline in his or her own way–his brother Cody as a football teammate and as the Wolf who will carry on, the love of his life Dallas Suzuki as his first, the town drunk Rudy McCoy as the man who teaches him about mistakes and covering up the truth, Coach Banks as his mentor and encourager, and his conversational partner during dreams Hey-Soos as the one who helps him think through the meaning of life and truth. Ben’s cantankerous teacher, Mr. Lambeer, even helps in his own way by forcing Ben to “hijack the curriculum” to speak up for his freedoms and his beliefs.
Deadline mixes levity with gravity. Deadline tackles many weighty themes: secrets, truth, family, mental illness, death, child molestation, and censorship to name a few. As Ben tells us and as we all discover at times, “Planet Earth is a tough town.” But he also shows us that that doesn’t mean we can’t make the most of our time in it.
There’s much to appreciate about Deadline. Some readers will appreciate the football action. Some will appreciate the relationships that develop (Particularly poignant, for me, was the relationship of Ben with his brother). Some will appreciate the philosophical aspects. Some will appreciate and admire Ben’s courage. Some will simply appreciate the fact that they’re alive and able to read a book.
Deadline’s plot has similarities with Jenny Downham’s Before I Die in that both stories chronicle the protagonist’s final time on earth. Before I Die mainly focuses on Tessa’s fulfilling her list of personal desires. In Deadline, Ben’s final actions and desires reflect both personal desires and desires to have a lasting positive impact on others. Both stories imagine the almost unimaginable–what would you do or want to do if you knew you were living out your final days?
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