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Anthony Paul Bonano, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath one month of my natural life to Gunnar Ümlaut.
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Signature
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Signature of Witness
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I have to confess, I almost didn’t sign it. I almost crumpled the thing and tossed it into the trash, because it was giving me the creeps. I’m not a particularly superstitious guy . . . but I do have moments. We all do. Like, when you’re walking on the street, and you start thinking about that old step-on-a-crack rhyme. Don’t you—at least for a few steps—avoid the cracks? It’s not like you really think you’re gonna break your mother’s back, right? But you avoid the cracks anyway. And when somebody sneezes, and you say “God bless you,” you’re not saying it to chase away evil spirits—which is why people used to say it in the old days—but you don’t feel right if you don’t say it.
    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 Gunnar an extra month?
    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 Gunnar a month of my life—that was inspired, too. The problem with inspiration, though, is that it’s kind of like the flu—once one person gets it, it spreads and spreads until pretty soon everyone’s all congested and hawking up big wads of inspiration. It happens whether you want it to or not, and there’s no vaccination.
    I tracked Gunnar down in the hallway between third and fourth periods that day, and presented him with his extra month, officially signed and witnessed.
    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.
    â€œAntsy,” Gunnar said, “there are no words to express how this makes me feel.”
    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, Gunnar and me, standing there all ripe for a humiliating Kodak moment, and Gunnar finds the words I had wished he wouldn’t: “As Lewis once said to Clark, ‘He who would give his life for a friend is more valuable than the Louisiana Purchase, entire.’ ” And now all I can think about is what if he hugs me—and what if Dewey gets a picture, and I’m known as “Embraceable Antsy” for all eternity?
    But instead Gunnar looks at the paper again and says, “Of course you didn’t specify which month you’re giving me.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œWell, each month has a