The First to Die at the End

Orion is a storyteller, and he uses stories as a way to cope with the problems in his life. At first, he “write[s] short stories because [he is] one,” believing that he will not have a long life (67). Eventually, he comes to realize that it is not the length of a life that matters, moving beyond wanting to write a full-length book about his life to recognizing that he is a work in progress, and that life is about how it is lived, not how long it lasts, a lesson that he learned from Valentino.

The stories that Orion writes are typically ones that bring him a happy ending of some sort. He has written romantic stories, and he has also written stories that find him a solution to his heart condition, as in the case of “Golden Heart.” In the story, an elder saves Orionis—based on Orion—from Death by giving him his heart and being willing to dance with Death on Orionis’s behalf. Because Orion has always felt close to death, his biggest dream is to be free from the burden of worrying about his heart. This worry causes him to imagine a fairytale version of himself that gets the happy ending he worries that he will never have. However, improbably, his fairytale does come true, albeit slightly different, because of Valentino.

Additionally, The First to Die at the End is a collection of individual lives brought together to show how stories intersect. Dr. Emeterio pops up unexpectedly as the pawn shop owner's wife. Her son Rufus is spotted by Mateo Torrez, who saw Valentino and Orion in Times Square. The intersections between these smaller stories and the larger one both help to build tension—as in the case of Frankie’s obsession with Valentin and his abusive relationship with Gloria—and help to show how people are all connected, showing that “even on your way out, there’s still time to let people in,” as when Valentino shares his story with Férnan (339).