Page 58 of 72 Hours of You

“I mean it,” Peter says. “You have to deal with this totally unprecedented thing. And I can tell it’s with you every day—even when no one is, like, ‘clocking out’ like you say, it’s there. And yet you’re so … cool.”

“Cool?” I laugh. Suddenly I’m very aware of my hands, and I have no idea what to do with them. I wrap my arms around myself.

“You see the world in this totally unique way.”

“You mean dark and horrible? I’m pretty sure every person here has the same ‘unique’ way of looking at the world.” I gesture to a woman in a long boho skirt cursing out someone on the other end of her phone.

“No,” Peter says. “You think about things no one else does. You understand death in a way literally no one else can. You read Heidegger at lunch, for god’s sake. You’re …”

“I’m insufferable.”

“I’d suffer you any day.” Peter looks at me, dead serious, and this moment, his eyes, his face, everything—it’s so small, but somehow it’s also too big. I need to make a sarcastic comment, roll my eyes, do something to ruin it, but I can’t bring myself to. So I just stand there in this liminal state, where I’m the same person I was twenty minutes ago, and also maybe I’m someone else. Someone who can let things be for ten seconds. Or at least maybe five.

“Come on,” Peter says. “Let’s go get you some jelly beans.”

Thirty

THE NEXT DAY I MEET PETER in the school parking lot again. I finish my bag of spicy cinnamon jelly beans on the train while Peter reads a biography of RBG. We find a Clocker with nearly three days left in Central Park watching the little sailboats, and Peter pretends he rented one for himself but had an unexpected emergency, then hands the guy the remote and lets him finish out the rental. I don’t know who ended up more excited, the Clocker or Peter.

We do the same thing the next two days too. Meet at school, take the train in. On Thursday we find a Clocker getting on the subway but we’re too slow to do anything about it, so we kind of just spend the day walking around together and eating at this ramen place on Orchard that Peter’s obsessed with. And on Friday we think we might not see any Clockers at all but at the last second, we find this person trying out mattresses in a Nectar store. They fall asleep and Peter chats up the sales guy for twenty minutes to let the Clocker get a nice solid nap in, undisturbed. I guess their dirt nap is about to be nice and solid and undisturbed too. Still, it was pretty cool.

I think Peter might need a break over the weekend, but he says he wants to go back to the city then too. So we do. On Saturday we don’t see any Clockers and on Sunday we see two, but they’re together and seem decently happy, so we decide to leave them alone.

By the time Monday rolls around, I’ve missed two math quizzes (Mr. Jerzo continues to be a grade-A POS) and a history test, and I’m massively behind on chem homework. Normally this would trigger a psychotic break. Actually, normally this would never happen. But I can’t bring myself to give a shit about school right now. Plus, what is the University of Alaska going to do? Not let me in? Hah.

I’m sure Peter’s behind too, but he’s not exactly panicked either. In fact, he’s been super calm and cool this past week. Like running around finding almost-dead people is his calling or something.

I eat the last few bites of my bowl of Count Chocula, my eyes on the clock over the kitchen sink. We need to leave for school in three minutes, and Jules is still upstairs blasting a TikTok on how to do this new thing with eyeshadow. Finally, I hear her clomping down the stairs. I stand up and grab my backpack.

“All right,” Jules says, taking a banana off the kitchen counter. “Cut the shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am your sister. Your flesh and blood. We share a deodorant, for fuck’s sake.”

“Ew, no we don’t. Oh my god, do we?”

Jules nods gravely. “We do.”

“Disgusting.” I make a mental note to stop at a pharmacy at some point today. “What’s your point?”

Jules crosses her arms. “If someone is going deep-sea diving for your pearl I deserve to know.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She points the banana at me. “True or false you are fucking Peter Beckett?”

“False, oh my god.”

Jules narrows her perfect eyebrows at me. “Be so serious right now.”

“I am not fucking Peter Beckett.”

She sighs. “I cannot believe you would betray me like this. Me, the person who selflessly and silently helped you throw out your underwear when you sharted at that group hang in seventh grade.”

“I’m not betraying you. I’m telling you the truth. We haven’t even kissed or anything. It’s not like that.”

Jules rolls her eyes, slipping the banana into her backpack. “It is one thousand percent ‘like that.’ You don’t think I notice how utterly sus you’ve been this past week? You two have been scampering off campus giggling and canoodling like two horny little schoolgirls. And look at you. You’re … well, not glowing. Because, let’s be real, it’s you. But—”