Page 10 of 72 Hours of You

“Seriously, Syd. Something is wrong with you. I can tell.”

Well, this is weird. She’s not usually this … observant? Or compassionate.

She sighs. “It’s just—it’s hard for me sometimes, you know?” Ah, there it is. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be the stunningly cool, absolutely biconic junior with the weirdo repressed older sister who never goes out and has no friends?”

“Jesus, Jules, I’m not like that.” Shit, am I like that?

“Christ, calm down,” she laughs. “I was kidding. Sort of. Although it is a good thing you’re hot. That way people falsely mistake your weirdness for an air of mystery.”

“Jules, what the fuck.”

“Seriously, though,” she says. “You seem kind of aloof. I mean, you’re always kind of aloof, that’s sort of like, your whole deal—”

“That’s not my whole deal.” God, she’s acting like I’m some reclusive psycho who lives alone in the woods with their porcelain dolls and guns, plotting the demise of democracy, instead of someone who doesn’t like to get wasted every Friday and Saturday and watch Noah and Ethan have kidney-punching competitions.

“—but ever since Liam died, you seem more aloof. More … detached. Unforthcoming. Indifferent. Supercilious.”

“You’ve been using those SAT prep flash cards I made you.”

Jules tosses her short red hair over her shoulder. “Are you impressed?”

I nod. “Not sure that last one means what you think it does, though.”

“Yes it does. Supercilious: behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others. That’s you.”

“That’s not me.”

She raises an eyebrow. I hate that she can do that eyebrow thing too. “Yes it is. Miss I Don’t Do Group Projects Because Everyone Is Stupider Than Me.”

I bristle. “That’s not why I don’t do group projects.”

“Then why don’t you?”

How can I possibly explain to Jules that there’s no point in making meaningless friendships with people who can never really know you? How can I explain that the candy-colored world she lives in isn’t real? I can’t. And I don’t want to. So instead I just say, “You’re right, it is actually because everyone is stupid. Have you seen Noah’s essays?”

“No, but I’ve seen his abs.” Jules’s eyes twinkle, like she’s imagining them right now. “I’d do a group project with him any day.”

“What about Elise?”

“Who?” she says, dreamily.

“Damn, that was a record, even for you.”

“You know what? I think you’ve cured me!” She slithers out of my bed, her face in her phone. “I’m going to go text Noah.” She walks back through our Jack and Jill bathroom (which she insists on calling a Jack and Jules bathroom), her thumbs furiously moving on her screen. “Ouch, shit! Stop leaving your fucking straightener on the floor!”

“Stop leaving your fucking makeup on my side of the sink!” I yell back.

The door to her room shuts, and finally I’m alone. I take a breath and close my eyes. I try to just lie there. In the stillness. But I can’t.

Ms. Jegstrup is really fucking me up. Right after Liam? It’s too many clocks. Too much pink. Too much death. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, trying to block everything out, trying to focus on my breath or whatever those stupid Spotify meditations tell me to do. But it’s having the opposite effect.

Their faces start to appear in my mind. Liam. Ms. Jegstrup. The guy on the side of the highway with the battered sign and the dog. The girl at the outdoor mall right off the freeway buying too many candles. Noah’s uncle who came to pick him up from school one day in third grade with promises of an arcade afternoon. The middle-aged guy who owned the bike store and used to love pumpkin seeds. The—

Stop. Stop. Stop. I push my hands against my head. I need the images to stop. I can’t let myself think about—

Caroline.

Oh, whoopsie daisy.