Page 199 of 72 Hours of You

There is no known cure for Huntington’s disease. However, patients can be asymptomatic or presymptomatic for a number of years.

The words blur into each other, black letters burning my eyes against the harsh white light of my phone screen. Why am I even looking at this? It’s done. He’s got a clock. There’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.

I squeeze the phone in my hand, wishing I could change the answers. Change everything. After all this—after everything—some horrible, mutated, twisted blip in his DNA is going to rip him from this world? Some microscopic thing I can’t even see? It’s unfair, so unbelievably, tragically, outrageously un-fucking-fair.

Tears have the nerve to sting my eyes again and I hate them. And I hate myself. And I hate the world. And I even hate Peter—for making me care so much. For being him and making me love him like this. For leaving me. I take my phone and hurl it across the room. It slams against the wall, and I can’t tell if the sound is my phone screen shattering or my heart cracking wide open.

Fifty-Three

TIME IS PASSING.

Seconds are falling away.

I know.

I know I’m losing that time. I know that I’ll never get it back.

Everything inside me is screaming to move. But I can’t. I can’t fucking move.

He’ll get a page in my Doom Doodle notebook. The thought sucks the breath out of my body. And I lie there, like an empty shell of nothingness.

I think about getting really fucking angry, setting the notebook on fire and trashing my room. Tearing at the walls, ripping at the sheets, the furniture, my own face.

But I don’t move.

I think about screaming and wailing. Waiting for Jules to hold me.

I think about walking into the bathroom and punching the mirror, feeling the glass shatter around my knuckles.

I think about praying to a dead god I don’t believe exists.

But I don’t move.

I don’t do a goddamn thing.

I think about calling him. Telling him.

I think about what that conversation would sound like.

And then I roll over into my pillow and cry.

Fifty-Four

MY EYES ARE BURNING. I can’t tell if I’ve been blinking them the right amount.

This is what I am going to do: I am going to let time keep moving. I am going to do nothing. Because there is no point. There is literally no point to anything.

There’s a soft knock on the connecting bathroom door. She never knocks.

“Can I come in?”

I don’t say anything.

The door creaks open and Jules walks in. “It’s really dark in here.”

She turns on my bedside lamp but I don’t flinch. I just let the light burn my eyes, blurring everything around me into a harsh yellow.

“Okay, so we’re doing the whole depresh thing again? I thought that little smoky sausage coming over would’ve fixed you right up.” Jules waits for me to respond. I don’t. “No? Nothing?”