Page 23 of 72 Hours of You

“You were sober,” he says. “And also … yesterday. In school. The way your face changed when Jegstrup walked in, it was like—”

“You shouldn’t have been looking at my face.” My heart pounds, slamming harder and harder into my ribs. “Haven’t you ever heard of minding your business?”

“It was like you had seen a ghost. You were … scared.”

“I’m never scared.”

“You look pretty scared now,” he says, softly.

“Jesus, Peter, you sound insane, you know that? Like truly unhinged. They’re just some stupid drawings.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what? You think I actually see death clocks over people’s heads? Be fucking for real.”

“Wait. Wait. Do you actually see the clocks? Like what you drew? Is that how this works?”

“No.” Oh god.

Realization dawns on Peter’s smooth face. “You … You kept looking at this spot. Like, right over Jegstrup’s head. It was like you couldn’t look away.”

“Stop.”

“And your face was so … sad.”

My stomach turns in on itself. I need him to stop. Stop talking. Stop seeing. Just fucking stop.

He rubs the back of his neck again. “You looked like you were in some serious pain, Sydney.”

“I’m fine,” I say through my teeth, but even I can tell it doesn’t sound convincing.

Peter makes this face—like he’s the one in pain. Like he’s trying to think of a way to save me from myself. Okay, no. Nope. Nope. All the way nope. I do not need this hero-complex bullshit in my life.

“Do you really … Do you really see those clocks?” His voice is almost a whisper now.

The No is locked and loaded in my mouth. It’s ready to go. But for some reason I can’t make myself say it. I just stand there, letting my hair soak through the back of my shirt, making my shoulders cold and wet.

“Sydney …” Peter reaches out and takes my hand. I yank it away and cross my arms.

But I still don’t say no. I still don’t yell at him to leave. I still don’t push him out of my room and lock the door. “I …”

Fuck it.

“Yeah,” I say. “I see them.” I don’t know why I say it. Maybe it’s a challenge. Maybe it’s a plea. I really have no clue. Because the last thing I should do is tell someone. This is not going to end well. Nothing ever does.

Charles’s enraged face flashes in my mind. The gold of his watch catching the hotel lights as he breaks the door chain and—

“Sydney.” Peter bends down slightly to look me in the eyes. He’s so goddamn tall. “What’s going on? In your head. Right now.”

“The day after tomorrow. In the morning,” I whisper. I’m outside my body, hovering over this scene, watching myself say out loud the truth that I work overtime to keep quiet. “That’s when Ms. Jegstrup is going to die.”

Fuck. I cannot believe I just said that.

Peter sits down at my desk, like he’s actually crushed by this knowledge. A cluster of my physically impaired origami birds, dangling on kitchen twine, hover over his head like a white cloud.

He looks up at me, his eyes worried and round, like a little boy who just found out Santa Claus isn’t real. “How is this even possible?”

“My grandma saw them. And then she died and passed them on to me, I guess. That’s about all I know. And yes, I’ve done research on the internet. And no, I still don’t have a better answer than Because. Got it?”