Page 47 of 72 Hours of You

And Peter.

I set my pencil down.

There’s something in this that’s connected to him. Peter and his goddamn hot dog. It’s like the packet and Peter are—

No, fuck this. Fuck the packet. Fuck Peter. Fuck all of it.

I grab the packet and toss it into the small rattan wastebasket under my desk.

Nothing has changed. She told Ms. Shywill that our little chat at the ice cream social made her feel good. So what? That was the point of the whole “maybe I’ll apply” lie anyway. I should be glad it worked and that she felt a tiny scrap of fulfillment before she ascended to the next astral plane. And I mean, I am glad. It’s just … now there’s this … thing.

I look at the red of the Doom Doodle notebook and the shiny purple of the NYU packet under my desk, two shades of a bruise at different stages.

Maybe I’ve been looking at this whole thing the wrong way. Maybe it’s not about saving people—god knows that’s impossible. Maybe it’s like Peter said. It’s just about changing something.

I sit there, at my desk, doing nothing, for who knows how long, watching the sky outside turn from light blue to a dark indigo, the night blooming like the thin inky skin of a black eye. And I don’t know if it’s the darkness leaking into my room, or the smell of sweet street nuts and human piss still clinging to my clothes, or the thick brochure under my desk, but something shifts. Something small. And so I do something I’ve never done before.

I flick on my task lamp and open my red notebook to page one.

Twenty-Three

I LIE IN BED, rolled into myself like a shriveled-up, decaying starfish. I press the red notebook to my chest, microscopic shards of pretzel crumbs digging into my back. I don’t know why I did that—looked at all those pages of dead people. Well, not all of them, if I’m being honest. There were two I skipped.

Mom.

Caroline.

No amount of self-flagellation or fucked-up attempt at enlightenment is worth revisiting those pages. But still. The rest of them were enough. The first sketches were kind of heartbreaking. The opening pages are all big heads and lopsided circles for eyes. I had forgotten how young I was when I started this book. And I had forgotten other stuff too. Like the grocery guy. I forgot his name was Harry. And that he thought four-leaf clovers were actually unlucky.

The hotel lady—she had been visiting her sister who just had a baby.

The guy on the side of the road—he had a dog with three legs.

The person in line at the library—they were checking out five books even though they said they only had time to read two because they “liked to live on the edge.” They probably never even made it through one.

I check my face for the stickiness of tear tracks but feel nothing but smooth dry skin. Still, my heart is swollen and raw.

It’s like the paper ghosts of this wire-bound graveyard are resurrecting themselves in my bedroom, trying to tell me something.

I run my fingers over the rough bumps of the scab on my forehead—a reminder of just how miserably I’m failing at … whatever the fuck this life is. The scraping force of the concrete against my skull. The image of Peter backlit by the sun, warm and amber, his face bending down to check on mine.

And then I ask myself the question I never let myself ask:

Why me?

And not in some cringe self-pitying way. But really, why me? Why the fuck am I the one who sees these Doom Scrolls hanging over people’s heads? What the fuck is the point of any of this?

A cramp of anxiety rolls through my stomach, giving me that feeling where I know I should be doing something—something crucial—but it’s like whatever that thing is, it’s in another dimension just out of reach.

Objectively, I’m the worst person on earth to have this stupid curse. Like maybe Bubbe did better, but I don’t fucking know. She never told me about it. She left me alone in this. And like, okay, she was on her deathbed and was probably 98 percent batshit by then. But still. She should have tried.

It shouldn’t be me. It should be someone else. Someone less shitty. Someone who thinks the world isn’t a flaming bag of dog shit. Someone who doesn’t dissociate every time they see a gold watch or a button-down shirt. Someone who doesn’t automatically assume everyone on the street is a massive asshole. Someone—

Someone like Peter.

Obviously.

Someone just like Peter.