Page 6 of 72 Hours of You

I’ve tried to avoid it all—the questions, the whispers—but gossip at Chapswell High has a way of escalating whether or not you want it to. Last year, someone leaked nudes of Sophia and people couldn’t stop talking about them for months. Like, the art club made fan art. Some of the charcoals were actually pretty stunning. The point is, they weren’t even proper nudes—you could see, like, a shadow of a shadow of an areola—but it still made headlines for the entire winter semester. So I’m not shocked the student body is feasting on Liam’s death like a bunch of starved zombies, nibbling on his personality and picking over his final moments.

I can only imagine what they’d be like if they found out I knew the actual, precise moment of his death down to the second. If they found out I’m some sort of mutant freak who sees neon-pink death clocks over people’s heads seventy-two hours before they die. If they found out …

But they will never find out. Because I will never, ever tell anyone. That’s a mistake I won’t make again.

I lock my phone and throw it into my backpack. I can still feel Peter’s eyes on me when Ms. Jegstrup walks into class. As usual, she’s all business, setting her worn leather satchel on her desk along with her thermos.

I keep my eyes locked on her. I don’t even let my feet or knees angle in Peter’s direction. Jules forced me to watch this TikTok that said your focus flows to where you angle your body, so I’m keeping all my limbs pointed straight ahead and away from him. I don’t believe in that woo-woo shit, but still, it’s the principle.

It’s not that he’s not nice and everything. He seems fine. And you’d have to be as dead as Liam not to notice that he’s technically good-looking, in that green-eyed, wavy hair, tall, bland, parent-approved ABC Freeform kind of way. If you’re into that kind of thing, which I’m not. There’s something about him that’s so … unnerving. It’s like he also believes we have some weird mystical connection from watching Liam climb into the car that drove him to the Drive-Thru of Death.

We don’t.

I’ve seen enough pink clocks to know that when it’s your time, it’s your time. There’s no preordained plan. There’s no bearded raggedy-ass white guy in the sky pretending to give a shit if we live or die. There’s no hidden meaning. And there’s no changing it.

Hopefully Noah sends a conversation-changing dick pic to someone in his harem so the cheerleaders can stop dressing in all black and reminding me every second of every day that Liam is gone and that Peter and I watched him go.

I like it better when I’m the only one dealing with the aftermath of a clock. Witnessing everyone else’s reactions to death is just too much.

My only saving grace is that this is a small town, which means I average seeing two clocks a year. (I’ve kept pretty meticulous records, even if I’m the only one who will ever see them.) And so Liam plus that old guy at the parking garage three months ago have me covered for the year. Once everyone forgets about Liam things can go back to normal.

The tardy bell beeps, and I finally sense Peter shift in his seat to face forward.

“Good morning!” Ms. Jegstrup says. She looks up from her thermos and beams at us.

And then a pink clock blinks to life over her head.

Fuck.

Three

MY FINGERTIPS TURN PURPLE WITH COLD, like little seashells. The air circles around me, stifling and freezing at the same time, blood thundering in my ears. Everything stops. Well, not really. The clock keeps ticking down, down, down, no matter how much adrenaline is firing through my veins. The clock never stops.

Jesus Christ, how is this possible? Another clock? Now?

71:58:13

In three days Ms. Jegstrup will be dead.

And the school will lose its absolute shit.

“I want to commend you all on your Camus essays from last week.” Ms. Jegstrup pulls a stack of graded papers from her briefcase and smiles, her lipstick leaving the slightest shadow of pink on her front tooth.

Damn it. Why does it have to be her? Why couldn’t it be Mr. Jerzo? He fucking sucks and his tests never follow his study guides. Plus he’s ancient. And Ms. Jegstrup isn’t.

I mean, she’s kind of old. But not old old. Like I’m sure she’s got grandkids, but they’re probably little. She’s not, like, feeding-tube, bony-hands, racist-comments-at-Thanksgiving old. She still dyes her hair. Yeah, I can see her white roots like a strip of skunk fur on top of her head. But still. She tries. I even caught her telling another teacher that her students were working “hard af” this semester. She pronounced it aff but whatever.

And now she’s got less than three days to live.

That’s three days until this school decides there’s a curse or some other stupid shit happening. Three days until everyone starts consulting Ouija boards and crying over another person they barely gave a shit about when they were alive. Three days until …

“Syd.” Peter’s voice, strong and insistent, pushes through the whirring in my ears. “Syd.”

“What?” I whisper-hiss, tearing my eyes from Ms. Jegstrup’s clock.

“Are you okay?” His eyes drift to my hands.

I release my white-knuckled death grip on the sides of my desk and pick up my pen. Casually. Normally. I make my face go smooth and emotionless. “I’m fine.”