Chapter Ten
Ten
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” My voice comes out weird and slow, but I can hardly hear it. My ears are ringing. Blood is pounding in my skull.
“I …” Peter stands there, mouth open, face ghost white.
What did he see? What the fuck did he see?!
I run over and snatch the notebook out of his hands, clutching it to my chest. “I said green notebook!” I scream, tears springing up in my eyes. “Green! What is wrong with you?!”
“I’m color-blind!” he yelps back.
“What?!”
“I can’t become a pilot!”
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” My hands are shaking and the room is spinning. Peter is looking at me with horror and disgust and fear and a bunch of other bottom-dwelling emotions I can’t name. He saw. He saw it all.
“I … Red and green. They’re the same to me. The cones. In my eyes …” He trails off.
Jesus Christ. He saw it all.
“Sydney …” he starts again. “What is this?”
“It’s nothing. It’s a fucking diary.”
“But the pictures …”
“What about them?” I snap. “I draw creepy pictures. Who cares? It’s whatever.”
“But all the people in here …” He pauses and rubs the back of his neck. “They’re all dead. Except for Jegstrup …”
“I … It …” Shit!
“In the notebook, you drew a clock. Over her head. Like … one of those countdown clocks. And everyone else in this book is already dead. And … do you think Jegstrup is going to—”
“Just shut up!” I mean for it to sound harsh and rude, but it comes out in a pathetic little warble. I might fucking cry.
He reaches out, like he wants to pull me into a hug. I step back. “Just let it be. Just don’t … Just …”
“It’s okay,” he says, clearly trying to sound stronger than he feels, because his face is still pale and terrified.
“It’s not okay. Nothing is ever okay.”
“Sydney …”
I have to get it together.
“Look,” I say, attempting some approximation of casualness, even though I’ve already screamed and am currently on the verge of crying little bitch tears.
“It’s just a weird notebook with creepy drawings.
It doesn’t mean anything. I just got freaked out because I haven’t shown anyone my sketches before. They’re personal. So. That’s it.”
“You can tell me,” Peter says.
“Tell you what? That I’m some kind of psychic who can see when people are going to die?
” I laugh. “Yeah, right. Do you know how crazy that sounds? This isn’t some M.
Night Shyamalan movie. This is real life.
Don’t be insane.” I laugh again, to really drive it home.
This is normal. This is casual. This is fine. I’m just a girl with a dark aesthetic.
Something shifts in Peter’s face. He isn’t buying it. He shakes his head, his eyebrows pulling together. “That night with Liam … you were so intense about him getting in that car. And …”
“I was drunk.”
“I heard you,” Peter presses. “You said … Shit, what was it? You said … ‘You were a good guy.’ Were.” Shit, I really thought I whispered that.
“I remember thinking it was weird at the time, but I was distracted because you looked so …” His cheeks get the tiniest bit of red (or apparently green if you’re Peter).
“Anyway, I kind of forgot about it. But now …”
“Now what? Like I said, I was drunk. So what if I mixed up my tenses? I didn’t think having perfect grammar was a requirement for attending a high school party. If so, you should probably tell Noah, because that kid says irregardless.”
“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?”
Peter runs his hands through his hair. “How is Jegstrup … I mean, how is she …”
“How is she going to die? That’s what you want to know?”
Peter nods silently.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I have no fucking idea. She could die of a heart attack or choke on a pancake. She could get trampled by a stampede of clowns. I don’t know. That’s not how this works.”
Peter swallows, solemn and serious. As if a clown stampede is a perfectly reasonable way to shuffle off this mortal coil.
“Go ahead. Ask the next question.” I cross my arms even tighter. Steady myself for the blow I know is coming.
But Peter just cocks his head slightly. “I’m not sure I know what the next question is.”
“Of course you do,” I spit. But he doesn’t open his mouth. God, he’s going to make me do all the dirty work for him. “The next question is: Why don’t you save them?”
I can feel tears wanting to shove their way out of my eyes. Not happening. No fucking way. I bite my cheek and square my shoulders. “Go ahead, ask.”
But it’s not a look of sheepish recognition that washes over Peter’s face. It’s genuine confusion. “Why would I ask that?”
“Because that’s the only question that matters!” I say, the anger rising in my voice. “Because if I know when people are supposed to die, then why do I just let it happen? Why don’t I save them?”
Peter stands up from my desk, his head nearly colliding with a crane, and crosses the distance between us. He looks like he wants to reach for me again, but I tense and he shoves his hands in his pockets instead. “I’d never ask you that question.”
“Why? You don’t think I’m the kind of person who would try to save them?”
“No, Syd.” He shakes his head. “Because if it was possible to save them, you would’ve done it already.”
Shit. I wasn’t expecting that. The kindness, the stupid fucking kindness—I don’t know what to do with it.
I bite my cheek harder. I try to keep it all in, to hold all the pain and the anger and the shitty feelings together, but I can’t.
I press the notebook closer to my chest, as if I can keep it all there.
Separate this from my actual self. But I can’t.
They’re always with me. I feel them, every second of every goddamn day.
Liam’s huge smile and black curls. The ghost of his high five in my hand.
The woman at the hotel counter, arguing over her room’s view.
The checkout man in the grocery store wishing me a happy Friday.
Bubbe’s eyes, sliding away, slipping into nothingness.
Leaving me alone in this, the beeping of her machine mingling with my shouting.
I see Mom’s face, blank and gone, three deep scratches across her cheek.
Ms. Jegstrup grinning with a smudge of lipstick on her front tooth.
I see Charles. Everything flying off the hotel dresser.
A lamp shattering. A scream that isn’t mine.
But I also see Peter. Here. Not leaving. His brown waves dangling over his big green eyes. His lip is sucked in just slightly, like he wants to do something. But maybe … maybe that something isn’t run. Maybe it’s stay.
The tears push their way forward. And then I’m doing something I never do. I’m crying. And this time, when Peter reaches for my hand, I let him.