Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
Apparently none of this fazes Peter either, because he takes a deep breath of the stale sewage air, smiles, and says, “Did you know that ice cream cones were invented in New York?”
“Get outta town.”
“And pasta primavera and eggs Benedict.”
“And crony capitalism,” I add, helpfully.
“Nah, I think that was Philly. Or maybe England.”
We exit the platform area into the main concourse.
It’s still crawling with people but the enormous ceilings and windows give you the illusion of having more space.
Like how the TSA gives you the illusion of safety at the airport.
This giant dome crammed with NY train people is actually not suffocating because look at the windows!
And a terrorist will not unalive you on your red-eye because take off your shoes and remove your laptops from your backpack!
The Grand Central ceilings are beautiful, though.
They’re this light turquoise color littered with giant golden constellations of triangles and crabs and leaping fish and scantily clad Greek men with bowl cuts.
I wonder how many people have died looking up at this ceiling, the little angel man getting ready to bludgeon a bull the last image they see before they ascend to the heavens themselves. Metaphorically.
“The constellations are actually all backward,” Peter says, following my eyes and leaning down so I can hear him over the noise.
“They projected the image onto the ceiling so they could paint, except they did it facing the wrong way. But sometimes mistakes just make something more interesting and beautiful, don’t you think?
” His mouth is close to my ear, and it sends a not-entirely-unpleasant shiver down my spine.
I clear my throat and turn to face him. “Did you study a BuzzFeed listicle about fun NYC facts on the train?”
“No, I read a Frommer’s guide on my Kindle app,” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s being serious or not. “Do you want to—”
My Apple Watch zaps my wrist over and over at the same time Peter’s phone buzzes in his front pocket. I slide my phone out too and swipe up to see thirty-six alerts. And counting. All from the senior class group chat.
I read through the flurry of messages, new ones dragging the chat back down every five seconds.
I guess the news is fully out about Ms. Jegstrup.
From what I can piece together, she died yesterday (right on schedule), but no one found her until this morning.
When her daughter (who lives in some flyover state) hadn’t heard from her all weekend, she got worried and asked the police to do a wellness check. Things were not well.
Noah’s dad is the head of our town’s police department (#DefundNoahsDad), so we’re getting a pretty descriptive account of what went down in Ms. Jegstrup’s living room.
She died on her couch, a stack of mediocre essays on her lap and a message from Netflix superimposed over a Heartstopper kiss asking, Are you still watching?
They haven’t done an autopsy or anything yet, but the police are unofficially reporting a brain aneurysm. And the senior class is unofficially reporting that Jegstrup was secretly fucking the assistant principal, based on the fact that she had four unread texts from him on her locked phone screen.
“That’s so fucking sad,” I say at the same time Peter says, “At least she died peacefully.”
I’m about to say something back to Peter when a forty-something woman with purple bags under her eyes and a fresh baguette under her arm walks by with a pink clock buzzing over her head.
The light makes her eyes look even more sunken.
She’s got eleven hours, twenty-two minutes, and three seconds left.
I’m in the city for one minute and I’m already seeing a clock. This place is so fucked.
The woman stops directly in front of us and fishes a phone out of her knitted purse.
It’s a silver flip phone from like the 1900s.
She presses some buttons and balances the phone against her ear.
“Hey, Ger. I— Yeah. I got the bread. I’ll be there in thirty.
” She pauses and then lets out a throaty laugh, tipping her head all the way back, her long black hair grazing the top of her butt.
“No way. You’re not getting me again. I swear! You’re scrabbling!”
I have no idea what they’re talking about. I have no idea who Ger is, who this woman is, or why she’s got tired eyes and a loaf of crusty bread. I have no idea if “scrabbling” is an inside joke or what the hell she’s talking about.
And I’ll never know.
She snaps her phone closed and heads off toward whatever platform is taking her to Ger.
She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t make eye contact.
We have no cosmic moment of understanding about the absurdity of life and death through a glance that, for some reason she can’t put her finger on, feels meaningful. She doesn’t even know I exist.
But now I know she does. And I have to make this stranger a page in my notebook.
“. . . according to Emma.” Peter pauses whatever he was talking about and follows my eyes.
“Sorry,” I say, turning my attention back to his overly concerned face. “Were you saying something?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, earnestly. “You look … Did you see something?” He glances back in the direction of the baguette woman.
“That bread lady’s got less than half a day left.”
“Oh, Sydney …”
“Listen, if you’re expecting me to break down crying, or whatever, it’s not happening.
People die every day. Every second of every day.
It’s not like people sob every time they turn on the news, which recounts, like, thousands of deaths all over the world.
And that doesn’t make me a bad person. For not crying. I don’t know her. So.”
“I know,” Peter says. “I get it.” He stops for a second, like he’s actually taking the time to think about what he says next.
Which is not something I am used to from teenage boys.
“Listen,” he starts, “my mom was a doctor, remember? An ER doctor, actually. I get how you have to compartmentalize to survive. No one’s judging you, Sydney.
Well, at least I’m not.” He pauses, his eyes scanning my face.
“But it would still be okay to admit you felt a little bad too. No one would judge you for that either.”
“I don’t feel bad”, I say. “I feel … I don’t know. It’s just weird. She’s going to die, and I’m the only one who knows it.”
“That’s not true,” Peter says. “Now I know too.”
This thing happens, then, when he looks at me and says that. This thing where my heart pushes against my chest, swelling like a broken bone trying to heal itself.
Well, that’s about enough of that.
“Sydney …”
“Let’s get some pizza,” I say before Peter can start quoting Socrates or Colleen Hoover or whoever he’s reading this week.
He looks a little startled but then he shakes it off. “Okay,” he says. “I know the perfect place.”
“It better not be Sbarro’s.”
“THIS IS A BAR,” I SAY, pointing to the bar we’re standing in front of.
“No it’s not,” Peter says, a smile sliding onto his face.
I point again to the giant sign hanging over the wooden door that says BAR.
“Just watch,” Peter says. He pulls open the door and a blast of cold air hits us.
A bachelorette group that’s obviously been up all night is laughing and taking shots at what is very clearly a bar, and a couple of old guys in German soccer jerseys are drinking beers at a corner table.
God, it’s like ten in the morning. New York is so insane.
We go to step inside, but a middle-aged white guy on a black barstool with a beer gut and muttonchops puts out his hand.
“That’s a bouncer,” I whisper to Peter. “They have them at bars.”
“IDs,” the bouncer says.
“We don’t have IDs,” Peter says.
“Exit’s that way.” He points a meaty finger behind us.
Peter drops his voice and leans down toward the bouncer. “Don’t worry. We’re here for … other stuff.”
Oh my god he’s lost his mind.
I grab his elbow. “There, there, sweetie, let’s get you back to the hospital before pill time.”
But the bouncer nods and says, “Through the second gender-neutral bathroom on the right.”
Peter turns around and winks.
“Care to tell me what the hell is happening here?” I hiss. “Because I’m starting to feel like my concussion is relapsing.”
“I thought you didn’t have a concussion.”
I roll my eyes.
Peter walks toward the back bathrooms, and I have no choice but to follow him.
The bachelorette group at the bar starts screaming about penises as a George Ezra song plays in the background.
“It’s a food speakeasy,” Peter says, pushing open the door to the bathroom, which is actually a bricked hallway to another room.
I follow him through the tunnel into a dimly lit pizza parlor straight out of the 1960s, with a jukebox and everything.
We take a seat at a worn wooden booth, and Peter smiles a giant megawatt smile.
He looks so handsome, his eyes crinkling in the corners and his hair dangling over his eyebrow.
It makes me want to break the little vase of fake flowers on the table and stab something.
“A bar with a hidden restaurant in the back, instead of the other way around. This is so New York.”
“I know,” Peter says. “There’s nowhere like the city.”
“Except maybe Fairbanks, Alaska,” I mumble.
“What?”
“Hey, Petey!” An annoyingly hot girl in a crop top and low-rise baggy jeans interrupts our sparkling conversation.
“Petey?” I mouth at him.
He shrugs but I can see the tiniest hint of pink hit the tips of his ears. “Hey, Zia. Can we get a …” He turns back to me. “What kind of pizza do you like?”
“Cheese.” An inspired answer. I feel Zia and her diamond nose stud judging me for not ordering a vegan cauliflower crust. Although, actually, that might be the new version of basic if you think about it. Which I’m sure no one does.
Peter nods. “Half cheese, half mushroom.”
“Sure thing,” Zia says, her eyes lingering on Peter.
She’s got to be in college, and Peter’s only a high school senior, so the whole thing is gross.
I mean, okay, yeah, plenty of high school girls date college boys, but that’s different because …
Fuck, I don’t know. Because she’s got a nose ring and I don’t.
“Who orders mushroom?” I ask when it’s just the two of us again.
“Fungis.”
“Wow, now I wish I had a clock over my head.”
Peter laughs. “Sometimes my dad’s voice is too loud in my head. It can’t be helped.”
I nod like I get it. But I don’t. I wish my mom’s voice was still in my head.
But she’s barely a whisper anymore. Just little snippets.
A laugh. The impression of lips on a hot forehead.
A perfume I can’t place. A Sydney, do you have your water bottle?
We’re going to be late for dance. But even those little bits get slipperier each year.
Like trying to pinch water between your fingers. I’m not even sure if they’re real.
“How was your camping trip?” I ask, trying out this thing where I’m normal and talk to people about normal things.
A shadow crosses Peter’s face. “It was fine.” Now he’s the one who looks like he wants to smash the flower vase (which I’m actually pretty sure is plastic).
“Wow. I feel like I was there. You really know how to describe a scene.”
“It’s because of all the books I read.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that, by the way?”
“What’s up with all the books?” Peter looks surprised by the question. “Reading is cool. Haven’t you seen the posters in the library?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But the sheer number you consume. And the genre-hopping. It’s kind of … affected.”
“Damn.” Peter laughs. “I thought it was charming.”
“Could be both,” I say. Out loud.
Peter’s smiling at me like he won the lottery. It’s obscene. Only he could get this high off a half insult. He doesn’t even look up when Nose Ring drops our pizza off.
“Don’t try to make me out to be the weird one,” Peter says. “I’m not the one furiously annotating Martin Heidegger during every free period.”
“That’s …”
“No, I’m just kidding,” Peter says. “I get why you’re so obsessed with him.”
“Oh, do you?” No one gets why I’m obsessed with him.
“Sure,” he says, easily. “His theory on death.”
“I …” I’m about to say something sarcastic and horrible like Nah, Jews just really get off on reading books written by arrogant Nazis, but for once in my life I stop myself. Instead I just say, “Yeah.”
“He makes the whole dying thing seem … almost ideal,” Peter goes on. “Like hey, in that moment, the moment of death, you get to finally be your true self. It’s like …” He takes a bite of mushroom pizza. “It’s like all of life is actually leading up to death as the prize rather than the punishment.”
The cheese pizza is getting cold on my plate, but I can’t do anything but stare at Peter. Because holy shit, it’s like he can read my mind. Or I guess, at least read Heidegger. “I don’t even know if I think he’s right,” I say, finally.
“Yeah, but he could be,” Peter says. “He could be.”
“You guys doing okay?” Zia says. “Can I get you anything else?” She reaches out and touches Peter’s shoulder. “Anything?”
But Peter’s eyes are locked on mine. “Syd, are you okay?”
And no, no I am fucking not. Because a man has just walked in with a booming laugh and a gold watch glinting under the dim pizza lights, a blue button-down straining at his wrists.
Charles.