Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
WHEN WE MAKE IT TO THE OTHER SIDE, I take my hand back, and my fingers burn but I can’t tell if it’s because of his touch or the absence of it.
I don’t know where to look or what to do. It’s too much. I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t be here.
“Listen,” I say, “I think maybe we should—”
But it’s like Peter can sense that I’m about to try and bail because he gives me a big sparkly smile and says, “You know what I’ve always wanted to do?”
“Lie naked in a stack of best-selling hardcovers?”
“Hardcovers? In this economy?”
“Then I give up. But really, I think maybe—”
“I’ve always wanted to do one of those classic New York stoop sits.”
“A … stoop sit?” I narrow my eyes. “I feel like you’re just making shit up.”
“You know what I mean. Where people casually sit on the stoop of their apartment building and talk and people-watch. It’s a quintessential New York thing.”
“You want to go full indie film.”
“Well, kind of. Or like one of those great scenes in a slice-of-life book, where there’s no plot and nothing happening but it’s just … life.”
Just life. As if there’s anything just about life.
“Sounds pretentious. And anyway, we don’t actually have a New York apartment with a stoop to sit on, so—”
“We can borrow one,” Peter says. “Come on. I see one down the block that looks perfect.”
I’m about to protest (harder) or at least alert him to the stupidity of this desire, but he’s already walking. Actually, kind of half jogging. Backward. And smiling at me. I feel my feet moving, following him without my permission, like he’s got some invisible thread yanking me along after him.
“This really is idiotic,” I say.
Peter puts his hand up to his ear. “Sorry? What was that? Can’t hear you. Let’s talk about it on the stoop.”
Shocking absolutely no one, it turns out that walking backward on a city block is ill-advised.
Peter bumps into a scowly man with slicked-back hair, a mustache, and—I swear to god—an actual pocket watch.
But Peter just laughs and says he’s sorry and flashes him such a genuine smile that the surly hipster (or time traveler) shrugs and mumbles a “No problem.” It’s weird—how people respond to Peter.
It’s like he has this light that surrounds him and if you get close enough, a little bit of your darkness goes out too.
For other people, anyway. There’s no light big enough to drive out the darkness inside me.
But I guess it’s still nice to see it. To be near it.
Peter stops at a brownstone with stone steps and runs his hands over the black wrought-iron handrail. “Isn’t it great?”
“It is definitely stairs,” I say.
“Yeah, but look at the craftsmanship. They don’t make them like that anymore.
” He’s looking at this stoop like it’s actually special.
Like this old-ass outdoor staircase is an architectural marvel, and maybe it is, I don’t know a lot about stairs.
But what I do know is that he looks at the world in this (delusional) way that no one else does.
Like it might actually be an okay place.
He sees beauty where I see booby traps. And like, I’m right, obviously, but damn, I wonder what it’s like to live like that.
“Come on, let’s do it.” Peter pats the marvelous step made of elephant tusks or whatever, and I shrug and sit down, the stone cold through my leggings.
“Now what?”
“We talk,” Peter says.
I go to stand up. “Yup, I’m out.”
Peter reaches and grabs my wrist. Lightly. It’s so light that it feels like the heaviest thing in the world. He smiles up at me, squinting into the sun. “Stay.”
Stay. A tiny word. An enormous request.
I look out at the street. There’s a teenage girl who kinda reminds me of Jules wearing too much lipstick and furiously texting, a person with a Columbia shirt shouting on their AirPods about bedbugs and hookups, a businesswoman checking her Fitbit, a guy with a fanny pack pushing a twin stroller with some weird toddler-skateboard attachment thing.
And they’re all weaving between each other, finding the gaps, careful not to actually touch another human, like the rest of humanity is just an obstacle in the way of whatever their final destination is.
It’s all so … random. All these different lives.
The whole street is like a river of bodies that doesn’t know which way it’s supposed to flow.
A little poofy rat-dog thing winds its leash around its owner who almost trips over himself.
It is sort of like stepping into an indie movie.
There’s actually a little hot-dog cart on the other side of the street, and a bodega with a flower display next to it.
I don’t know how Peter managed to find a corner of New York that looks like Hollywood designed it to be New York. I’m half expecting someone to yell Cut!
“What’s it like in there?” Peter says.
“In where?”
He touches his pointer finger to my forehead. “In there. Sometimes it’s like you’re somewhere else.”
“I’m here,” I say, ignoring the fire where his finger was. “Against my will, I might add.”
“But what were you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever just thought about nothing.”
“You know,” I say, “you don’t really know me.”
Peter runs his hands through his hair. “That’s the point. I want to.”
My toes get all prickly in my sneakers, like they’re just itching to jump into that river of bodies so I can take off in my own direction, let the wind blow through my hair, and keep running until I find a bridge to jump off.
But I stay. “I’m an open book.”
Peter laughs. “No. You’re the unpublished Salinger works they keep telling us they’ll release and never do. But it’s okay. I don’t mind waiting.”
Jesus Christ. This guy reads too much. His words are too … too. They’re making me all messed up. And they’re making me want to … say things. But I don’t say things. Saying things is dangerous.
Oh, whoopsie daisy.
“Sydney,” he starts, looking at me as earnestly as he’s ever looked at me, which is saying a lot. He’s gearing up to talk to me about the big stuff. I can’t. It’s one thing to talk about the clocks as a concept, it’s a whole other thing to talk about how I feel about them.
If he keeps looking at me like this, I’m going to burst into flames on this supposedly interesting stoop.
“What’s it li—”
“Is this a coping mechanism of yours?” I cut in. “Focusing on everyone else instead of talking about yourself?”
Peter shifts on the edge of the step, suddenly looking uncomfortable. I’m not used to seeing him out of sorts. It makes me feel out of sorts.
“Relax, I’m just kidding. It’s not like I really believe a golden boy like you has big problems you need to avoid through the subtle art of deflection.”
“Right,” he says. He rubs the back of his neck and I wonder if maybe I’ve actually succeeded in offending him.
Maybe he really does want to talk about that one time in second grade when he only got runner-up in the spelling bee or something.
But then he clears his throat and smiles again.
“I just like getting to know you. That’s honestly all this is. ”
Oh god. There he goes again with the honesty. The earnestness. It’s so wildly over the top and yet …
And yet.
“Yeah, well, it’s okay because I’m pretty sure I already know you anyway.” My own art of deflection.
He raises his eyebrows. “Is that so?”
“Sure,” I say, brushing some dirt off the edge of my Converse. “You’re the guy who picks Os in tic-tac-toe.”
Peter’s eyes crinkle in a laugh. “What’s wrong with Os?”
“Everything.”
“Os are nice. They’re hugs!”
“See what I mean?”
“No,” Peter laughs again, “but I feel like maybe I should be insulted? Also, I thought you weren’t a mind reader.”
“Maybe I am,” I say. “Let me guess, your favorite color is …” I close my eyes and rub my temples. “Hmmm. Wait, it’s coming to me. Blue. Your favorite color is blue.”
Every boy’s favorite color is blue. It’s peak American gender indoctrination.
“Sorry,” Peter says.
“Red?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You mean green?”
I laugh. “Oh god. Right. I forgot. Okay, yellow? Can you see that?”
“Yes. But that’s not my favorite color.” He leans back on the stone step. “It’s white.”
“No way. No one’s favorite color is white.”
Peter shrugs. “Except me, I guess.”
“Your favorite color can’t be a lack of color. That’s … that’s more affected than the constant reading.”
“White isn’t a lack of color. It’s actually all the visible colors of the light spectrum reflected back at you. If we’re talking physics.”
“We’re not.”
“I just … I like things that are complicated, you know?” He pauses like he’s actually taking this kindergarten favorite-color shit seriously. “White looks like nothing, but it’s actually everything.”
Damn it. That actually is cool. And like, as much as it pains me to even think it, he’s really cool.
But so what? He’s a cool person. Whatever.
There are lots of cool people in this world.
Okay, maybe not lots. But at least like five.
That doesn’t mean it has to mean anything.
I’m just … appreciating him. Abstractly.
It’s not like I’m all thirsty for his stupid nerd brain and green eyes and tall tall-ness and that little mini bicep poking out his T-shirt. I’m not.
“What white really is,” Peter goes on, looking me in the eyes, “is misunderstood. But the most interesting things in life usually are.”
I can tell what he’s doing. He’s trying to sell me on the idea that I am somehow misunderstood and therefore interesting and unique and whatever. But the thing is, I’m not misunderstood. I’m messed up. There’s a big fucking difference.
“Listen, Peter, I think—” But the words die in my throat because at that exact moment, a bright pink neon clock lights up down the street.