Chapter Thirty-Nine
Thirty-Nine
MY PHONE BUZZES, lighting up the cramped corner of the hotel room. It’s the fifth time in the last hour.
“Peter,” I whisper.
His eyes shoot open, like he’s ready for battle or something. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. No. I don’t know.”
“What is it?”
I pick my phone up off the floor, unlock it, and pass it across the bed to him.
He sits up and scrolls through the messages. “I don’t get it.” He runs his hand through his hair and looks at me. “Who is this? An ex or something?”
“No. It’s … Charles.”
Peter puts the phone down. “That’s the name you were screaming.”
“Yeah.” I sit up too and bring my knees to my chest.
Peter reaches out and takes my hand. And then he just waits.
“I have these rules—for the clocks,” I start. I picture them now, written in black Sharpie on the inside of the front cover of the Doom Doodle notebook. So I never forget. “‘Don’t tell anyone. Don’t witness a Zero Hour. Don’t get involved.’”
“We’re breaking a lot of those this week,” Peter says.
“I broke them once before.”
“For Charles?”
I slip my hand from Peter’s and wrap my arms around my legs.
“My mom had this place up north. Kind of a cabin. I mean, I don’t know, it had a lot of wood in it.
Whatever. Anyway, we used to go there for the summer when we were little.
Jules and I would run around and play in the dirt and swim and stuff.
We made friends with all the other families around.
It was that kind of place, you know? Like out of a TV show or something.
The parents would get together on the weekends and on the Fourth of July and host these big cookouts.
When we got older and my mom was gone … we’d still go up there for a while in the summer.
Just Jules and me. It felt like a place where she was still around, you know? ”
“Wait, your dad let you and Jules go by yourselves?”
I run my hands over the rough bedspread.
I wonder how many other people have slept under it.
How many other lives have spent one night, one hour, under these same sheets.
“He’d come in the beginning, you know, to make it seem like it was a normal thing.
But then he’d always pretend to get some emergency work call and leave.
And sometimes he wouldn’t come back for weeks.”
“Jesus, that’s kind of—”
“It’s fine. He just … He couldn’t be there without Mom.
He’d leave us with enough money for food and stuff.
But …” My words get thick and clumped in my chest. “But then there was Charles. He was one of the dads who was at all the cookouts—he was like the grill master. Everyone loved him. And he was really nice to Jules and me. I think because he knew about my mom, and he knew my dad kind of bailed, so he tried to make up for it a little, you know?”
Peter goes kind of rigid, like he’s preparing himself.
“A couple years ago he asked me if I wanted to start babysitting for him. When he asked, he acted like he really needed the help. His wife had left a few years before. But I think … I think he just wanted to keep an eye on us. Jules and I had been to his house a few times before and he had the best junk food in his pantry. Like the Double Stuf Oreos and Sour Patch Kids, all that good shit. And so I said yeah. Plus his kid seemed nice enough, so whatever. So I started going over there, all the time, and then …” My hands start to shake again, and I squeeze them into fists.
“I don’t know, I just … I couldn’t help but start to love—”
“What did he do,” Peter says, the words flat and hard, like he’s trying to hold himself together.
“No,” I say. “No, it’s not like that. I mean …
I loved her. Caroline.” Just saying her name again makes my chest want to squeeze into itself.
“She was so little when I started. But she was so smart. Like she’d say these things that were just totally above her level.
Like once she called bagels ‘bastard doughnuts.’” I let out a small, rough laugh.
“God, I don’t even know where she heard that word.
She was cool, you know? Even when she was five.
She was cool. And then after a while it was like …
She was kind of mine, you know? Like Jules was off doing whatever, and Caroline was so attached to me.
I was there all the time. Even when I wasn’t supposed to be.
But Charles would let me stay. He’d set another plate at dinner without asking.
And it’s like … I don’t know … I was part of his family or something. I know it’s so pathetic but—”
“No it’s not,” Peter says. “I get it. That’s what everyone wants.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I take a breath. “When Caroline was seven
I’m not seven, Syd! I’m seven and three quarters. Don’t forget to account for my fractions.
Goddamn it. My eyes are blurry and hot, and I don’t know if I can finish this shit. I don’t even know what the point is. And then Peter does this thing. He reaches out and gently touches my ankle. “I’m here.”
“We were …” I swallow the heat rising in my throat.
“We were making origami birds on the carpet. I had helped her set up her own kid Instagram account and she was uploading all her attempts to her feed in hot pink filters. All these mangled, adorable paper birds. And we were laughing, making up ridiculous captions and … And Charles walks in and says, ‘How’re my girls?’ like it was real.
Like I really was one of them, and it was like this one moment of pure happiness and belonging.
And then I look over to Caroline and she’s beaming back at me—and she just lost her front teeth so she’s all gums and she—she’s got a clock over her head. ”
Oh shi— I mean, oh, whoopsie daisy. I messed up the wings again. Sydney? Sydney?
“Oh god, Syd …”
“I didn’t know what to do. It was like my life was ending too.
I just … I loved her so much. She was like this little perfect thing, you know?
And so I waited until she went to sleep, which is usually when I’d go home.
But I didn’t leave. I stayed. And I told him.
I told Charles. But he didn’t believe me.
I kept trying to convince him. And he kind of lost it.
I mean, I’m in the kitchen, hysterical, completely unhinged, telling him his perfectly healthy daughter’s going to die in three days.
Like god, of course he wouldn’t fucking believe me.
He started yelling at me, telling me to get out, telling me I needed help. ”
I stop. I don’t know if I can keep going. The noise of the air conditioner clicking on again is the only sound in the room. Even the city is quiet for a second.
“You can tell me,” Peter says. He slips his thumb under the edge of my sock, holding on to me. “Whatever happened, you can tell me.”
“He took her the next morning,” I say, my voice small.
“They left. And then four days later, he came back. By himself. There had been a car accident. And she was gone. Charles was like … he was possessed or something. He came to the cabin and he started pounding on the door. Jules was sleeping over at someone else’s.
So I was just there alone. And I let him in.
I thought maybe … I don’t know what I thought.
That’d we’d like, cry together or something.
But when I let him in he just started screaming that I was some sort of witch.
Like I did it to her. Like I …” My voice catches like a fishhook in my throat. “Like I killed her. On purpose.”
Peter brushes my hair out of my face. “Jesus, Syd. I’m so sorry.”
“He wanted me to fix it. He was convinced that because I knew I must have made it happen and so I could also somehow undo it. He wanted me to bring her back. He didn’t get it.
I couldn’t do anything. I never could. And like, I loved her too, you know?
I would’ve done anything to get her back.
Except this is real life. Death is it. There’s no coming back.
The more I told him that, the angrier he got.
He left that night but he couldn’t let it go.
“He started trying to find me everywhere. Sending me weird Reddit articles about witchcraft and links to these crazy websites about bringing back dead people. Sometimes he would just beg me over and over and sometimes he would get really mad. It was like … when Caroline died, he broke in a way that could never get put back together. And I couldn’t fix it.
“I kept trying, you know? Talking him through it. Letting him be mad at me. But it just got scarier and scarier. I kept trying to apologize. To help, but … it was never enough.
“Once he cornered me outside the movie theater and forced me to read some article about harnessing electricity as a way to, like, regenerate cells or something. Another time he walked into a conference room at the library and wouldn’t let me leave until I promised him I’d ‘recharge my powers.’ He’d always go away for a while after one of the incidents.
And sometimes I’d think that was it. He never comes to my house, but he always comes back.
Finds me again. And at that track meet …
it was bad. The worst it had ever been. He … It was …”
Peter’s body tenses, but he doesn’t say anything.
“He felt shitty. Afterward, you know? Shitty enough to leave me alone again for a while. I kind of thought it might be over. But now …”
“He’s trying again.”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever …” Peter rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry, I don’t know if I’m allowed to ask this. But have you ever thought about reporting him?”
“No. I can’t report him. I can’t cut him off.”
“Why?”
“Because.” I take the phone and flip it over, facedown on the bed. “He was right, in a way. It was my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Peter sits up straighter, leaning back against the headboard. “It wasn’t, Sydney.”
“You don’t get it. If she had just died, then maybe he would’ve been okay.
Like maybe he would’ve been really, really sad for a while, but he would’ve kept on living.
But telling him … that’s what made him like this.
That’s why he can’t stop obsessing. He’s convinced there’s some secret to life and death that I’m just refusing to let him in on.
I made it this way for him. It is my fault. ”
Tears, stupid fucking big tears well up in my eyes.
And then the real question, the one I’ve been too afraid to put into words even in the darkest nights, comes spilling out of my mouth.
“What if I hadn’t said anything? Maybe she would be alive?
Because it was a car accident, you know?
And he left the lake because of what I said?
What if—” The tears fall fat and wet down my cold cheeks. “What if I did kill her?”
Peter pulls me into him, holding on so tight I can’t tell where he starts and I end, my face pressed against the waffle pattern of his shirt. “No. No, Sydney,” he whispers into my hair. “You are a good person. You are maybe the best person.”
“There is something bad inside me, Peter. Something dark.”
Peter pulls back and looks me in the eyes. “Bullshit.”
I must look startled, because he doubles down and says it again.
“Bullshit. God, Sydney, we’re specks in this universe.
Little nothing motes in the sky. And none of us—not a single soul—knows how it works or who we are or what the point is.
But you …” He wipes a tear from my chin with his finger.
And it almost looks like maybe he wants to kiss me again.
But he doesn’t. He just keeps talking. “You see something else. What’s inside you isn’t dark, Sydney.
It’s beautiful. You’re more connected to reality than the rest of us ever will be.
” Peter runs his hand through his hair. “We all keep living our lives as if they’ll go on forever.
As if our story is the one that doesn’t end.
But in real life, there is no epilogue. The words run out.
And you’re the only one who really knows it. ”