Chapter Fifty-One
Fifty-One
“PETER,” I SAY, MY VOICE CALM and measured, even though my chest is screaming, clawing, tearing apart. “What was it you wanted to tell me?” This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
Peter closes the phone and sits up. I feel myself sitting up too, though I’m not really sure who is making my body move.
He takes my hand. “Sydney, I know you know something’s been going on with me. And I’m sorry I haven’t told you sooner.” He takes a breath. “My dad’s sick.”
I …
“Your dad? I don’t understand.” His words aren’t making sense. Maybe my brain isn’t working. Maybe nothing is real anymore.
“He got diagnosed with Huntington’s a while ago. But it’s gotten really bad in the last year. That’s why we moved here. He wanted to be somewhere quieter. My mom quit to help take care of him. Before he …” He rubs his thumb over my hand and lets out a sigh. “Before he dies.”
Keep your eyes on his face. Not the clock. His face.
“Huntington’s?” I don’t even know what I’m saying.
“It’s a degenerative disease. It eats away at your brain.
At your mind, until … until you’re gone.
My mom’s a wreck. It’s been so hard to watch …
” I lose the end of his sentence. His words are muffled, garbled.
Like he’s talking to me from the bottom of an ocean.
The syllables are in the wrong order. I’m dreaming.
I must be dreaming. There’s pink light everywhere.
What is he talking about? His dad is sick?
“But … what about you?” The words feel so small, so tiny. But those three words are all that matter. What about the boy with the green eyes who opens doors and recites weird lines from books? What about him? What about Peter? Don’t cry. Do not fucking cry.
Peter goes kind of still, his face smooth and somber under the cast of pink light. “It’s hereditary.”
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
He leans back on my headboard. “My mom has been obsessed with finding out if I have the gene, looking for signs, tracking how much I’m sleeping .
… She’s been dragging me to appointments, trying to convince me to get tested.
She basically wants to know if she’s going to be the only one of us left.
” He lets out a bitter half laugh. “See? You’re not the only one who can get dark. ”
“Peter—” Against my will, tears well up in my eyes.
“No, it’s okay,” he says. “Really. I’m not scared.
I thought I’d never want to get tested. Because, I figured, what was the point?
For a little while I got kind of depressed, stopped hanging out with my friends and stuff, but then I decided I was just going to try and live every single day like it could be my last. For my dad, and for me too, you know?
And being with you and seeing all those different Clockers …
it made me feel like that was the right thing. But then, that day at the waterfall …”
“Peter—”
“I just never thought …” He clears his throat and it’s my turn to reach out and hold his hand.
“I never thought that any of this would happen. That there’d be a you and me.
But now there is. And that day at the falls, when you were talking about what it’s like to be left behind …
I didn’t want to do that to you. I couldn’t bear to be the reason you felt like that again. So I decided to get tested.”
I put my palm on his face. On his warm cheek. My hand glows in the bright pink light.
“I’ll get the results on Thursday.”
He’ll be dead on Wednesday.
“Are you mad?” he asks. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I know I should have. I just—”
“No. It’s okay. I’m not mad.” I’m not mad. I’m disintegrating into oblivion.
And then he smiles this giant beautiful smile and he pulls me back into him, holding on to me, both of our bodies bathed in pink light that only I can see. My arms are limp and unmoving, but I let him hold on to me, my head on his chest, feeling him breathe.
He holds me like that for a while. Seconds, hours, a lifetime, I don’t know. I don’t dare look at the clock.
Peter’s phone buzzes and he lets go of me to check it. My body already aches at the absence of him. “Shit. Sorry. It’s my mom.” He looks up from his text. “I have to go. She’s really happy that I got tested, but she’s still really worried, you know?”
My heart surges with desperation. I don’t want him to leave. I want to reach out and grab his T-shirt and wrap my fingers around the fabric and never let go. I want to pull his whole body close to mine. Hold him. Keep him. But I don’t. There is no keeping him. He’s not mine. Not anymore.
“Aw, Syd, don’t look so worried. Everything’s going to be okay. I have a good feeling about this test. I really do.”
I nod. I make my face do something. Is it smiling? I can’t feel it.
He leans over and kisses me on the forehead, and I smell the soapy lemon of his skin for just a fraction of a second before he pulls back.
And then I let him leave.
The room is quiet and still. My foot brushes something underneath the covers. I bend down and grab it. Peter’s origami bird, crumpled and wrinkled. I hold it close to my chest and I don’t move when night comes and the darkness fills every corner of the room.