Chapter Sixty-Three
Sixty-Three
PETER STIFFENS. “HEY, MAN. You can’t be here.” He angles his body between the door and Charles.
“I just need to talk to Sydney.”
Peter puts his arm out, blocking him. “No.”
Charles looks at me, his eyes suddenly turning wild and desperate. “Please, Sydney. I just want to apologize.”
“How did you know I was here?” I whisper.
“Instagram,” he says.
Oh. Oh god. The last thing on Peter’s timeline. The two of us. Here.
“But I blocked you,” I say, weakly. As if that’s going to change anything.
“I know,” he sighs. “I used her account.”
I almost ask whose account he means. But I already know who he’s talking about. There is only one “her” to Charles.
Caroline.
I imagine him pacing, logging on to the account I set up for her, clicking away from the rainbow-colored grid of photos of little origami birds, touching the only name in her friends list. Mine. I wanted her to be able to have an account. But I wanted to keep her safe from the outside world.
God, this is all so fucked up.
“I’m sorry,” Charles says. “I don’t want to upset you. I just have a couple of things I need to say.”
“I think you’ve said enough already,” Peter says.
Charles looks from me to Peter. “Does he know? What you can do? Who you really are?”
“I …”
“Yeah. I know exactly who she is. And I also know exactly who you are, and you need to leave. Now.”
“You don’t understand,” Charles says, a familiar tremor of anguish in his voice. “I have to talk to her. Just one more time. Please.” He tries to push past Peter.
“No.”
“Yes,” he says through gritted teeth. And then he shoves his shoulder into Peter, hard, and pushes his way into our room. And just like that, our bubble of safety explodes.
“Please, Charles,” I say, my hands shaking. “Please. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I swear. I promise.”
“It has to be today,” he says.
Peter grabs him by the shoulder. “She said no. Do not take one more step toward her, I swear to god.”
“Peter—” We can’t waste his last minutes on Charles. This can’t be happening. He has to see his parents. I have to kiss him all over his face and tell him I love him. I’ve only told him once.
Charles turns around to face Peter and they start arguing, but I can’t hear their words. I can’t hear anything besides my own heart screaming in my ears. Because then I see it.
Tucked behind his back, into his waistband.
A gun.
I can’t breathe. Everything blurs together: the expensive yellow armchairs, the soft carpet under my feet, the smell of cold burgers and shrimp, Charles’s watch, Peter’s words … Nothing feels real. Nothing is real. Nothing except—
“Peter.” His name comes out in a croak, a plea, a prayer.
Charles turns at the sound of my voice—my stupid fucking voice—and then Peter’s entire face goes white. He sees it too.
00:19:12
He still has almost twenty minutes left. We just have to get Charles out of here. We have to—
Peter lunges at him. They fall to the ground yelling, punching, fists smacking into sides, rolling on top of each other, a blur of pink.
Peter’s head knocks into the wood coffee table.
There’s a scream. Mine. And then I lunge too.
I try to pull Charles off him. I can’t. He yanks away and his crisp button-down slips through my fingers and I fall backward.
Peter yells something and knees him in the gut.
There’s a crack. Peter’s thin, gold-rimmed glasses. For a second he looks at me, our eyes meeting through the tiny, jagged fissure in his lenses and then—
Arms. Legs. Yelling.
The gun hits the carpet with a too-soft thud. And then everything stops. A dust mote lingers in the light of the giant window. There’s only the sound of breathing, breathing, breathing.
They look at each other, then at me.
Wait.
Wait. Wait. Wait. Don’t.
They both grab for the gun. I can’t see what’s happening. I can’t—
An explosion.
A cry.
Blood on the ground.
“Goddamn it! Why did you do that?” Charles’s voice is distorted and far away.
It’s Peter.
His leg. Wait. I don’t … His leg? But if it’s just … Oh god.
There’s blood everywhere. All over the expensive rug. Red. Red and pink, everywhere.
I run to him, drop to my knees.
“Sydney.” He tries to sit up, but he can’t. I put my hand on his chest. His heart is beating so fast.
“Peter.”
Peter. Oh god, Peter.
“I couldn’t …” He coughs. “I couldn’t let him hurt you again.”
Charles drops the gun and pulls at his hair. “I wasn’t going to hurt her! I wasn’t going to hurt anyone!”
“You have a fucking gun!” I scream, tears pouring down my face.
“I only had one bullet!” Charles yells. “It was for me. Goddamn it. It was for me.”
For him. His words fall like snow, melting as soon as they touch the ground.
“This time it was going to be different! I was going to … I just wanted to say I was sorry before I … Fuck!” Charles yanks at his hair again, doubling over.
“Just get out,” I say. “Leave!”
Charles looks from me to Peter before grabbing the gun again and stumbling backward out of the room.
I turn to Peter. “I’m going to call 911.”
He touches my wrist. “Don’t.”
“But—”
“How much time do I have left?”
“Fifteen minutes and two seconds,” I whisper.
“I don’t want to be in an ambulance.”
“Okay,” I say, pushing his hair back. “Okay.” His glasses are crooked. I readjust the thin gold frames so they lie straight on his nose, and something soft and fragile inside me rips apart.
00:12:14
His phone buzzes and I grab it. “Your … your parents missed the train. They aren’t going to make it for a couple more hours.” Oh god, they aren’t going to make it to him at all.
Peter nods, tries to reach for his phone, but he’s shaking so much. I place it in his hand.
His mom’s voice floats into my mind again. I’m glad he’s got a friend.
He types something, then lets his phone slide out of his hand. He takes a ragged breath, his body shaking. “I know what you’re thinking.”
I’m thinking that this is all my fault. I’m thinking that I’ve killed Peter. I’ve taken the one good thing in my life, the one good thing in this entire disgusting world, and I’ve murdered it.
“This isn’t your fault,” he says.
“How can you say that? Of course it is!”
He reaches up and touches my face. I put my hand over his, keeping his fingers pressed against my cheek. The light is getting brighter over his head. He’s slipping away. “Benjamin Franklin said—”
“Really?” I can’t help but laugh, wiping the snot off my nose with the back of my other sleeve. “You’re going to quote Benjamin Franklin right now?”
“Hell yeah I am. I’ve had a few hours to think about it, you know.
” Peter tries to laugh but it turns into a cough.
A look of anguish passes over him, and then he makes his face go smooth again.
“Franklin said, ‘People die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are seventy-five.’ But that’s not me.
I’m going to leave soon. But I really lived.
I …” His whole body trembles under my fingers, but he takes a shaky breath and looks me in the eyes.
“I didn’t waste a single second, Sydney.
Seventy-two hours of you is worth an entire lifetime. ”
“Peter …” I run my fingers over his mouth. He’s so cold. I lean down and press my warm lips against his. He can barely kiss me back, but I feel him trying to. I still feel his soul in the space between our mouths.
“We’re on the fourth floor,” he says. “It’s not the Empire State Building but we … I think we still get some of those … those micro-nano-seconds.” He takes another breath. “Don’t you think?” He blinks up at the ceiling. “I can feel them.”
I hold his hand, lacing his fingers through mine. “I feel them too.” And I do. I feel every single individual particle of time in the room right now.
He closes his eyes, his chest moving up and down. The minutes, the seconds, everything is going too quickly now.
Sirens scream in the distance. I don’t even know if they’re for us. There are so many tragedies in this city, in this world.
00:04:31
He’s leaving. I want to scream, claw at the air, hold on to the last minutes. But there’s nothing to hold on to.
His eyes flutter open. “Sydney …”
“I’m here,” I say, holding on to his hand. “I’m right here.”
There’s pounding at the door. Wood breaking. Shouting from police officers.
But they’re not here with us, not really. The only thing that exists is him and me. PeterAndSydney.
“Do you believe in reincarnation, Syd?”
Everything is a pink blur. His light is so bright, and my tears are making everything hazy.
“Do you think we’ll see each other again?”
His face is still so optimistic, so open, so Peter. He’s waiting for my answer. He’s waiting for me. So I lie, and I say yes to Peter Beckett one last time.
00:00:00