Page 25 of 72 Hours of You

She quirks an eyebrow. “You?” She turns and faces Peter. “What have you done to her?”

“I …” He rubs the back of his neck and squints up at the ceiling. “I think, uh …”

“Ohhh, I see,” Jules says. “This is about Liam, right?”

Peter locks eyes with me over Jules’s head and he gives me this look.

“Sort of …” I say, tearing my eyes from his.

Jules nods. “Sure, of course. I know it’s extra hard for you two because of the whole ‘last two people to see him alive’ thing.”

“Right,” Peter says, his eyes still locked on mine.

Jules looks between us again. “Huh. I guess it’s true. Grief really does make people horny.”

“Jules!”

“I’m just saying I have condoms in my nightstand if you need them. I’m not trying to become an auntie at sixteen. Although, if it is shark week the chances of that happening are—”

“Okay! Everyone get the fuck out of my room.”

Mercifully, Jules leaves, but not before reminding Peter one last time to “keep his street dog wrapped in foil.”

“You’ve got to go too,” I say to Peter when it’s just the two of us again.

“Are you sure?” he says. “I can stay and talk if you wa—”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck again. He glances toward the door, but he doesn’t move. “At least add me on Insta. In case … Well, just in case. Okay?”

“Yeah. Fine,” I say.

He rocks back and forth on his heels like he’s trying to summon the will to leave. “I feel like … I feel like you’re not going to add me.”

“I will.” Apparently I don’t say it convincingly enough, because he still doesn’t leave. “Okay, fine, whatever. I’ll do it now.” I grab my phone, open the app, and confirm his red pending request. I turn the screen to him. “Happy?”

Peter smiles. “Actually, yeah.”

Whatever, I can just unfriend him later. “Okay, well, bye then.”

He looks like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t push it, thank god. One tearful hand-touching per decade is more than enough for me.

“I’ll DM you,” he says seriously, before slipping out of my room.

Finally. Now it’s just me and the crumpled birds.

Except … I thought I’d feel a sense of relief as soon as I was alone again. But weirdly I just feel … alone.

I look at the cranes’ crooked beaks and bent necks. Little statues from the past. I get this impulse to gather them all up in the bathtub and set them on fire. Watch their little white wings turn black and charred, folding in on themselves. But instead I sit down at my desk and pull out a fresh sheet of paper.

I don’t know why I’m doing it exactly. In fact, I can hardly remember how to make them anymore. But something like muscle memory kicks in and I’m folding and smoothing the sheet, pulling out the triangles and tucking in corners until the paper resembles a creature close to a crane. For a second I think about flattening it and sliding it into my red notebook, but then I’d have to find the page it belongs with. And fuck that.

I pick up the new bird and set it next to the others on my dresser.

And then it all hits me. What I’ve done. I’ve gone full Haley Joel Osment and told Peter Beckett that I see dead people. Or technically, that I see alive people who are going to die. What the actual fucking fuck was I thinking? This is not a normal or even remotely okay thing. The back-to-back clocks plus the forehead to the concrete must’ve really messed me up.

An extra sliver of panic pierces my heart. This is so fucked.