Page 9 of 72 Hours of You

“Great,” I say, shoving my foot into her side. “Get out.”

“Okay, since you begged,” she says. She takes a very long, very drawn-out breath in through her nose. Like she’s actually composing herself, getting ready to tell me something deeply revealing. “Elise”—she pauses for dramatic effect—“is dating Thom.” She pauses again. “Did you hear me?!” She sits up on her elbows. “Elise! Thom! Together!”

“And?”

“And she kissed me! At Noah’s party! Remember?” A hint of actual hurt flashes across her face but I can’t tell if it’s because she actually gives a shit about Elise (unlikely) or because she’s upset that I didn’t remember.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just …”

“Forgot?” she finishes. “What else is new.”

She’s being absurd, acting as if nothing else happened at that party that could possibly have overshadowed her making out with someone. Still. I can never stand to see her actually unhappy. “I forgot for like a second. But now I remember. She was wearing Khloé Kardashian’s new lipstick, right? I listened.”

A tiny crinkle of a smile forms on Jules’s pouty face. “Kylie Jenner. Khloé doesn’t even have a makeup line.” She rearranges her mouth back into a deep frown. “But now she’s with Thom and my life is over. OVER!”

She pulls a pillow against her face and screams into it.

My eyes flick to the clock-free top of her head. “No it isn’t.” Liam’s life is over. Ms. Jegstrup’s is about to be. But Jules is here and fine and alive. She’s so unbelievably lucky that this is what she thinks matters. Who kisses who. As if those are actual life-and-death stakes.

She thinks she’s invincible because she doesn’t know any better. She doesn’t see any clocks, doesn’t even know they exist. She gets to live in the world everyone but me lives in, where bad things are far away. Where things are rosy, but nothing is ever bright pink.

When we were little, we would use the bumper blocks in the parking lot of Mom’s office building as balance beams. While we waited for her to finish her calls in the car, we’d walk carefully, toe to heel, wobbling back and forth, sometimes slipping off and scraping our ankles on the jagged concrete. As we got older, we got braver, hopping on one foot, jumping over each other, doing it with our eyes closed.

But then I turned five. And our bubbe died and she left her clocks behind with me. I stopped playing on the bumper blocks. I tried to get Jules to stop too. But she wouldn’t. She didn’t understand. So I started walking on the ground next to her with my arms out. Always ready. Just in case.

But she didn’t even notice. She still doesn’t. She just keeps walking, wobbling, never once thinking about what might happen if she falls. Never once thinking about what it must feel like to be the one always watching. Always waiting.

Jules pulls the pillow off her face and rolls back over to look at me. She blinks her blue eyes (a gift from our father’s side that I was not lucky enough to receive) and smiles this little sad smile. “I just thought Elise and I were soulmates, you know?”

I scoff. “There’s no such thing.”

“Yes, there is,” she insists. “That one person who makes everything worthwhile. Someone who makes life worth living. Someone you would die for.”

Someone you would die for. As if you could choose. As if death would let you.

“You’re right. My soulmate is Hozier.”

“Seriously, Syd,” she says, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Don’t you think … Don’t you think Mom and Dad were soulmates?”

Shit, I didn’t see that one coming.

Her face looks so open and naive, like all her heavy eyeshadow and red lipstick is on some little kid playing dress-up. So I do what I always do. I lie to her. “I guess,” I say, brushing her bangs back. “I mean, sure. Yeah, I think they were soulmates.”

She takes a breath and smiles. Like that settles it. Like me saying it makes it a fact. “Okay,” she says, shaking it off. “Your turn.”

“My turn for what?”

“To tell me about your day,” Jules says. “Like sisters. I go. Then you go. Share information about our lives. Et cetera. Et cetera. Like normal people.”

Oh. My day.

Well, Ms. Jegstrup is going to die. In less than three days, isn’t that exciting?! Also, Peter—you remember Peter? The boy from the party who also saw Liam right before he went face-first into that truck? Well, he thinks we’re going to be partners for this poetry project, but we’re absolutely not because I cannot stand being around him. Oh, also, I thought I was over what happened last year, but maybe I’m not because I had a panic attack thinking about it and had to run to the bathroom to vomit and—

“Nothing happened today,” I say, throwing my arm over my eyes. “I’m just tired and I need a nap.”

Jules pulls my arm off my face, but I keep my eyes closed. “You need to talk to me.”

“Nap.”