by Bailey Flaherty
TW: death occurred prior to story’s beginning, grief, mentions of car crash + blood
The grandfather clock stood motionless, its hands frozen in place at 7:37 like it knew my world had stopped then.
It towered over the rest of the room, huge and wooden and still, and it was staring at me like it recognized something inside my chest—like it could see the ruptured gears that cut into my heart, the splintered mechanics that had gone still ever since Leto died.
I wondered if the clock thought the time it held was funny. If it was mocking me in its fractured state by forcing me to confront the same moment my own hands had stopped ticking. 7:37. My gears had been frozen ever since.
I closed my eyes, but I could still feel the clock’s glare. It was a never-ending shadow over the apartment—our apartment, or what was supposed to be, anyway. I sighed, and even just the change in oxygen made my chest feel heavy. In and out. Change of air. Breathe, Zach.
Breathe.
But I couldn’t breathe, not when Leto was somehow everywhere around me and still nowhere at all.
Opening my eyes placed me once more in front of the grandfather clock. I knew I had to rewind it eventually, but I couldn’t just yet. Leto had been the one to build it, so cranking it would only make me think of her here with me. Of her laugh that was now only a memory. Of the sounds of her tinkering with whatever spontaneous robot we’d thought up for our next assignment. Of her fingers threading my hair when I get so stressed I can’t speak. Of her hand pressed coldly against my shoulder, rocking energy into me like a pendulum.
We were back and forth like that, bouncing off of each other like bobs that could never swing away too far—always coming back to crash in another collision. Another idea. Another build.
So, I couldn’t fix the clock. Not when Leto wasn’t coming back this time.
【┘】
The apartment was her idea, but I followed her along like I always did. It’ll be easier to work together if we live together, too, she had told me. We need a shared space if we’re going to be partners.
On the seventh of March, just when spring was starting to make its way to campus, Leto had skipped up to me with the most beautiful, brilliant grin on her lips; the same mischievousness she holstered whenever she had a new, ambitious idea for a project.
Immediately, I knew whatever she would tell me would be the best news of my life.
And it had been. There was no greater feeling than Leto Sumer telling me that she wanted to continue this friendship—this partnership, this thing that we had—past the ephemerality of university.
I’d said yes, like I always did, and when Leto started rambling about how our desks will be smashed together and we’ll have bookshelves of all the theorists we like right next to them. It’ll be one bedroom, so when we sleep, our unconsciousness can link together, and then we can dream up new ideas from just a couple of feet away.
Being close to Leto was all I had ever really wanted, so this little world we would create together seemed like the best invention of my career. It felt untouchable, some distant Promised Land that felt too good to be true.
Now that I was actually here, in this sacred realm that was supposed to be ours to conquer, I knew it was. I’d been so tempted by the promise of perfection that I hadn’t accounted for all the possible failures that could happen.
My own negligence felt like a curse. Being here without Leto was my eternal punishment, my eternal purgatory.
I was stuck, and the whole apartment was stuck with me.
Even when the windows were open, I couldn’t quite feel the breeze. The air was coming in, but it was still, hanging heavily over all the things that were now mine instead of ours. We’d sent all our furniture—which wasn’t much—before the move-in date, so everything was here.
Boxes littered the floor, and they were getting dusty after a month of nothing. I couldn’t open them; they were the books Leto had picked out for us, the trinkets we had crafted and collected over our years in college.
The boxes were holding the last bits of Leto I would get. I couldn’t open them. I didn’t want her to be over yet.
So, the apartment stood still, the time perpetually at 7:37.
7:37. Ring. Ring. The phone is ringing. 7:37. Is this Zachariah Stark? 7:37. You’re Leto Sumer’s emergency contact. 7:37. We need you to come to the station. 7:37. Now.
I can’t do this, can’t live in this apartment alone, in this place that was supposed to be ours. I can’t just pretend that every single time I open my eyes, I’m not hit with so much loneliness and misery that it physically hurts. My body goes into overdrive. System malfunction.
Error 410: Gone.
I can’t function without Leto here—I can’t be my own person. Our gears were notched together, a part of the same machine.
Error 415: Unsupported Media Type.
Now, I have to find a way to function on my own, but even walking feels like half of myself is being ripped away. A broken machine. A mess of torn fuses and bloody wires.
I can’t manage to fix myself up.
【┘】
It was on one of those days where the grandfather clock seemed particularly threatening that I saw it: the door of the cuckoo bird popping out. It was barely an inch, but no part of the clock had moved since I’d gotten here. Was it starting to tick again?
I wanted to analyze it and see if anything else had changed, so I brushed my fingers against the length of the glass. They came away with flecks of dust, and there was something about its lightness that felt almost magical, like fairy dust.
It was the first time I had managed to touch the clock—had managed to touch anything that was Leto’s.
The dust suddenly felt heavy, and I blew it away until my fingers were clean. This wasn’t the day that I would fix it. I wasn’t ready.
And yet, I couldn’t manage to look away from the dusty glass and frozen hands. From the door that was open a crack and the bird’s beak was peeking out behind it. There was something about it. Something familiar.
I reached for the cuckoo’s door and started to trace it with my fingers. Maybe the answer was here.
I tried to pull the door open, but it was glued in place. All I could touch was the protruding sharpness of the cuckoo’s beak. It was cold like metal, cold like Leto’s hands had always been.
I backed away.
I felt so stupid. There was no “answer” to my situation. There wouldn’t be. There couldn’t be because the only answer I could think of was Leto coming back, and she wasn’t. Fixing a frozen clock wouldn’t fix that.
7:37. She wasn’t coming back.
【┘】
I fell asleep on the couch watching something static on the television, and when I dreamed, I dreamt of wooden tabletops and mechanical arms, of a shoulder bumping against my own and the warped hum of Radiohead seeping from the broken robotics lab speakers.
There was a sweet laugh against my eardrums, drowning away the music, and then Leto—Leto—was blowing at my exposed neck, sighing, “Zach. Zachariah Stark. You’re not listening to me.”
I craned my neck so that we were facing each other, and it was either the too-quick motion that made me dizzy, or Leto’s quizzical pout. She looked beautiful like this—she always did, of course—but it was so much more profound inside the lab. Her eyes were always brighter when she was inventing, her freckles popping more in the artificial light of the classroom.
Curiosity had always been the most beautiful thing about Leto.
“I am,” I promised, without needing to think much about it. I always was—I always would listen to Leto. “Swear it.”
She hummed and tugged the mini astronaut I wasn’t quite aware I was holding out of my hands. “I told you to rewire the hardware. You connected the wires in the wrong places.”
I looked at the stomach of the astronaut, where a hatch popped off to reveal a very chaotic motherboard I’d been working on for the past month. She was unfortunately right: I had connected the wires to the wrong jacks. We wouldn’t be able to code it like this.
“Sorry,” I said, and I meant it. This was my passion project, not Leto’s. She wasn’t supposed to be pointing out all my mistakes—that was my job. “I’ll fix it later. How’s the bird?”
She grabbed the ball of clockwork she’d been tinkering with and palmed it for display. “Full of gears, currently. You know how it is. But she’s gonna fly soon, just you wait.”
“She?”
She grinned, “Leto Jr. officially.”
“Thought ‘Jr.’ was a guy thing.” Leto was always going on about my stupid guy things. She shrugged, winding up the knob. A disjointed crow came from the base of its stomach,
playing so off it sounded like the bird had fallen into the ocean and drowned. We both grimaced, and then she hit the bird’s side until it stopped crowing. “Feminism.”
Even with her noisy experiment and the overbearing guitar riffs of “Karma Police” ringing around us, Leto looked unreal. I couldn’t believe I got so lucky as to have her by my side in all the ways that mattered. Maybe one day there’d be a change between us—a chemical rewire, a shift in gears—but for now, just being with Leto was enough.
Error 403: Forbidden. Cannot access the requested resource.
It was enough. Being with Leto was enough.
She stole the astronaut from my fingers, stealing my attention from my sinking heart
back to the glint in her eye that always signaled mischief. “Stop getting distracted,” she teased, fiddling with the astronaut’s helmet so that it faced backwards—I would have to fix it later. “How are we supposed to be Zachariah Stark and Leto Sumer, the greatest robotics engineers the world has ever seen, if you keep zoning out to Radiohead?”
I was zoning out to Radiohead. Yes. Right.
I eyed her rooster that was finally quiet. “How are we supposed to be ‘Zachariah Stark and Leto Sumer, the greatest robotics engineers the world has ever seen’ if your rooster sounds like it’s dying every time you wind it up?”
She plunged the astronaut back into my hands. “Touche, Zachariah. Touche. Practice makes perfect.”
When Leto turned her attention back towards her rooster, I went back to my computer, typing in the coding for the astronaut’s expressions. Python was easier, but Leto had told me to “challenge” myself, or whatever, so I was using binary. I typed in: 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101. Love.
Yeah. Maybe practice really did make perfect.
【┘】
A strange-sounding chime woke me from the memory. It was a new melody, a light and loud sound that was coming from the other side of the room.
Leto’s presence hung over everything. I ached with the memory of her so close to me. She had never finished that rooster.
I blinked my eyes like it would quiet the sound and turned my attention to the grandfather clock. Its weights were clashing together as the pendulum swung. I couldn’t believe it: The clock was moving.
Its movement was jarring against the otherwise still room. Out of place.
I stood up to check it, and when I began walking the sensation was strange. All the heaviness I felt—the loss of my partner machinery—turned into something gravitational. It was like the clock was pulling me towards it with a heavy chain; there was nowhere else to go but forward.
Standing up close felt even more unreal. While the cuckoo door was still closed and the hands were still stuck at 7:37, the bottom hammers were swinging as if the clock was working between two different poles.
I sat down so I could watch. Just watch.
The movement was so mesmerizing that I found my eyes begin to droop, the pendulum hypnotizing me into rest.
As I slipped into a hazy sleep, I could swear the chimes of the clock were making the same sounds as Leto’s laugh. The sweetness of it made my heart ache. She seemed almost real.
【┘】
When I woke up, there was a familiar, unfamiliar weight on my chest. Known, yet unknown; paradoxical. I felt heavy and light. Real and not.
There was a solid, soft thing pressed against my neck that limited any movement. All I could see was the popcorn ceiling of the apartment and the grandfather clock towering over me, enclosing me in its shadow.
I wanted to push the weight away so I could get up, but the familiarity of it stopped me. I knew this presence. I knew this thing.
I tilted my chin down as much as I could and inhaled the scent of chrysanthemum and strawberry. The gears in my chest began to stutter. Leto, I wanted to say. You’re here. You’re really here. But my mouth wouldn’t fit around the words—it was exotic, too long since I’d last said her name.
All I could do was wrap my arms around her and tug her as close to my chest as I could manage. Leto, my mind was screaming. Leto. I couldn’t let her go just yet.
【┘】
The next time my eyes were open, I was face-to-face with a dream.
She had one hand threaded through my hair and the other was resting gently against my cheek. She was smiling playfully like she’d just dreamt up some new invention and wanted me to work on it. But that was strange; we didn’t make things together anymore.
I studied her face—full and soft and spotted with freckles. Her eyes were as green as I remembered, her hair just as red, and she was wearing the same clothes as the day she died: a lengthy plaid skirt and a brown cotton sweater. No blood against her neck, no threads torn from the burst of an airbag. No lifeless eyes and blue lips.
She looked beautiful, like she always did. She looked alive.
How could she be alive?
In all the studying, I hadn’t managed to notice her lips moving, open and closed like the mouth of an automaton. It had to be my imagination; I was in some kind of fucked-up fever dream.
And yet, Leto’s lips were shaping around words again, and now I could hear them. “Zach?” she asked, “Are you awake?”
I nodded, and her hand followed the motion of my chin. I was holding my breath, like this moment would dissipate if I took in air. I thought she might speak again, but she stayed quiet, just brushing her fingers against my skin like she was waiting for me to talk.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, hoping my body would kick back into motion. I felt alive with Leto here, like her touch was an electric wire shocking me back into place. I found her gaze again, alive and wild, and breathed, “Are you?”
She seemed put off by the question, like she hadn’t been expecting it. “I’m…” she trailed off, the edges of her face twisting into a grimace. “Awake for now.”
“For now?” I asked, reaching out to soften out the wrinkles that had formed. I needed to make sure she was real.
She smiled into my thumb. “For now, yes. I have to go back once we’re done.”
For now.
“But I just got you back.”
“I know,” she answered, soaking up the sting in my voice like it pained her. “But I’m not supposed to be here, even now. Just to help. Then, I have to go.”
I couldn’t fathom such a quick here-and-then-gone. I didn’t want her to go—not again. I couldn’t take it again. “Help with what? Go where?”
The hand in my hair stilled before ruffling it. She shook her head, “You always loved asking questions.”
I twisted my hand through her curls while I waited for an answer. I needed an answer. “I came from the clock,” she said finally. “I have to help you fix the clock, and then I’ll go back to it.”
I looked at the grandfather clock that always mocked me with the time of that phone call.
It was still frozen now at 7:37, but the hands were twitching like the start of an earthquake: Something was making them move. Someone.
“You….” I couldn’t believe it. “You’re the reason the time’s been strange.”
She shrugged like the world was on her shoulders. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what I was doing.” Her head fell against my hand, and all I could think about was how right it was that we were together. That I could feel her again in my arms. “All I knew was you.”
My gears were stuttering, longing to restart their spins. She was here and close enough that it felt like a real possibility. We could combine again. Become the same machine. “Me?”
She nodded slowly, languid like the time that had been passing here because of her. “I don’t want to be stuck, Zach, and I don’t want you to be either.”
The words came out in drops of melancholy, and I was struck once more with the unreality of this. She was here, now, somehow, and she would have to leave again soon. Stuck. I would go back to being stuck in broken machinery, lopsided gears.
“No,” I said. “No, you can’t go. You just got here.”
Her eyes tilted up to meet mine once more as she put her hand over mine. “I’m not leaving yet. We still have to fix the clock.”
And then she would leave me.
“Zach,” she whispered, threading her hand into mine. “Promise me that you’ll really try to move on. You can’t just sulk forever.”
“How do you know I’ve been sulking?” The words formed a pit in my gut. She couldn’t mean….
“I’ve been watching,” she said quietly.
She’d been here all this time, and I hadn’t known.
“No,” I whispered. “You…I could’ve been talking to you all this time?”
“Not…exactly.” I felt a rush of nausea. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. I’d missed
her, again. I was always just missing her. “I wasn’t here, exactly. But I could see you.”
All this time. I’d been missing her all this time. My lips were shaking. “From behind the clock?”
“We have to fix it.”
I didn’t want to fix the clock. “But then you’ll leave again.”
Leto pushed herself up, standing next to my limp body. I realized this was the first time I had seen her in our apartment. The only time I ever would.
The sun was low enough in the sky that it turned golden, casting its rays onto her in a way that felt divine. I seared the image into my memory; I wouldn’t forget how she looked here, in our apartment, for this one fading moment.
She tugged me up next to her and pushed me towards the kitchen. “Get the toolbox, Zach. It has the crank in it.” The instead of our. Instead of my. I haven’t gotten around to unpacking it yet—it was in one of the many, many boxes that reminded me too much of Leto.
But I knew exactly which one it was: the biggest one, the one that hurt the most. The label reads: Office. For all the inventions we’ll make.
I walk towards it, checking behind me every few seconds to make sure she’s still here.
My hands are shaking as I tear off the tape and slowly, like some Jack-in-the-box will jump out at me, open the cardboard flaps. Dust flares up into my nose. The silver toolbox labeled Leto 🙂 is closest to the top, as if it’s been waiting for me to take it all this time.
When I get back to Leto, she’s running her hand along the clock’s face, frowning like it’s done something wrong. Or, maybe she’s just sad about having to go back. Having to leave me. Selfishly, I hope that she is.
“Open it,” she tells me. So, I open the trunk and pull out the crank.
“Now unlock the door,” she says. So, I twist the key and open the door at the top of the clock.
All I have to do now is put in the crank and turn until the weights come back up to the top. I know this. She knows this. But Leto’s looking at me like her heart’s been split in two, and there’s tendrils of confusion tracing her face. “Why haven’t you fixed the clock before now?” She asks like she doesn’t already know. “It’s such a simple fix.”
Simple, she says. Like moving on from 7:37 was an easy thing to do. “I couldn’t,” I tell her. “It didn’t seem fair.”
“Fair?” Her eyes are pools of guilt. “To me?” I nod because there’s nothing else to say.
“Zach,” she says, like just my name is enough. She sounds hurt. She sounds thankful. I can’t tell, and it’s killing me.
I can’t fix the clock yet. There’s still so much I need to know.
“Leto,” I say, tongue hesitating over the rest of my words. “You…Did you ever—I mean, before. Did you…Could we have….” I can’t say it.
She reaches out her hand as if she’s about to steal the crank, but it falls against mine, holding me like I might vanish if she lets go. “Yes,” she whispers. “I think so.”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I’d thought knowing would give me some kind of closure, but it just makes me feel worse. I’d actually had a chance to be something—something more than whatever it was we had—with Leto. If we had more time, the two of us could have….
I guess I made some kind of noise in my throat because Leto was tugging me against her chest, threading her hands through my hair. “I’m sorry.”
I think I’m crying, but nothing feels real anymore. All I know is the stillness of Leto’s chest—no beating heart, no life to beat for—and the steady run of her fingers in my scalp. “Sorry?” I ask, voice muffled against Leto’s chest.
Her body shakes against me, but I can’t move. I can’t do anything but let her hold me. I know it’s weak—that I’m not the one who died—but being strong has never felt so far away. I feel like I could break at any second.
“I wanted to tell you for so long.” Her voice breaks like china because, of course, even now she still sounds beautiful. “I was just so scared. I couldn’t ruin what we had. I—I thought our inventions were more important than whatever was going on with us outside of it.”
“Me too,” I whispered, because it was true. I always thought the cogs of our brains working together were more important than the hum of our hearts.
Her hands stilled, instead clamping onto my head and pulling me closer. “But…now I feel so stupid. It’s too late. We could’ve had something even more, and it’s too late.”
We’re both shaking. Malfunctioning.
Error 408: Request Timeout. Unused Connection.
Not quick enough.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, even though she just said it. “It should have been me.”
I’m pushed away from her chest before I can even take another breath. “No,” she says, and her voice is angry. “Don’t say that. Don’t think that.”
I can’t help the words that tumble out, “You were always the leader. I just followed you because that was all I knew how to do. I can’t—I wasn’t supposed to be here without you.
“I don’t know how to be.”
Leto shakes her head. “You’ll learn.”
There’s something unbalanced about her expression. She’s upset with me and angry, but she’s also…happy? There’s something twinkling in her eyes that looks astonishingly similar to hope. “You will,” she tells me again. “You’ll learn how to live without me, and you’re going to become the biggest inventor there ever was. For me, Zach. Move on for me.”
I don’t know if I can, but I tighten my hold on the crank anyway and bring it to the clock face. The crankshaft for the left weight is right above the seven. 7:37. My breath shudders, and I push the crank in. My hands shake as I turn it counterclockwise until the weight is back at the top of the trunk. Seven seven seven.
I feel Leto’s presence right beside me, but I can’t manage to turn my head. It’ll only make me stop fixing the clock. Make me start bargaining for more time.
The middle weight is high enough that I don’t have to crank it much, just a couple of inches for good measure. It’s the last weight that gets me, the shaft right under the three. 3. Thirty. 7:37.
This is the end. The end. The end.
As I shove the crank into the shaft, I turn to Leto and smile as wide as I can manage. As big and full as I can bear. If this is the last thing she sees, I want to make sure she can see how much she was loved. How much I’ll always love her.
My hand is still, antsy to turn the crank. Leto is watching me quietly, feebly. Like she’s scared of what I’ll say. But she’s smiling anyway, soft and gentle like she’s accepted this is the end. Like she knows that I have, too.
“I’m going to miss you forever,” I say, and I turn the crank. Again and again and again as the last weight slides up the chain.
It moves so quickly, and I feel so unprepared for its resolution. Leto: gone. The broken clock no longer broken. Different, different, different. Change, change, change.
The weight clicks into place anyway. I remove the crank and close the glass door and stand ghostly still, like this fragile moment between us will break if I move.
So Leto moves instead, jumping on top of me like I could hold her weight. I can’t, so we fall to the floor, wrapped up together like one machine, all our parts ticking together one final time.
Her lips are at the junction of my neck, pressing soft enough that I can’t tell if she’s planting a kiss or simply resting there. But really, I don’t care what she does; I just want her close to me. When she pulls back an inch, I feel her breath against me one last time. “I’ll miss you
forever, too.”
【┘】
I wake up to the clash of pipes and a bird’s coo.
My eyes find the grandfather clock right away, and sure enough, the cuckoo’s door is open, and the bird is springing up and down, cooing the way it was always supposed to.
I check the hands and they’re ticking forward. The little one at 8, the bigger one at 12.
7:37. Time was moving forward.
I remember the weight on my chest. Leto’s hands. Letos’ voice. Leto telling me to move on. For me, Zach. Move on for me.
I stand up, look around. She’s really gone.
But…I look at the clock, look down at my hand that still holds the crank. She was here, wasn’t she? Really here.
The cuckoo is still cooing, so I can’t really think straight. My mind is so hazy that everything feels like a dream. But the clock—it was fixed. Leto had helped me fix it, whether she’d really been here or not.
I eye it again, just taking in the sight. It’s the same damn clock that had been mocking me before, but it looks different. Lighter, almost. As if it were happy to be unstuck. To be free from that one, eternal moment where the world really did stop.
I shift around the rest of the apartment, and it feels the same—so light. The air feels fluid and dynamic. While everything touched by dust and stillness remains dusty and still, there’s a new energy to them.
There’s hope.
The clock moved past 7:37. I moved past 7:37. Time was no longer standing still.
I found my way to the box for our office. For all the inventions we’ll make. Leto’s toolbox is on the floor, open. The theory books we were supposed to shelve are in a pile at the bottom.
My chest aches at the reminder of her in my arms, but it’s a good ache. A memory. I’m remembering her. I’m moving on. Though I really would miss her forever—that was something I could never forget.
When I breathe, it no longer feels heavy. I start to unpack the rest of the box.
Leto’s bird’s beak pokes out of the crumpled newspapers the same way the cuckoo bird had earlier—an offering, a hand that I could take. I wrap my fingers around the metal frame and tug it close to my chest. This clockwork rooster was a part of Leto I could hold onto forever.
I wound the knob clockwise and heard its warbled crow.
Leto Jr. was the perfect thing for me to finish. The end of Zachariah Stark and Leto Sumer. The start of a Zach without a Leto.
Her memory forever in my work.
Author Bio
Bailey Flaherty is a creative writing major at Emerson College, where she currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of their HerCampus chapter. In her free time, Bailey enjoys reading and writing about magical quests, researching weird and wild histories, and spending time with her friends and girlfriend.
