Some people are born wakeful.
When I was little, the reason I couldn’t sleep seemed simple. I was too full of thoughts. The problem would work itself out when my skull got bigger. I didn’t know yet that the ideas just get bigger too.
Back then, when I’d brushed my teeth and said good night to my stuffed lamb, exhausted every jigsaw puzzle and game, read all my books and the drowsy weightlessness still wouldn’t come, I’d go to the moon. That kind of inter-orbital travel is easy when you’re little—the membrane between real and pretend is still semipermeable. Your imaginary friends seem just as solid as anyone else. When they pinch you, it hurts. When they disappear, you wonder what you did to make them leave.
Late at night, I’d stare at the ceiling and imagine myself on the moon. Up there, I would lie on my back, making angels in the drifts of pale lunar dust, peering down at my neighborhood with telescopic vision.
Because it was pretend, the tiny roof of my tiny house would dissolve and then I’d be looking at myself where she lay under the sheets, wishing to be a physicist and a manticore and Carl Sagan. And sometimes, if I stayed there long enough, her face would go slack and she’d close her eyes. She’d fall asleep.
That trick is broken now. The moon has disappeared, replaced by other allegories—mushroom clouds that bloom and expand in radioactive billows, and gleaming knives balanced on their points, rotating in perfect symmetry. I don’t need an expert to tell me that’s not normal.
Some people are just born wrong.
In my room, the urge to climb out of my skin is suddenly so big it feels criminal.
I turn out the lamp and light my candle, illuminating the only place where nothing about me is for other people. A draft sends the glow flickering over the bed, desk, chair. My bookcase, home to three hundred comic books, thirty-seven collectible horror movie figures arranged in alphabetical order, Norman Bates to Xenomorph, and a pair of two-gallon terrariums that house my tarantulas, Franny and Zooey.
Maribeth said once that it was fitting, how even my pets can’t be in the same room with each other without risking fatality, but the arrangement seems equitable. They’re just enjoying each other from a distance.
When I lie down, my bed feels miles away. Already, I want to be up again, on my feet and pacing the room a few hundred times. But I need to sleep, and if I can’t have that, then I need to achieve some kind of doze or trance or hypnotic state.
Courtesy of the Internet, some things I’ve learned today: insomnia is a harmless phenomenon that affects everyone from time to time, and it’s the sole province of the clinically insane. It’s a symptom of a physiological, possibly life-threatening condition, and it’s all in your head. Mainly, though, I’ve learned that the Internet is alarmist, uninformative, and full of contradictions and the only practical option is to pick some relaxation techniques and start trying them.
I have my candle from the credenza, even if it’s just an outsized Thanksgiving votive. Now all I need is a number to count backward from until my brain bows down to the hypnotic power of repetition.
Eleven seems like a good choice. It’s a Lucas number, an Einstein prime, and the preferred visualization number in my mother’s guided meditation book. Downstairs, the TV is murmuring and then she switches it off and the house goes silent.
I lie back, arms at my sides, trying to clear my mind.
But trying not to think is much harder than it looks. At once, I’m ambushed by the faces of the people who inhabit my world every day—my mom and Maribeth and Jamie the cross-country coach. They hover in front of me in a noisy flock, voices overlapping, blending together until I can’t even tell who’s saying what. If it’s Jamie who likes Cattaleya orchids for the corsages, or if Maribeth thinks I could qualify for State.
I understand in a muddled way that the reverse counting technique must be working. Ordinarily I’d still be wired to the core, staring at the ceiling with hot, itchy eyes and humming skin. And instead, here I am, all my thoughts slipping away, slipping away, my hands heavy and numb.
I’m beginning to suspect that thinking is overrated. There are all kinds of people at school and I’m reasonably sure they rarely think at all. How nice it must be to have low expectations. No one wants anything from you. If you succeed in not getting arrested, they’re happy for you.
Except for the Trunchbull…
The Trunchbull—I hear her voice suddenly, as clear as if she were standing in the room. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you.
Marshall Holt is a burned-out loser who just happens to have nice features, good skin, and well-shaped eyebrows. And surprisingly good test scores. The smell of the candle is much stronger, suddenly—a dark, complicated array of dryer sheets, deodorant, smoke, and indifference. It’s undercut by something sweet and pungent and all its own. Pot, maybe?
All at once, I’m back in the office, sitting behind the reception desk with my stack of hall passes, and Marshall Holt is waiting for the stamp.
He’s looking past me, and his mouth is wide and soft in a way I’ve never noticed. Then he smiles, but it isn’t friendly. “Little miss perfect isn’t so perfect after all.”
I stare up. The sound of his voice is realer and sharper than everything else, almost accusatory.
The scene changes, the way it does in dreams. Now the room is small and poorly lit. I can’t make out the details, but there’s a smell of tomato sauce, onions, dog, and laundry. He’s sprawled out on an unmade twin bed, still looking at me, but not aggressive now, not arrogant. His eyes are fixed on mine, so dark I think I’ll drown there. Somewhere close by, people are talking in raised voices, but the sound is indistinct, nothing but a murmur.
He smiles again, and this time it almost looks regretful. “Forty-five across is Lucrezia Borgia.”
I sit bolt up, clutching my blankets to my chest.
The clock says 1:29. My pulse is frantic.
Somewhere down the street, a dog is howling like its heart will break. On my nightstand, the candle flickers. I lean over and blow it out.
Lucrezia Borgia. How could I have missed that?