Sleeper Code

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “Were you having a daymare?” asked a voice from across the room, and Tom realized his father had come downstairs. “Daymare?” Mason asked again, using Tom’s childhood name for these waking dreams. “Are you okay?”

  Tom nodded. “Yeah. It was a bad one.” Embarrassed, he quickly picked himself up and began to gather the school papers that he had knocked off the desk. “How long have you been there?”

  “Not long,” Mason answered from the leather recliner across the room. He had a bottle of water and removed the cap, taking a sip. “What was it like this time?”

  “Just stupid crap,” Tom answered. He sat back down at the computer and tried to look busy, but he could feel the tension in the room and knew that his mother had already shared the fact that he hadn’t been taking his medication. “It was another floating one, only this time I went up through the ceiling and kept right on going into space.”

  Dad nodded, taking another pull from his water bottle. “Sounded like you were having some problems breathing,” he explained coolly. Mason Lovett did just about everything coolly. Tom figured it had something to do with his job as a mathematical troubleshooter. It was difficult to read his father, and Tom wasn’t sure yet if he was in deep trouble or simply having a normal conversation.

  Tom swiveled nervously from side to side in the chair. “Yeah, I couldn’t breathe once I got high enough. I even thought I had frost forming on my arms. This one was a trip.”

  His father nodded again. “Sounds like it,” he said. “Do you think the fact that you haven’t been taking your medicine had anything to do with how bad this one was?”

  Tom shrugged, deciding that the papers on his desk weren’t quite straight enough. “I’m sure it had something to do with it.” He didn’t want to look at his father; there was nothing that freaked him out more than the look Mason Lovett got in his eyes when he was disappointed or angry. Tom and his mother secretly called it the death-ray stare.

  “Do you like having these attacks, Tom?” his father asked. “Do you enjoy falling asleep at the drop of a hat, smashing your head on furniture, and having hallucinations that you’re floating off into space to suffocate?”

  Tom found himself touching his bump and quickly pulled his hand away. The funny thing about Mason Lovett was that even when he was really angry, he never raised his voice. Tom had learned to listen carefully to every word to figure out his father’s mood. He understood the meaning of these words very well; he was in serious trouble and braced himself for what was coming.

  “I know it was dumb,” Tom said, hoping to defuse some of his father’s anger. “A really stupid move.” He glanced quickly at Mason, who still sat in the leather chair, death-ray eyes blazing.

  “Well, at least we can agree on that,” his father said. “But what I want to know is how someone as smart as you are could even think that something so obviously stupid was the right thing to do.”

  Tom knew that it was probably in his best interests to keep his mouth shut, to endure the withering stare until his father got it all out of his system and went back upstairs to help Mom with dinner and watch the nightly news. But he just couldn’t do it this time.

  “I thought… I was feeling really good and—”

  “Did you realize the risk you would be taking?” Mason asked. He set his half-empty water bottle down on the rug as he leaned forward in the leather chair. “This is your health we’re talking about—your life.”

  “And I thought that there might be a chance for something more than my life, and I grabbed at it. Do you have any idea how it feels to be like this?”

  He wanted his father to realize that what he had done wasn’t just because he was some stupid kid who didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. He understood very well and had been willing to take the risk just the same.

  Mason stood up, his tall figure suddenly looming over Tom at the desk chair. “I know it’s hard for you, son,” he said. “Believe me, I know, but it doesn’t change the facts. You’re sick, whether you want to be or not. And the only way you’re going to be able to live any semblance of a normal life—a life that your mother and I want for you—is by doing what you’re supposed to do.”

  Tom nodded, defeated.

  Madison reached across the kitchen table for the large glass bowl and another helping of salad.

  “So, besides making us this fabulous supper, what did you do today?” Ellen asked, picking up her hamburger.

  “Nothing much,” Madison answered, nibbling a bite of lettuce off her fork. “What do you know about the guy next door?” she asked.

  “The boy next door?” Ellen asked. “You know, not a lot. Why, did you see him today?”

  Madison took another bite of salad. “He was playing basketball in his yard. I saw him from the deck.”

  “We don’t see him much,” her uncle cut in. “We could probably count on one hand the number of times we’ve seen any of them next door since they moved in—what? A year ago, was it?”

  Ellen nodded.

  “He’s probably about your age, though,” Marty said, taking a bite of his burger.

  “And cute,” her aunt added, making Madison do a double take before letting out a nervous giggle.

  She had always been close to Ellen and Marty, but there was still so much about them that she didn’t know, like why they had never had children of their own. They seemed like they would have been really good parents.

  “What, you think I’m too old to notice?” Ellen nudged Madison. “Admit it, you think he’s cute.”

  Madison blushed, and soon they were both giggling. Madison suddenly remembered what it felt like to joke around, to be happy. “I might just have to climb over that fence tomorrow to get a better look,” she answered.

  “Think he’d be worth the climb?” Ellen asked.

  She felt her cheeks flush with the memory of watching the guy as he played. “Probably.” She started to giggle again.

  “Maybe he’ll be in some of your classes this fall,” her uncle happily interjected.

  Madison’s face fell as Marty’s comment sank in. “Why would he be in my classes this fall?” she asked with tightness in her voice, already anticipating the answer.

  Marty was desperate, looking to his wife for support. “Whoops,” he said with a grimace.

  Madison looked from her uncle to her aunt. “What did he mean?” she asked. “Why would he be in my classes?”

  Ellen shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “Good one, Marty,” she muttered before turning her attention to her niece. “We were going to tell you this later,” Ellen said softly, “but seeing as it’s already been brought up…”

  “Discuss what?” Madison’s muscles tensed.

  “I talked to your mom today, and she feels that it would be best for you to stay here with us rather than go back to Chicago at the end of the summer. She’d like you to attend school here.”

  Madison leaned back in her chair. She took a deep breath, trying to stay calm, but no amount of breathing was going to diminish the anger rising in her chest. It was her senior year—her last year of high school.

  “This is bullshit!” she cried. “Complete bullshit!”

  “Madison, please calm down,” Marty said. “We know that this is upsetting, but the divorce is going to take a while, and to tell you the truth, things aren’t going all that peacefully…”

  Madison abruptly stood. The silverware jangled noisily as her hip bumped the table edge, and then the kitchen fell into an uncomfortable silence.

  “Why is it that everybody is always making decisions about what’s best for me without asking me what I think?” Madison stared at her aunt and uncle. They didn’t deserve this, but they were the closest thing to parents in the general vicinity.

  “Home just isn’t the place for you to be right now, honey,” Aunt Ellen said, nervously picking up her wineglass and taking a long sip.

  Madison thought about everything that she had left behind: her friends, her job, her pa
rents—even though she wanted to kill them both at the moment—and home. She had left before school let out, only on the condition that she would return at the end of the summer. After all, summer was only a few months long, and she knew that a distraction from the fighting might be a good thing.

  She could still hear her mother as she packed her things two weeks ago, and suddenly those words took on a whole new meaning.

  Don’t think of it as a bad thing, she had said. Think of it as a fresh start.

  “Maddy, sit down,” her uncle said, reaching over to pat the seat of her chair. “Let’s talk about this.”

  She moved away from the table, heading for the deck. “I really don’t feel like talking right now.”

  The nighttime air was cool, although the official start of summer was just a couple of weeks away. Madison breathed in the New England night as she closed the door behind her, hoping that her aunt and uncle wouldn’t follow her out.

  She walked farther onto the back of the deck, standing in the darkness and looking out over the yard. What am I going to do? She felt her eyes begin to well with tears. The most frustrating thing was that she couldn’t do anything—she didn’t have a choice.

  From the corner of her eye she saw something move and glanced over to her right, into the neighbors’ yard.

  It was draped in shadows, but she could just make out the shape of somebody sitting alone. An arm rose in the darkness to swat away a bug, and she realized that it was the guy she had seen earlier. The first thought that flashed through her brain was how strange it was that he was out there in the dark alone. Then she realized—hello, so was she. Kindred spirits.

  Tom had made a conscious decision to return to his usual routine.

  Sitting in the yard last night, he had thought about his life and what he wanted from it and knew that there was no way his illness could not be factored in. Quentin’s narcolepsy was here to stay.

  What choice do I have? he had asked himself in the darkness. His decision had been obvious, common sense, really. And although it was easier said than done, he had run out of other options.

  “Accept your illness as a part of what makes you you,” a psychologist had once said to him. “Embrace it.” That guy hadn’t lasted long. In no way did Tom want to give his narcolepsy a hug, but he did have to learn to live with it.

  He hadn’t wasted any time getting back into the swing of things. It was a schedule first created by his parents and then tweaked as he had gotten older. He got up around seven, ate breakfast, took his medication, and showered. Schoolwork was his next priority, broken up with periodic exercise, a bike ride, a run around the neighborhood, weight training, martial arts with his dad. Exercise was always followed by a brief nap to recharge his batteries so he didn’t get overtired and trigger an attack.

  That was his day—how it was supposed to be, and would be, as he realigned his way of thinking.

  Now Tom was sitting at the patio table in his backyard, finishing schoolwork. Something flew over his shoulder and hit the screen of his laptop. Tom leapt to his feet, knocking his chair over behind him. His heart hammered in his chest as he stared at the object on the table in front of him.

  A Frisbee. A blue Frisbee.

  He picked it up and turned around to find a girl climbing over the neighbors’ fence. He had never seen her before.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, her voice muffled slightly by the hand that covered her mouth.

  “Scared me,” Tom replied with a nervous laugh and an uncomfortable smile. He had no idea who she was, but she was definitely hot. The girl was about his height, with auburn hair pulled back. She had pale, soft-looking skin and wide eyes.

  She moved her hand away from her mouth and walked slowly toward him. He noticed she was wearing a T-shirt and white shorts; he tried not to stare at her legs. “You’re not mad, are you?” she asked with an embarrassed grin.

  Tom shook his head. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Nah, I’m fine. You just surprised me is all.”

  “I’m Madison Fitzgerald,” she said, sticking out her hand. “I live next door.” She motioned with her head. “Well, my aunt and uncle live next door and I’m staying with them for a while.”

  “Hi.” Tom took her hand. “I’m Tom Lovett. Nice to meet you.” He noticed that her hand seemed kind of sweaty, and he was relieved to think she was probably as nervous as he was.

  “Nice to meet you too.” She gave his hand a slight squeeze before letting go.

  An uncomfortable silence followed and Tom’s mind raced, searching for something to say, but it was Madison who broke the silence.

  “I saw you playing basketball yesterday,” she confessed. “And I just thought it might be cool if I came over and introduced myself.”

  He was smiling again. Say something, stupid, he thought frantically.

  “So you threw a Frisbee at me?”

  Madison smiled slyly, shrugging. “Sorry. I kind of did it without thinking. I hope I didn’t mess up your computer.”

  “It’s okay,” Tom said. “Sometimes I get the urge to throw things too.”

  They both laughed. “Do you want to sit down?” he asked her, gesturing toward the chairs set up around the patio table.

  “Sure,” she said, taking a chair close to his.

  Tom sat back down. He glanced toward his laptop to see that the screen saver had activated: Sports Illustrated swimsuit models flashing by in a slide show. He quickly placed his finger on the mouse pad and the pictures were replaced by his essays.

  “Nice screen saver,” Madison said wryly.

  “Yeah,” Tom answered, feeling his cheeks flush. “I really need to get a new one.” He realized that he was still holding on to the blue Frisbee and quickly handed it to her. “I think this belongs to you,” he said, and she smiled as she took it from him.

  “Thanks. I’ve been looking for this.”

  They laughed again, and she craned her neck to see what was displayed on the laptop screen.

  “I’m nosy. Is this for school?”

  Tom felt his heart beat faster. His mind raced, close to panic. Trying to explain the whole homeschooling thing and the reason why didn’t seem to be an I-just-met-you conversation, especially with a hot girl.

  “Yeah,” Tom managed as he reached over and pulled down the screen. “Just wrapping up some stuff before the end of the year.”

  She nodded, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “So, what year are you?”

  “Um, junior.”

  “Me too,” Madison said. “I finished up a little early so I could come out here.”

  “I thought I noticed an accent,” Tom said. “Where are you from?”

  “Chicago,” Madison replied. “Born and raised. Ever been there?”

  He shook his head. If it didn’t involve his father’s job, Tom’s family didn’t travel all that much; in fact, they didn’t travel at all. “No, but I hear it’s a lot like Boston.”

  “Way better than Boston,” she said, with a wave of her hand that made him laugh.

  “So how long are you here for?” Tom asked. “For the summer or …?”

  He stopped, noticing her face grow tense. Madison quickly looked away and began to fidget with a copper bracelet on her wrist. Great, he had somehow entered touchy territory. Now what?

  Madison took a breath and looked back at him.

  “That thing you’re writing, it’s something about John Steinbeck?” she asked, pointing to his laptop.

  He lifted up the monitor screen again, grateful that the uncomfortable silence seemed to have passed. “Yeah,” he said. “I was just finishing some essay questions on The Grapes of Wrath.”

  She looked thoughtful. “ ‘Grapes of Wrath’ was pretty good. Have you read any of his other stuff? Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden. I’d read East of Eden next if you haven’t. My mom bought a copy because of that Oprah book club thing, and I needed something to read one day and thought it looked sort of interesting. It was real
ly good. I wish I could write like that.”

  “So, you write? Like what, fiction?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Nothing major. I’ve done some short stories and some articles for my school paper.”

  “That’s awesome,” Tom said, truly impressed. At least her stuff had been read by somebody other than her parents.

  “I was nominated for the Hemingway Awards for High School Journalists in the feature-writing category,” Madison said. “But I didn’t win,” she added. “I lost to a story about this couple who raise monkeys to help disabled people.”

  Tom nodded. “At least you were nominated. That’s pretty impressive.”

  She smiled and looked away. “Thanks. Do you write?”

  “A little,” he answered. “I couldn’t win any awards or anything, but I occasionally like to write things down—y’know, get my thoughts on paper.”

  Tom was amazed. Just a few minutes ago he had been sitting alone, buried in schoolwork and thinking about an uncertain future, and now he was talking with a girl and feeling more normal than he had in a long, long time. It just went to show how quickly things could change.

  Madison grinned. Tom seemed a little shy, maybe a little awkward, but there was something about him. She examined his face: his wide jawline, sandy blond hair, light blue eyes. She didn’t want to stop looking at him. It was as though he gave off a kind of electricity that charged the air around him and yet was totally unaware of it.

  A voice from the yard next door interrupted her thoughts.

  “Madison?” she heard her aunt call. “Madison, are you out here?”

  She glanced from Tom to the fence and back again.

  “Somebody’s looking for you,” he said.

  “It’s my aunt—I’ve got to get going,” Madison replied. “But it was great talking with you.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed as she started to leave. “It was good to meet you too.”

  She waved and smiled, then turned and headed toward the fence she would have to climb to return to her own yard.

  “Madison,” she heard Tom call, and turned to see him snatch up the Frisbee from the patio table and jog across the yard to her. “You forgot this.”