The Insomniacs

by Marit Weisenberg

  My shin accidentally connected with an old sprinkler head and my foot caught. When I tripped, I put out my hand and accidentally touched Van’s back. He startled.

  “You okay?” He reached a hand back to me.

  “Fine,” I breathed. Van dropped his hand to his side.

  We paused at the sliding glass door, listening for a heartbeat inside the house.

  “I don’t think anyone’s in there,” I said.

  Van waited a moment longer before seeming to agree with me. “Okay.”

  The police had most likely locked it and we could turn around. Now I wasn’t sure about doing this. The vibe of the house was strange, disturbing.

  Van tried the door and miraculously, it slid open.

  We walked directly into a tiled room that held residual heat. The odor was musty and sour, like soiled, old furniture had baked in the sun and released the scents it had absorbed. A TV was missing in the corner—all that was left was the partially ripped-out arm mounted to the wall. Wires hung from two corners where someone had jacked the speakers. I caught sight of Disney princesses on DVD case covers scattered on the tile by an old pool table. A dog bed was tucked into one corner.

  Van crouched low and used his phone to light the floor. “From the backyard, if I was pushed, it was through this room, down this hallway.”

  “Careful with the light,” I said.

  The light didn’t catch any sparkles of glass on the smooth tile.

  “This way.” Van took the two steps that led up to a narrow hallway covered in shag carpet. He shone his flashlight but the carpet was thick and could have disguised anything except the largest shards. Van began running both hands through it before sitting back on his haunches. “Nothing.” I couldn’t tell if he sounded dejected or relieved. “Hey, sorry I dragged you in here,” he whispered.

  “Beside the things that were taken, the house looks untouched,” I said, looking around.

  With our mission over, we sauntered to the front of the house where there were more windows and moonlight. I moved the curtain aside and had a new perspective on my house. Even through the thick oak trees, there was a partial view into my bedroom.

  Van came to stand next to me. “Could you see me when you came here?” That was back when I could sleep.

  “No, your lights were always out.”

  He’d checked.

  I saw the rest of the room as my eyes adjusted.

  Everything in the house looked worn, like the family had moved their same furniture from house to house. I again wondered if they were part of a church that had maybe given them this mismatched furniture. They hadn’t removed the ancient carpet when they’d moved in. They hadn’t repainted walls. But because of its location, the house itself was worth a small fortune. And there was so much packed into every corner: toys, movies, instruments. Beside the sheer amount of stuff, the family had never made the home theirs. It was like they had lived here tentatively.

  “What are you thinking?” Van asked.

  “It’s more sad than scary to me. What about you?”

  “That, I guess,” he said. Van exhaled slowly.

  “Hey, maybe we just learned that nothing happened and you were just passed out. That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Then why won’t Max look at me?” Van said, frustrated. He put his hands on his hips and looked all around.

  I sucked in my breath. Van saw it at the exact moment I did. A light had come on in my house. We both edged into the narrow, train-car kitchen. It was where the sour stench was coming from. I wanted to believe it was the garbage but it was an overpowering smell, like something had died in the walls.

  My mom was up. She came to the window and looked out, her long gray jersey nightshirt clinging to her narrow body. Van and I ducked at the same time, crouching down together. I wasn’t used to getting in trouble. My mom treated me like an adult so I didn’t know what her reaction would be if she caught me sneaking out. Not knowing somehow made it worse.

  “You okay?” Van asked.

  “Yeah. But I’d like to not get caught.”

  “Just get in the house. If she catches you downstairs, pretend you were in the kitchen. Get through the back door quickly, then you’re good. Even if she thinks you’re lying, she can’t prove it.”

  He reached over and touched the back of my hair, sliding his hand down my ponytail. “Mess up your hair, look like you’ve been sleeping.”

  I shook out my hair. The moonlight glowed through the kitchen window and I could see him clearly. His eyes held mine steadily.

  The light went out. Van slowly stood. “Come on.” Van reached down for my hand. I took it and his warm fingers grasped my wrist to gently pull me up.

  We walked down the bedroom hallway. Van paused at the open doorway to the master bedroom.

  “Let’s go.” I wanted to get out of there. There was something exposing about the bed being unmade, a corner of the fitted sheet and mattress cover yanked up, baring the shiny blue mattress beneath.

  Again, Van reached his hand out to me before quickly replacing it at his side.

  Just before I opened the sliding glass door, willfully ignoring the evidence of rats, I twisted back to Van.

  “You go. I can get back into my house on my own.”

  “No, I’ll walk you. I’m the one who convinced you to sneak out.”

  “I’m the one who said yes.”

  We were quiet for a second, our whispering almost feeling romantic.

  It was rare to let someone help me. I did everything scary alone. Diving was all about doing a scary thing all by yourself. Van’s offer felt good but I didn’t want to lean into it. I’d learned not to lean on something because it wouldn’t be there to stay.

  I carefully slid the door open and we made our way into the wild backyard.

  The light in my mom’s bedroom flipped on again. Van grabbed my arm and we swiftly headed for the dark cover. Straight ahead, deep in the backyard, toward the greenbelt.

  We were knee-deep in brush and there was some ominous skittering next to our feet. Van looked behind us, trying to find a gap in the bramble wide enough for both of us.

  “Is there any way we can push back into the woods? Get out of plain sight?”

  “No. You remember—there’s the chain-link fence behind all this. You can only get on the trail by Wilson’s.”

  Van was so close. We were in a tight space. Waiting. Van shifted and put his hand on my upper arm to position me. There was no room except closer to him. We stood, chest to chest, on the edge of the woods, frozen. I could feel whenever he inhaled. Our breathing synced up.

  I wanted to joke. To say This is ridiculous and What are we doing? But I didn’t. If either of us got caught, we wouldn’t be meeting again anytime soon.

  Staring for minutes on end at one point of light became hypnotizing. I was a zombie, not awake, not asleep. Just so heavy everywhere. My mind, my body. At this point, I didn’t know what amount of sleep it would take to make me feel rested again. A week to seriously recover?

  “I’ll make sure you don’t get in trouble,” Van whispered.

  “You won’t get me in trouble.”

  “Your mom will think I’m a bad influence.”

  “No. She likes you.”

  We quit talking. Maybe only five minutes passed, us staring at my mom’s ominously lit window, our breath rising and falling. There was more rustling not too far from our feet and I leaned closer to Van. An owl hooted above our heads. A moment later, there was an answering call.

  I bowed forward to see if any lights upstairs had been turned on. Van pulled me back just as I saw all was dark. He kept his arm around my shoulders.

  I quit breathing when he did that. He was so close. For a moment, I imagined being Caroline. I saw their kiss right before my dive but, this time, I pictured myself being the one curving my hands around his shoulders, standing on tiptoe, and tilting my face up to his while he smoothed his hands down my lower back. Ashamed, I peeled his hand awa
y. When I did that, Van put as much space between us as he could.

  My mom’s light went out again.

  “Let’s go,” Van said. I noticed how careful he was to avoid touching me. Then he stopped so abruptly, I slammed into his back.

  “Ow. What?”

  “I think it was a picture frame. Maybe I knocked a frame off the wall and broke it. I told Wilson I remembered shattered glass that night. So, if they really wanted to, they could have cleaned it up. But there could still be a broken frame inside.”

  I felt bad for him. He sounded like he was grasping for straws. “We have to look another time,” I told him.

  “I’ll go in real quick.”

  “No. I’m about to get caught. Not now, but soon. Okay? When my mom is working.”

  “Fine,” Van said, sounding reluctant. “Let’s get you home.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MONDAY, APRIL 11

  Hey! I went to a sports psychology seminar in Fort Worth. There’s a new, slightly weird therapy that might help get you back quicker. Doesn’t require getting wet. Call me.

  “Hi! Look what I bought you.” Like a game-show hostess, my mom presented a pair of floor-length gossamer curtains cradled in her arms and draping down to the floor.

  My brain was behind, still stuck on Mike’s text, and I could tell my pause was unexpected, that my mom had looked forward to a positive reaction.

  “Thank you!” I scrambled off my bed to take them from her and behave like a normal person.

  “Do you want some help hanging them?”

  “Sure!” They were what you’d find at a motel, a flimsy insert in front of the heavier curtains that was supposed to lightly obscure the view and the viewer. My mom’s head was bent as she went about ripping off tags. When she wafted the length of semi-sheer polyester, she looked like an old-fashioned bride, or a bridesmaid straightening the train of the bride’s dress.

  When the curtains were hung, they changed the light in my room. It was shadier but the light was also more yellow, ethereal.

  “You can still see through. I’m sorry. But it’s better than nothing.” My mom gave me a Mona Lisa smile I had never seen—kind of wistful, like she was appraising how grown up I’d become. For a moment, I wondered if someone on the cul-de-sac had said something to her about the inappropriateness of being able to see me at night.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “How’s the head today?” she asked.

  “It’s fine!” I lied.

  Recently, we had been like two ships passing in the night, only crossing for Sunday’s brief dinner. When I got home from school, she was always sleeping. I had lain down next to her once since the accident, hoping that being so close to the person I had always wanted to be close to would lull me to sleep. It made me anxious instead; the blackout shades, the gentle up-and-down of my mother’s chest in rhythm to the tick of the clock. I used to feel like the child in our relationship but since the accident, I felt more like the adult. Maybe because I’d realized, after the accident, how on my own I was. Or maybe it was because I was keeping secrets.

  “You look like you haven’t slept,” my mom was saying. “Your eyes are all pink.”

  “I was up late with Izzie. At the movies, then her house.” There was a grain of truth in the lie. All of that had happened, but days ago.

  She appraised me for a moment. “I trust you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Just, I trust you. I couldn’t do any of this—my job, our lives—if you weren’t you. You’re not an ordinary kid.”

  To me, that wasn’t a compliment.

  * * *

  Later that day, I stood at my new curtains, watching the activity on the street. The obfuscation made me bolder and I observed for more than an hour, mesmerized by the show.

  It was afternoon and bright and beautiful. The cul-de-sac looked as American and healthy as could be. Kids wheeled by on bikes, Mrs. Kitchen was planting her vegetable bed and various service trucks parked at intervals. Two men on opposite sides of the street used their blowers to push dust, debris, and the confetti of fallen white blossoms farther down the block. Between the noise of the blowers and the pop music from wireless speakers, it was almost celebratory.

  I caught sight of Mary Seitzman on the sidewalk below and I raced downstairs and out the front door to catch her. Mary sat on the curb in front of the abandoned house, wild grasses and weeds crowding the base of the mailbox. She laced up her roller skates, happily humming to herself.

  “Mary!”

  “Hi, Ingrid. I saw you the other night! At first I thought it was Van’s girlfriend—I always see her—but it was you.”

  Oh, great. Well, of course she saw Caroline on our block. Just because I never saw Caroline didn’t mean she’d stopped going over to Van’s. “We’re just friends,” I said quickly. “Hey, I was wondering, do you know anything about the break-ins here?” I pointed to the sad house behind us. “Did you ever hear anything? Or see anything?” After all, I’d seen her awake at dawn. It had just now occurred to me that maybe Mary had a piece of the story that could help Van.

  Mary stood, adjusted her black-and-yellow knee socks, then began expertly snaking backward on her skates. “No. It’s so weird! Every time the police have been called, I’ve been at my dad’s.”

  Mary skated to the middle of the street, twirled like a ballerina, and then returned to my side. “Do you think they’ll come back?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “The family.”

  We looked to the house at the same time and paused for a moment, as if we were both wistfully imagining a happy family, together, inside.

  “I don’t know. But I somehow doubt it.”

  Mary nodded to herself a few times, as though reluctantly accepting reality, and then she skated away.

  I saw Wilson and Max exiting Wilson’s house. They were both looking down at a large digital camera. Max held it but Wilson kept consulting the instruction booklet in his left hand and then would point out a feature. With knitted brows, they both toyed with the black camera. I was surprised Max didn’t tell Wilson to back off and give him some physical space, but Max and Wilson were so intertwined, they were apparently used to being in each other’s business. It used to be that Van was right there, too.

  I knew nothing about cameras, but the way Max was cradling it, you could tell it was valuable. Expensive new clothes for Wilson, expensive new camera for Max, new tattoos. They were trying to keep up with Seba. I thought about asking Van if he had noticed but he didn’t seem to want to talk about Max and Wilson. If Van missed their friendship, which he had to, he never said a word.

  I realized I was staring. I made my way back inside and up to my bedroom but once there, I felt the pull of the view and returned to the window.

  The opening of the Moores’ front door caught my eye. Van came out first, trailed by his three younger brothers and his mom and stepdad. Behind Kevin, one of the twins rolled a black hard-shell suitcase, getting it stuck between each and every paver before laboriously hauling it up again. The entire family waited in the front yard amid their Georgia O’Keefe–inspired landscaping. Van stood a bit apart from the family, off to one side under a mesquite tree, sleeves of his hoodie pushed up to his elbows, hands shoved in his pockets. He froze when he noticed Max and Wilson, watching them for a few long moments. I bit my lip and waited for him to call to the boys, but instead, Van lowered his gaze to the ground and subtly turned his back.

  A sleek black Mercedes pulled up and the driver got out, shook Kevin’s hand, and immediately loaded the suitcase into the trunk. The twins clung to Kevin’s legs and he jokingly pretended to shake them off. Then Kevin put his arm around Adam. Adam’s madras shorts made him look 100 percent more country club than Van. Kevin was shorter than Adam but he managed to pull his son’s head down to plant a kiss on top of his blond curly hair.

  In a messed-up family tableau, the five Moores stood together while Van was a dista
nce away, now typing on his phone. In an attempt to include him, Lisa called Van over to come say goodbye. Kevin waited, seeming to want to say goodbye to Van. But by the time Van looked up, Kevin was lowering his large frame into the luxury vehicle. Lisa walked over to Van and tried to place an arm around him, but Van was too quick and already heading back inside.

  Van had never been a fan of Kevin’s. But I hadn’t thought of Van as a loner in his own home. It made sense why Wilson and Max—and formerly me—were like his other family. But now Wilson and Max had drifted.

  I glanced over to see if Wilson and Max were still outside. When I focused out over the entire block once again, I saw Max’s camera in Wilson’s hands and aimed directly at my window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13

  All day, I waited for night.

  Pieces of dives were coming back to me. Still not the missing dive but it was a sign that the block was loosening. It was a miracle given the fact that I was in bad shape sleep-wise. Maybe Van had been right—distraction was good.

  It was a joke that Van would ever help me sleep. He was keeping me up at night, which I had to admit was wrong but, if I was getting dives back, something about it also had to be right.

  A voice in my head screamed about getting too attached to Van but, from lack of sleep, from neurons constantly firing, it was like I was taking speed. For once I wasn’t stopping to think. Not that I could hold my train of thought for that long anyway.

  I sat at my desk, a massive travel mug of black coffee next to me. I refocused on the dirty computer screen. We had an English paper due—a long one—and I couldn’t work on it to save my life.

  The only motivation I had was to compete with Van. He had bragged one night that he was getting all As this quarter, his soccer coach was playing him more, and he was staying up every single night with me. How was it that he was maintaining every aspect of his life—excelling, actually—and making it look so easy? I wasn’t diving, my friends had stopped inviting me anywhere since I kept saying no, for the first time I’d forgotten a test, and I’d thrown away my house keys at Chipotle.