The Insomniacs

by Marit Weisenberg

  Van put his hands on my shoulders and angled me to face him so I’d look into his eyes. Really? He thought we needed a breakup scene in the school hallway?

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I ignored that. “How’s Max?”

  “He’s good. There’s a lot of talk of wilderness rehab school in Utah for the three of us.” Van half laughed.

  It wasn’t funny. “You didn’t do anything.”

  Van shrugged. “My mom and Kevin will calm down. My mom’s just scared right now. Can we go somewhere?”

  The resounding bang of lockers reverberated in my ears. I’d dressed too warmly and a trail of sweat trickled from between my shoulder blades to my lower back. Van waited for me to answer. I saw the boys from the soccer team whisper to each other while they watched us. One of them laughed and shook his head.

  If we continued the conversation, I worried Van would tell me he was sorry. We’d stand along a less populated corridor where he would rush through, get it over with, tell me that he and Caroline were giving it another chance and he couldn’t see me at night anymore. He would think he was a good guy doing it in person instead of over the phone. He might even put a hand on my shoulder to make sure we were friends and things were cool between us.

  I would save face by pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about; we were just friends, after all. That night in my room wasn’t a big deal. There was no need to be sorry.

  I could avoid that if I made this easy for both of us. I looked Van straight in the eye and said, “Now that we know the truth about next door, let’s get some rest. Maybe we can, now that it’s over.” I gently pulled from his grasp and started down the hall.

  “But it’s not over,” I thought I heard Van say.

  There was a touch of sadness in his voice that I didn’t quite understand. I kept on walking.

  * * *

  “What is going on?” Izzie asked as I settled at the lunch table.

  “He was making sure I was okay after the other night.”

  “Van was holding your shoulders.”

  Molly and Preeti sat down to join us. “Wait. Back up. Am I crazy or was Van talking to you in the hallway?” Molly asked.

  “It’s nothing. He was telling me about Max.”

  Izzie extricated herself from the bench and walked out.

  * * *

  “Izzie.”

  “You don’t tell me anything. You never have.”

  We stood outside the library on a small square of grass. The metal poles supporting the ancient flat roof were painted maroon in keeping with the school colors.

  I opened my mouth to speak. Then I closed it. I couldn’t talk about it because then I would never stop. I loved Izzie so much but I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t mention a word to other people. It was mortifying.

  Izzie turned up her palms and narrowed her eyes. “Seriously?” she said, incredulous. Then, as if it was a decision she’d been weighing for some time, she said, “If you say nothing, I can’t be friends with you anymore.”

  “What? Izzie. Come on. They live next door. That’s why I was there.”

  “Then why are you being weird?”

  “I’m not!”

  Sometimes you know when you’ve lost the ability to be a good liar.

  I dreaded what was coming and it was worse than I expected.

  Izzie’s expression closed off, like she inserted a barrier between us. Then it started.

  She took a step back and began shaking her head. “I thought I’d have more time with you this month. Finally. But I feel like I know you even less. You never, ever crack. My mom says it’s because your mom and your coach are all about strength.” Izzie raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes again. “I used to admire it and I’ve always felt like a mess compared to you but you know what? I’m happy I’m a weirdo and can cry. Because what you’re doing—always trying to be perfect—seems awful.

  “Now you’re living this double life and I’m not important enough—or too nerdy—to be included. Exclusive parties and you have some relationship with Van going on. Do you think I’m stupid? I know you’ve been in love with him since at least freshman year. I’ve been waiting for you to admit it for three years. I see how you look at him from across the classroom. How you ignore him every time he walks by and even when he’s right across the street. How you go into this weird Queen Elizabeth frozen walk whenever he’s around, like you know he’s there but you’re pretending he’s not. And I see those guys look at you. All three of them. And I have to say, you have lost your shit since Van started dating Caroline. Maybe you’ve lost it even more since they broke up.”

  I swallowed to stave off the gigantic, ominous lump climbing my throat. I literally couldn’t speak. Izzie gave me her back and left me in the dust.

  It was fitting that Caroline and two girlfriends walked by five minutes later. I was still rooted to the spot where Izzie had left me.

  “Hi!” Caroline acknowledged me with a dazzling smile as she passed.

  As I waved, I quickly brushed a tear away with the side of my hand and smiled at the girls like everything was just perfect. “Hey.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20

  I slid the car into “my” parking spot at the swim center. Mike’s hatchback was two spaces to my right. The aquatics center was located in a section of campus on a hill and the parking lot had a broad vista of the university’s eclectic architecture. A couple playing Frisbee on the green below were straight out of a college catalog. Next to me, the dark gray aquatics center loomed large and had the look of a nuclear power plant.

  If I wanted to speak with Mike before the team arrived for practice, I had to do it now. I’d rehearsed a bit on how to finally tell him.

  I trusted him. He’d never let me down. He was Mike.

  When I opened the car door, my legs began to shake uncontrollably, knees knocking together. Totally, completely irrational. Totally, completely not me.

  “What? What is it?” I whispered out loud, helplessly angry. I remembered my last dive. I knew what had been going on next door. I shouldn’t be scared anymore.

  I shut the car door, pulled out swiftly, and breathed a sigh of utter relief when I blended into traffic.

  * * *

  I drove miles and miles, to the outskirts of town. It had been years since I’d gone to the swimming hole with Izzie’s family.

  Back then, on a Sunday afternoon filled with canned soda and fire-ant bites, I’d shown off to Izzie’s family with backflips on the lawn. There was a rope swing over the warm, black water in the shade of the towering trees on the cliff above. Except for crazy, drunk frat boys, no one took the rope swing off the cliff. Except for me. Izzie’s mom kept fretting, “Are you sure your mom would be okay with this?”

  I remembered now how Izzie’s sister had barely scraped her knee that day. When Izzie’s mom ran to get a Band-Aid from the first aid kit in the trunk, I couldn’t believe it. I had been disdainful yet kind of jealous at the totally unapologetic show of weakness. When I’d had strep throat in fourth grade, Mike had called my mom to come get me. She was in nursing school and I begged him not to call her, knowing she’d be mad. He must not have believed me until my mother appeared at practice to collect me and didn’t say a single word. Mike actually patted my shoulder before I reluctantly left his side. Sure enough, she’d stalked ten steps ahead of me to the car. I could still see her pointy-toed flats attacking the pavement.

  “I’m not mad at you,” she’d said half an hour later as she tucked me into bed, having fully transitioned to mom mode by then. “It’s just terrible timing.”

  I accepted her apology because I knew she was in a tough position, pulled in different directions. My being sick had just been more than she could handle at that moment. For her sake, I wanted to get better fast, and all night I had fitful, feverish dreams of going to school the next day, desperate to get out of my mom’s hair. Instead, I went to the doctor and got antibio
tics, my mom white-lipped as she pulled out her credit card and missed her test.

  Today, the park was empty. I knew the water would be cold but I also knew it was deep enough after heavy rains this winter.

  I sauntered over to the fraying rope swing and gave it a tug, giving it my full body weight for a moment. I thought about the news story: a dumb teenage girl died hitting her head on a rock at Indigo Creek. The old me would have done it.

  Instead, I followed the path down to the water and waded in, fully dressed. I gently lay down in the water and floated on my back in the piercingly cold water and stared up at the branches above that made a lace umbrella.

  Was it that I was afraid Mike would be mad at me? The way I was afraid of my mom sometimes getting mad at a show of weakness?

  My dad, on the other hand—he had known all of my weaknesses. When I used to tell him I was afraid of the ghosts under my bed, he would lie down next to me until I fell back to sleep. I always trusted that he would be there when I cried out. So completely.

  My teeth were chattering. I closed my eyes and let myself drift but the cold was becoming harder and harder to ignore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20

  When I entered the house, something wasn’t right. The air was completely different—warm and still. Our house was like a bowl of soup. The air-conditioning had officially blown out. A handwritten note from my mother on the kitchen counter said she’d contact that repair company with the catchy jingle we always heard on the radio.

  There had been texts from my mom over the past couple of days but I’d never gone this many days in a row without seeing her face-to-face. But it was perfect timing; by the time she came up for air at the end of the week, the Wilson-Max-Van story about the ambulance and the party at the house next door would be old news. A nosy neighbor or Lisa and Kevin wouldn’t really think to stop her in the driveway to inform her. They would assume she already knew.

  My freezing-cold swim had lowered my body temperature and even though I really should have taken a shower to rinse off the filthy pond water, I peeled off my sticky, damp shorts and T-shirt that smelled of algae and changed directly into another identical outfit. I put on a yellow diving T-shirt from a meet two years before in San Antonio. I detangled my hair with both hands as best I could and let it hang down my back to dry.

  There was no choice but to open both windows in my bedroom. I sat down to do homework. After fifteen minutes, the air was too stifling. I pulled the curtain halfway to actually let the air in. Thankfully, it was cooling down with the sunset. The light outside was transforming the sky into a royal blue. It was a beautiful, breezy evening.

  There was an essay to write. There was AP chemistry homework. The words and equations swam in front of me. As a distraction, I checked my grades online. My computer wheezed scarily, showing its age, while the rainbow wheel onscreen spun mercilessly.

  When results popped up, at first, I wasn’t sure if I was asleep and having a nightmare. But after I slapped my cheeks and shook my head, it became clear that what I saw was real and what was in my head was a lot less reliable. Missing assignments littered the grid. My grade from last week’s chemistry exam was posted—C. The computer went dark after I’d been staring, unmoving, for too long. I snapped the screen down and lay down on my bed facedown. I grabbed the duvet at the foot of the bed and pulled it over my head.

  How had I let this happen? I had lost my mind. I hadn’t even been keeping track of what was passing me by. Spring of my junior year.

  I had been absolutely confident that I’d been handling everything. Staying up all night. School during the day. What else had I missed?

  I dug in my backpack for my phone where it was buried deep. The screen had fogged from the wet sweatshirt I’d put over it while I drove home in a sports bra. I saw there were no texts from Izzie, and my stomach clenched when I realized Coach Mike hadn’t responded to my lame text about a forgotten doctor’s appointment. There was one message from Van.

  I need to talk to you. Call me, text me. Whenever.

  I knew better than to call. This mess was why it was safer to get my thrills in diving. I’d been smarter as a ten-year-old when I’d poured everything into training instead of friends, my mom, people who were absent.

  My phone buzzed. It was my mom, checking in. Under the covers, I kicked the phone all the way to the foot of the bed until it tumbled into the curve of the tucked sheet.

  For hours, the phone proceeded to consistently buzz, punctuating my worry loop at regular intervals.

  The mystery wasn’t what was happening next door. Or why I couldn’t sleep. It was why I was falling apart.

  The rusted old gate in the side yard budged, scraping the pea gravel next door. At the noise, there was a sharp intake of breath. With my window open, it sounded like the person was in my room.

  The duvet came off my head, releasing me into cooler air.

  The sound again. Then a little, muffled, female sneeze.

  If I’d had my window open for the past few weeks, Van and I would have caught the secret parties next door. I could hear everything.

  I wandered over to the window, staying close to the wall, and peeked around the edge to see outside.

  It was Caroline. I caught just the back of her—I knew that beautiful, shampoo-commercial blond hair anywhere—before she disappeared into the shadows of the backyard.

  A wind had kicked up, the whine of it swirling around my house. Bright yellow pollen would litter the cars parked in driveways.

  The clock said 1 A.M. It made sense. Van would be out in a minute. He hadn’t changed his nighttime activities, just the players. Yet I moved to the other window to see if I was correct.

  I was chewing my nail when Van appeared approximately seven minutes later. He gripped the back of his neck with one hand and paused on the sidewalk to stare at the abandoned house. Then he dropped his arm to his side and jogged quickly across the street.

  Seeing them sneaking out together was almost pleasant in that strange, bottom-of-the-barrel way when you know things can only get better from there. Caroline was important enough to Van that he was willing to risk getting caught. Everyone was watching that house, ready to take it back from the jerk kids who were rotten enough to corrupt the sweet cul-de-sac. This era was going to be whispered about in the history of the block, like the time there was the robbery at the convenience store. Or the lore of how, back in the ’90s, one of the neighbor’s sons dropped acid and fried his brain. Today he biked circles and circles around the neighborhood and lived with his parents.

  The wind howled louder and before my room was dusted with a layer of dirt, I went to shut my windows. While I cranked in slow, stubborn circles, I glanced across the street at Van’s house. The windows were black, quiet. Everyone asleep. Then, before my eyes, every single light came on in the house, like a row of falling dominoes.

  Moving from right to left, the entire line of upstairs rooms came alive. I saw a blur of people and the tail end of a robe swish out of vision.

  I froze when Kevin entered Van’s room. Kevin stood shirtless, in his boxers, his large, hairy belly hanging over his waistband. But it wasn’t funny. Somehow it was scary because he seemed to be looking directly back at me. I couldn’t tell if we made eye contact.

  Then downstairs. Kevin’s figure appeared in the living room through the windows. Soon the entire house was ablaze.

  Kevin would search the house next door first.

  Torn, I knew Kevin still needed to get dressed before he took off to catch Van. I was closer to the empty house than Kevin. There was still time to warn Van.

  But forget it. What did I care if Kevin caught Van? If Van’s phone was taken away or he couldn’t play with his band.

  Because Van wasn’t a bad person. He was one of the best people I knew. The best. The loss he’d suffered early had only made him more kind and more loyal. Not broken. His only fault was that he didn’t want me.

  * * *
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  The moon was bright, which made it easier to see. When I stepped onto the neighbor’s property, mulch squeezed between my toes as I sunk into a layer of topsoil. It had rained in the last few days and the house grounds were damp and loamy.

  I wasn’t afraid of the house anymore but that same metallic taste of fear filled my mouth. Why was I suddenly scared?

  The backyard was made up of mostly overgrown lawn, almost knee-high in patches taken over by weeds, with wild shrubs bordering the looming greenbelt. I could distinguish individual trees closest to the house, but farther back, the blue-black melted together into one block of forest. I turned to trot up the wooden steps to the back door one last time, when an arm yanked me back.

  A scream tore from my mouth but only one small note escaped before a hand slapped across my mouth and my head was pulled back hard against the shoulder of someone much taller and stronger. Pinning me.

  My arms were free and I clawed at the hand across my mouth.

  “It’s me. It’s me. Shhhh,” Van’s voice said next to my ear.

  Van released his hand and I got out, “Kevin,” before he shushed me. We heard the back-gate groan at the same time.

  Without a word, Van grabbed my hand and led me in the direction of the greenbelt.

  For a bit, I followed, picking my way behind him.

  “Van,” I started to say when he’d led me through the slimmest opening in the imposing green border—the hole in the wall. Wilson must have shown him. Battling branches that scratched my face and arms, we sidled through the crevice that remarkably led to the twisted trail we knew and had traveled for years. Earth crumbled away beneath our feet as we descended. Van was going in the wrong direction and I could barely see the back of his maroon soccer jersey in front of me. We could reenter onto the street just one block over and Kevin wouldn’t find us there. I doubted Kevin knew that trick. But Van led me downhill toward the creek, where it was too dark and the terrain too wild. We didn’t need to go so deep into the woods.