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THEN
I come to in a start. It’s the kind of panicked awakening that follows a slammed door or a breaking glass: not a gentle emergence but a jarring disruption. I immediately know I’m not alone. There’s another body pushed against mine, warm and slightly damp like a leaky furnace. Little puffs of breath hot on my neck.
I twist around, blink quickly as two large eyes come into focus.
“You were doing it again.”
I rub my own eyes with the backs of my hands and stare at my sister, her hair tangled together like strings of melted caramel. Her thumb is pushed gently between her lips as she looks at me expectantly. I try to remember her coming into my room last night, lifting the dead weight of my arm before wriggling her little body flush against mine, draping it back over her stomach like a seat belt.
I try to remember, but I can’t.
“Sorry,” I say.
“It scares me when you do that.”
“It’s okay.” I wet my fingers, reach for her head, and pat down a particularly large knot, like a cat licking a newborn. “It’s just sleepwalking.”
“Yeah, but I don’t like it.”
“I can’t help it,” I snap. For a second, I’m annoyed. I’ve always been groggy in the mornings. I’ve always been a little irritable, like my brain is perturbed at being forced to wake up and drag itself to work. But then I remember that she can’t help it, either. She’s only six.
I force myself to exhale, to breathe.
“What was I doing?”
“Just standing there,” she says. The side of her face is pushed into my pillow, squishing her cheek. “Your eyes were open.”
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, tracing the crack that starts at the base of the chandelier and branches outward like little tributaries snaking their way across the cement, collecting in the corners. An interchange of veins. I’ve always been a heavy sleeper, as long as I can remember. Once my head hits the pillow, I enter a slumber so deep, nothing can wake me. Nothing. A few months ago, I slept clean through a fire alarm blaring just outside my bedroom door. I remember stirring awake on my own, outside in my nightgown, a pungent smokiness in the air. The feeling of my bare feet sticking to the dewy grass as my father held my hand in the dark, squeezing. Apparently I had walked outside with him, my fingers clenched tightly between his. I stood there for thirty minutes, rigid and upright and entirely unconscious, watching as the firefighters doused out the flames that had taken to our kitchen, licking up the walls.
“Where was I?” I ask.
“In my bedroom,” Margaret says, her pupils still flicking back and forth across my face. “You woke me up.”
I feel a hot flash of embarrassment crawl up my neck at the thought of my little sister feeling someone watching her as she slept. Of opening her eyes, blinking rapidly as her vision adjusted to see me, finally, standing motionless in the dark.
“Did you try to wake me?”
“No,” she says. “Mom said not to. It’s dangerous.”
“It’s not dangerous. That’s an old wives’ tale.”
Margaret pushes herself deeper into my comforter, and I try, so hard, to picture it: my eyes clicking open with a lifeless stare. My torso sitting upright, swiveling to the side, and my skinny legs swinging over the mattress. Hanging there, kicking, like I’m sitting on the edge of the dock, toes in the marsh, blind to the life that’s lurking just beneath. Feeling the plush shag carpet on my feet as I walk across my room, open the door, and creep down the hallway.
I try, but I can’t.
“What did you do?”
“Just lay there and waited for you to leave,” she says. “Then I followed you into your room.”
“Why did you get into bed with me?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I couldn’t sleep. That’s what I do when I’m scared.”
I look at my sister, place my open palm on her cheek, and smile. Margaret, my little shadow. She follows me everywhere. Always running to me when she’s afraid—even, apparently, when I’m the one she’s afraid of.
“How long are you going to keep doing this?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, sighing. And that’s the truth. I don’t know. I don’t know how often it happens, but judging by the number of times I’ve woken up in strange places over the last few months, I’d say it’s not infrequent. Coming to while standing rigid in our living room, the television emitting a silent blue glow. Sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal in the dark. Me in my white nightgown, lit by the moonlight, haunting the halls like the ghost of some lost, lonely girl. The doctor says it’s harmless—common, even, for kids my age—but the idea of my body acting independently from my mind is a little eerie, that’s all. The first time it happened, I woke up on the floor of Margaret’s bedroom; she was sitting right next to me, playing with dolls. She hadn’t even realized I was sleeping. “Dad said I’ll grow out of it.”
