The Sleepwalker(68)

I sat down in her desk chair. “Why did you change your mind?”

“I just did.”

“Did you have a fight with Lucy or one of the other kids who are going? Did you and Coach Noggler have some sort of falling out?”

She tossed the Game Boy onto the mattress beside her and rolled so she was facing the wall. “No. If I don’t go, Lucy will be disappointed and Coach will be pissed off.”

“Have you suddenly lost interest in ski racing?”

“I don’t know.”

A part of me wanted to scream at her, Why have I been driving you to the swimming pool almost every single day if you’re not interested in ski racing anymore? But I restrained myself. It wasn’t like I was so busy.

“No, I still like racing,” she went on. “I’m still looking forward to the season.”

“Are you worried about being away from home for a month? I mean, that is a crazy long time and Chile is crazy far away. Maybe you could just go for two weeks.”

“Look, it’s not like you’ve been so brave and gone back to college.”

“That isn’t quite the same thing,” I told her. “But tell me: Are the second thoughts because of all that time away from Vermont?” It dawned on me that Paige had never even gone to a sleep-away camp. I’d been a Brownie; Paige hadn’t.

“Can we talk about this some other time? The forms aren’t, like, due tomorrow.”

“No,” I agreed. “They’re not.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you done your homework?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to go to bed soon?”

“I’m in bed right now.”

“Let me rephrase that: Are you going to go to sleep soon?”

“I guess.”

“Good.”

“You know what I wish?” Paige asked.

I waited.

“I wish I were a cat who didn’t have to think about grades or Chile or dying or even whether your dad was ever going to be okay again.”

“I don’t think you have ever in your life lost any sleep over grades. You get A’s without breaking a sweat.” I focused on the grades because it seemed the most innocuous and unreasonable of her anxieties. I understood I was avoiding the bigger issues. So, I am sure, did she.

“You don’t know that,” she murmured.

“Well, I know how smart you are and how together you are. Okay? You’re way smarter than I am. And I’m not just saying that. Try not to be such a goofball worrywart.”

She rolled back over so she was facing me. I realized she had been crying. I went to her, but as she did whenever I tried to comfort her, she batted my arms and pushed me away. “I’m fine,” she said, sniffing and wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’m fine. I’ll go to sleep.” She tossed the Game Boy onto the floor, and as I sat helplessly by the side of her bed, she turned off the standing lamp beside it.



“Paige has always been a wild card,” Heather Prescott told me late that night on the phone. I called her to talk about my kid sister because we had been friends forever and she had known Paige since she was a baby.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“All that downhill craziness: you have to be a wild woman to be a ski racer. And there was her determination to find your poor mom back in August and September. You told me she was out there all the time looking for clues. And Zach always said there was no one like her when they’d be playing kickball or soccer in elementary school. That no sliding rule? She ignored it.” Zach was the youngest of Heather’s three siblings. He was in Paige’s grade at school.

“Well, then: her deciding not to go to Chile doesn’t exactly fit that profile.”

“She’s kind of acting like you. You don’t want to leave home at the moment. Neither does she. Frankly, I can’t blame either of you.”

“She said the same thing.”

“There you have it.”

“But she was the one who initiated this whole Chile ski camp a couple of weeks ago.”

“Because her coach brought it up.”

“So I shouldn’t be wigging out?”

“No, you shouldn’t be wigging out. I mean, at least don’t wig out about Paige. There are plenty of other perfectly good reasons to wig out, beginning with the fact that your mom is gone.”

Gone. The word was one of those euphemisms that some people used instead of dead. It sounded less harsh. It was closer to out. Here was the spectrum, I thought: Your mom is out. Your mom is gone. Your mom is dead. But I said none of that. People meant well. Heather meant well. She was a good friend.

“Okay,” I agreed simply. “Can I ask you a question that might seem kind of random?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think my dad might have been having an affair?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been wondering lately. There must be so much temptation.”

“Because he’s a college professor?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “Have you ever actually wanted to fuck one of your professors?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. They think we are way hotter than we think they are. I mean, I guess it happens—girls sleeping with their profs. Girls interested in older men. But I just don’t see the attraction, do you?”