All the Dangerous Things(5)

I drop my purse on the counter and thumb through the mail she left in a pile, mostly junk and bills, until I feel a catch in my throat. I pick up an envelope addressed in familiar script, my parents’ address in the left-hand corner, and flip it over, sticking my thumb in the gap and ripping it open. I pull out a small card with flowers on the front; when I open it up, a check flutters out and falls to the floor.

I drop the card on the counter, exhaling slowly. I can’t bring myself to touch the check, to see how much it’s for. Not yet, anyway.

“Are you ready for a walk?” I ask Roscoe instead. He spins in a circle, an undeniable yes, and I feel myself smile. That’s the beauty of animals—they adapt.

Ever since I’ve become nocturnal, Roscoe has, too.

I remember looking up at Dr. Harris, nine months ago, during our first appointment. The first of many. I couldn’t see my eyes, but I could feel them. Tight, stinging. I knew they were bloodshot, the little veins that were supposed to be invisible branching out across my sclera like a windshield after a wreck, bloodied and cracking. Broken beyond repair. No matter how many times I blinked, they never got better. It was almost as if my eyelids were made of sandpaper, chipping away at my pupils with each flip of the lid.

“When was the last time you got a full, uninterrupted night of rest?” he had asked. “Can you recall?”

Of course I could. Of course I could recall. I would be recalling that date for the rest of my life, no matter how hard I tried to push it out of my memory. No matter how hard I tried to will it out of existence, how desperately I wanted to pretend that it was just a nightmare. A terrible, horrible nightmare I would be waking up from at any minute now. Any second.

“Sunday, March sixth.”

“That’s a long time,” he had said, glancing down at the clipboard on his desk. “Three months.”

I nodded. One thing I was starting to notice about being awake all the time was the way in which seemingly little things grew bigger by the day. Noisier, harder to ignore. The ticking of the clock in the corner was deafening, like a long nail steadily tapping against glass. The dust in the air was unusually visible, little specks of lint floating slowly across my field of vision like someone had tampered with my settings, distorting everything into high-contrast slow motion. I could smell the remnants of Dr. Harris’s lunch, little particles of canned tuna wafting through his office and into my nostrils, fishy and brackish, making my esophagus squeeze.

“Did anything extraordinary happen that night?”

Extraordinary.

Until I had woken up the next morning, there hadn’t been anything extraordinary about it. It had been painfully ordinary, in fact. I remember changing into my favorite pair of pajamas, pushing my hair back with a headband, and scrubbing the makeup from my skin. And then I had put down Mason, of course. I had read him a story, rocking him to sleep the way I always did, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember which story it was. I remember standing in his bedroom, days later, after the yellow police tape had been snipped from the doorway, the silence of his nursery somehow making the room seem to expand to triple its actual size. I remember standing there, staring at his bookshelf—at Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Where the Wild Things Are, desperately trying to remember which one it was. What my last words to my son had been.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember. That’s how ordinary it was.

“Our son,” Ben had interjected, placing his hand on my knee. I looked over at my husband, remembering that he was there. “He was taken that night from his bedroom. While we were sleeping.”

Dr. Harris had to have known, of course. The entire state of Georgia had known—the entire country, even. Then he had bowed his head the way most people seemed to do when they realized their mistake and didn’t know what else to say, his neck mimicking the snap of a shutting lid. Conversation closed.

“But Izzy has always had … problems,” Ben continued. Suddenly, I felt like I was in detention. “With sleep. Even before the insomnia. Kind of the opposite problem, actually.”

Dr. Harris had looked at me then, studying me, like I was some kind of riddle to be cracked.

“About fifty percent of sleep disorder cases are related to anxiety, depression, or some kind of psychosocial distress or disorder, so this makes sense, given what you’ve been through,” he had said, clicking his pen. “Insomnia is no exception.”

I remember looking out the window, the sun high in the sky. My eyelids were feeling heavier with every passing second; my brain, cloudier, as though I were enveloped in a blanket of fog. The pen was still clicking, amplified in my ears like a ticking time bomb ready to blow.

“We’ll run some tests,” he said at last. “Maybe get you on some medication. We’ll have you back to normal in no time.”

I’m reaching for Roscoe’s leash when I catch a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror and wince. It’s an automatic reaction, like jerking your fingers away from a hot stove. I should be gentler on myself, I know. I’ve been through a lot, but the lack of sleep has become so apparent on my face it’s hard not to notice. I look like I’ve aged years within months, with the new bags hanging heavy beneath my eyes, droopy and worn. The thin swathes of skin beneath my tear ducts have morphed from a warm olive to a deep, dark purple, like a marbling bruise, while the rest of my face has taken on a grayish tone, like chicken that’s been left in the fridge too long. I’ve lost twenty pounds in twelve months, which doesn’t seem like that much, but when you’re already tall and waifish, it shows. It shows in my cheeks, my neck. My hips—or, rather, my lack thereof. My hair, usually a deep, glossy brown, looks like it’s dying, too, the ends split clean in half like a splintered tree that’s been struck by lightning. The color growing duller by the day.