Insomnia (The Night Walkers)

by Johansson, J. R.

  Turning, she leaned against the counter and folded her arms over her chest. “What do you want me to think? You don’t talk to me. You’re losing weight … you … you just don’t look good, honey.”

  “Way to boost a guy’s self-esteem, Mom.” I rubbed my hand against my eye and looked out the window across from me.

  “Do you have a better explanation?” She waited a mo-ment before continuing. “Because, believe me, I don’t want to find drugs … but I don’t know what else to think.”

  “I’ve told you.” I shook my head and looked back at her. “I don’t sleep well.”

  She lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows. “Parker, you sleep all the time.”

  A hot wave of anger flowed over me. Why did she keep bringing this up? She never believed what I said, anyway. I stood up from the table and turned back toward the hall. “Well then, guess it must be drugs.”

  “Wait, please.” She grabbed my elbow before I could get out of the kitchen but didn’t speak until I turned to face her. “So, if it’s sleep, we’re going to a doctor. Today. Dr. Brown has an after-hours clinic on weekends. We’ll go see him right now.”

  “Today?” I frowned. “But you have appointments.”

  “I’ll reschedule. It’ll be fine. This is more important.”

  A chill ran through me. I’d been avoiding this, afraid a doctor would confirm my suspicions, or worse, call me crazy and stick me in an asylum, but I had to be honest. I’d gotten as much information as I was going to get from my online searches … and I didn’t like the answers they were giving me. It was time. I’d just have to be smart about it. I wouldn’t tell him the whole truth, but I’d figure out a way to get him to give me the answers I needed.

  “Okay, Mom, if you think it will help. I’m in.”

  two

  Dr. Brown had been our family doctor for as long as I could remember. After sitting in the waiting room a few minutes, his nurse led us to a mustard-yellow exam room with pictures of fish on the walls. Now that we were here, I couldn’t seem to keep still. I sat down, drummed my fingers against my thighs, stood up, looked at the pictures, and sat down again.

  The door opened and Dr. Brown came in. He’d always been super thin and serious, and he always managed to take charge the moment he walked in a room. He smiled at my mom and shook my hand before taking a seat on his rolling stool.

  “Well, Parker, we haven’t seen you in a while.” He bent over my chart and all I could see were the short brown hairs on top of his head. “With teenage boys, that’s usually a good thing. What brings you in today?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m having trouble sleeping.”

  “That isn’t all,” Mom said. I wished again that she’d agreed to stay in the waiting room. “He’s been losing weight.”

  Dr. Brown glanced at me and back at the chart. “Teenage boys tend to fluctuate a lot. You play soccer still?”

  I nodded.

  “I can give you some sleeping pills to help get your body back into a regular rhythm, but I don’t want you taking them for very long. And you need to make sure you’re eating enough to keep up with the exercise.” He glanced at his watch and back to my chart.

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to sound as frustrated as I felt. Of course I’d tried sleeping pills. Over-the-counter, but still, they made the exhaustion so much worse. I’d be so groggy I could barely walk straight the next day. This wasn’t going to get us anywhere, and I couldn’t ask him anything with Mom in here. What a waste of time.

  Dr. Brown squinted at me for a moment before turning back to Mom. “There’s a new insurance form I’d like you to fill out while I chat with Parker. Just to make sure there isn’t anything else going on, if that’s okay with both of you?”

  Mom glanced at me and I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be fine, Mom. Go ahead.”

  She stood and followed the doctor into the hall. I tried to prepare myself. I’d only have a few minutes alone with him. I was sure he had his own reasons for getting rid of Mom, but I had to control the conversation.

  When Dr. Brown stepped back in the room, he handed me a pamphlet: Drugs and the Teenage Mind. I groaned and shook my head.

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, but when you’ve been a doctor as long as I have, you learn to read the signs.” Dr. Brown had kind eyes. They were sympathetic, compassionate … but it didn’t change the fact that he was as wrong as everyone else. “You know that any drugs you put in your system can affect your sleep patterns as well.”

  I looked him straight in the eye. “Just for the sake of argument, let’s say I am on drugs that are keeping me from sleeping.”

  His bushy brown eyebrows shot up. Clearly not the response he’d been expecting. “What are you on?”

  “I didn’t admit anything, and it doesn’t matter.” I shook my head and leaned forward, my elbows resting on my knees. “What I need to know is, what happens to a person’s brain when they don’t sleep?”

  Dr. Brown shook his head. “Don’t sleep at all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, first they’d be tired, irritable, emotional, obviously.” Dr. Brown shrugged, but he was watching my reaction closely. “And then there’d be tremors as the brain experienced stutters in its control of the body. Eventually the body would collapse from exhaustion and the problem would be fixed for the time being.”

  No matter how tired I became, I never collapsed and my brain never slept. I wasn’t normal. I shook my head. “Let’s say it didn’t collapse. For whatever reason, a body kept going. What would happen next?”

  He frowned. “That’s not possible without external interference—and extreme stimulation.”

  “Okay, then with those things.” I’m not sure when I stood up, but his eyes widened as he looked up at me. “What would happen next?”

  “I don’t understand. What’s this about?” He rolled his stool back a bit.

  I took a step closer but kept my voice low. I needed him to answer. “What would happen next, doctor?”

  He frowned and stood up, but I still had a couple of inches on him. “The person would become psychotic, experiencing a variety of dangerous psychological symptoms, and then … well, then the person would die.”

  It felt like he’d punched me in the gut. The room spun a little and I crumpled back into my seat. My eyes glued to the carpet in front of me. The research I’d done … I was right. I’d been right. I didn’t want to be right.

  Dr. Brown sat back on his stool and scooted it closer to me. “Why these questions, Parker? You aren’t saying that you—”

  “No,” I interrupted, looking up with a forced smile. “It’s about a science project I’m working on.”

  “Oh.”

  He stared at me in silence and I could see that I now had his full attention, but I didn’t want it anymore. I’d come for an answer, and he’d given it. I just needed to get out of there without Dr. Brown trying to have me committed.

  There was a knock on the door and Mom poked her head in. “You guys about done?”

  I nodded and got to my feet. Realizing I still had the drug pamphlet in my hand, I stuffed it into my pocket, but not before Mom got a look at it. Perfect. “I think the sleeping pills should help,” I said.

  Mom’s shoulders slumped a little and she glanced over at Dr. Brown, her gaze piercing. “Do you think so, doctor?”

  “I think it’s a good place to start.” He frowned, then continued. “But I want to check all his vitals … just to be safe.”

  After ten minutes of having me say “Ah,” checking my reflexes and pupil dilation, and listening to my breathing and heartbeat, Dr. Brown handed me a prescription for some sleeping pills and a referral card to a shrink. His brow was furrowed and he looked like he was considering saying something else, but instead shook my hand.

  “Take care of yourself, Parker.
I’m here if you need me.”

  Mom and I barely spoke on the drive home. She grunted and almost snarled at the other drivers as we went. She clearly didn’t believe me or Dr. Brown. I put on my headphones and turned up the music on my iPod. It wasn’t like I was exactly happy with the results of the doctor visit either, and luckily, neither of us wanted to talk about it.

  As soon as we were home, I headed to my room, shut the door, and called Finn.

  He answered after the first ring. “Hey man, what’s up?”

  “Nothing. I need to get out of here.”

  “Okay. Are we talking out to a movie or a south-of-the-border kind of escape?” I could hear him munching on something in the background.

  “A movie sounds good.”

  “Cool. Be there in a few.” When I heard him hang up, I stuffed my phone in my pocket and flopped down on my bed. I pretended not to hear Mom whispering to Dr. Brown on the phone in the living room.

  “Yes, but do you think he’s on something?” A pause. “No, I know you can’t tell for sure. I’ve never found anything in his room.” A longer pause. “Okay, I’ll let you know if it gets any worse. Thank you, doctor.”

  Dr. Brown’s voice, as he listed the stages of extreme sleep deprivation, kept bouncing around in my head like a rubber ball with no means of escape. I’d already been shaking a lot, getting worse every day. I guess those were the tremors, so next was …

  Become psychotic and then die … become psychotic and then die … become psychotic and then die …

  Fear clawed at me. I wasn’t sure anymore if knowing was better. I sat up and moved to my desk. The only thing I could do was be prepared. Time to do some more research.

  I opened a search engine and typed in Psychosis. It came up with a definition: “Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality, usually including false ideas about what is taking place or who one is (delusions) and seeing or hearing things that aren’t there (hallucinations).”

  My stomach clenched. Psychosis made death sound like the better part of my future. I dreaded the hallucinations and delusions more than what would follow. I was most afraid of becoming one of the monsters I’d seen so often in dreams, of not being able to follow my own code, my own morality. Or worse, not being able to tell reality from whatever my mind made up … that would be the real nightmare.

  I rubbed my hands together in an effort to warm them. My future felt cold, isolating. My kind of insomnia would be branded by everyone else as insanity.

  The doorbell rang and I jammed my finger into the power button on my computer. I stuffed one hand in my pocket as I grabbed my jacket with the other. I needed to get my mind off of all this. I couldn’t fix it, not right now, anyway. Finn was the perfect person to help me relax. Everything about him said chill.

  “I’m going to a movie with Finn,” I yelled down the hall. “I’ll be back later.”

  “Okay. Please be safe … and smart.” Even through her closed bedroom door, disappointment tinged her voice.

  I bolted out of the house. The instant I saw Finn’s face, the first dream of his I’d ever watched flashed through my head. Memorable, it was definitely memorable—I mean, he was a twelve-year-old, dressed like Superman, battling a giant bunch of broccoli. Finn’s dreams were always … unique.

  Even his most realistic dreams were never what I would consider “normal.” That was the main reason I liked to watch his more than anyone else’s. Finn’s dreams were the closest I could get to what I thought my own dreams might’ve been like.

  When we were thirteen, I told him I watched people’s dreams. He immediately assumed I was joking, and, rather than try to convince him, I’d dropped it. He probably would have freaked out anyway.

  Finn was leaning against the wrought-iron railing of our porch step. As I walked over I got a whiff of his deodorant; he smelled like old-man spice. His shirt read I’d flex, but I like this shirt with a remarkably muscular stick figure below it. I shook my head. That was Finn. His entire wardrobe was full of stuff like that.

  “Glad to see you brought my car back.” I plastered a smile on my face as I grabbed the keys from his hand.

  “Is it my fault that my parents bought me a piece of crap that’s only spent one week out of the shop since I got it last spring?” Finn flashed a grin and the spattering of freckles across his nose stood out like polka dots in the fading light.

  “Well, it’s definitely not mine.”

  Finn clutched his shirt in front of his heart. “Loyalty, man. Loyalty!”

  The sun peeked through the dark clouds that filled the sky and I stretched my hands out as I walked toward the car, absorbing the fading warmth. The leaves were still undecided—half on the ground, half on the trees. I shook off the feeling that they were a little too much like me and stomped through some dried-up ones on the front lawn, enjoying the crisp, crunching sound the leaves made beneath my feet.

  “The old theater first, right?”

  Finn hopped down the remaining stairs and hurried to catch up with me. “First? Is there a second?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve got to buy some new soccer cleats. Get them worn in before the season starts.”

  “As long as we catch that old craptastic Kung Fu movie, I don’t care what else we do. And hey, maybe new shoes will improve your footwork. I’m tired of blocking all the goals when other teams steal the ball from you.” He shrugged and climbed in the passenger side.

  “If you blocked more goals, I wouldn’t have to try to catch us up all the time.”

  Finn turned up the radio and pretended he couldn’t hear me.

  Three

  The sporting goods store always smelled like a gigantic rubber ball dipped in pine-scented cleaner. The store was pretty empty, but I noticed Jeff Sparks flipping through an issue of Sports Illustrated at the checkout line across from me. He was our senior class president. Everyone got along with him and he got along with pretty much everyone. He was definitely top dog, and had been the soccer team captain since junior high. There was a moment, when the team voted me co-captain of the soccer team this year, that I thought Jeff might not be down with sharing the spotlight, but so far he’d been cool.

  “Any good?” I asked.

  Jeff glanced up and smiled when he saw me. “Hey, man. Nah, my team sucks this year anyway.”

  “Dude, the Broncos suck every year.”

  He laughed, put the magazine back on the rack, and placed a new pair of shin guards in front of the register. “And the Packers are any better?”

  I shrugged and walked over to Jeff’s register. My line wasn’t moving anyway and I didn’t like shouting across the girl ringing him up. “Always.”

  “Never took you for a liar.”

  “Then you haven’t been paying attention.”

  Jeff paid and grabbed his shin guards. He walked backward toward the door and pointed one finger at me. “Soccer team meeting tomorrow after the assembly. Don’t forget.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said as he left.

  Jeff and I used to hang out all the time, but he was a year older so when he went to high school and I didn’t, things changed. Sometimes I missed hanging out with him, but I’d been a little too distracted and tired to make an effort over the past couple years, and now I wasn’t sure how to try again.

  I hadn’t watched his dreams in at least two years, but he used to dream a lot about hanging out with his mom. It seemed to make him oddly happy. Hard to look at our school’s star soccer forward, not to mention my co-captain, in quite the same way when you know he’s a serious momma’s boy.

  After buying my cleats, I glanced at the clock above the door and walked out into the damp night air. It was just after six. Not that I wanted to avoid Jeff’s dreams, but I was glad Finn was waiting for me outside. His dreams were comfortable for me now. Besides, even his nightmares were too freaky to be considered scary.
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  He was sitting on a bench talking on his phone. The air around us was thick and moist, but it hadn’t begun raining yet.

  “Yeah, we had to stop by the mall after the movie,” he said.

  I recognized his mom’s muffled voice coming through the earpiece. He shrugged and said, “Fine, I’ll ask him.” He held the phone away from his ear. “Can we pick up Addie from the pool on the way home?”

  I ignored his shaking head and laughed. “Sure, no problem.”

  He scowled and said goodbye. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell Mrs. Patrick no. Besides, Finn’s fifteen-year-old sister Addie was the coolest girl I’d ever met—although I’d never tell Finn that.

  I’d avoided most girl Dreamers since the end of junior high, when girls got all weird. Addie was the only girl I’d ever been curious about, but I’d never watched her dreams. For some reason it felt like an intrusion with her. It didn’t help things that last summer she’d turned ridiculously hot pretty much overnight. She even went to our school now that she was a sophomore. Too bad sisters of friends were off-limits. It didn’t really matter, though—girls were so much work. It wasn’t worth wasting the time I had left on them.

  “Fine, we can pick up Addie.” Finn gave an exaggerated sigh and got to his feet. As if we hadn’t already agreed. “But I want to stop at a gas station for a drink on the way home.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged and decided to change the subject. “Did you know about the soccer meeting after the assembly tomorrow?”

  Finn nodded and tucked his phone in his pocket. “Yeah. Aren’t we starting practices a little early this year? Spring’s a long way off.”

  “Yeah, it’s early. I think we should wait a few more weeks, at least until after Halloween, but it isn’t worth arguing with Jeff about it.”

  “I don’t understand half the stuff Jeff does, but it seems to be working for him.”