Page 107 of Middle of the Night

I even feel like I’m ten. Lighter, younger, carefree. Gone is the weight of thirty additional years and all the stress, guilt, and heartache that came with them. I literally feel like my old self again, a fact that would fill me with joy if I didn’t know what was coming next.

But I do.

Thescriiiiiiiitchmade sure of that.

I look to my left and the sleeping bag that’s a Billy-shaped lump beside me. Next to him, a long gash runs the length of the tent’s side. It looks so much like a wound that I half expect to see blood gushing from it at any moment.

The freshly split tent walls ripple slightly, and the dark gash widens. Just a tad. I peer through it, even though I know I’m not going to see who’s on the other side. I’ve never been able to see.

This time, though, something’s different.

Someone isthere.

I see their face.

I recognize it.

For a slice of a sliver of a second, our eyes meet.

No.

If the word is spoken or merely thought, I can’t tell. It sounds the same to me. A loud, emphatic noise echoing through me.

No.

It can’t be him.

I blink in shock, and it’s all gone. Then is replaced by now. And through the new slash in this new tent, I glimpse a sliver of Detective Palmer eyeing me from the other side like a Peeping Tom.

“Did it work?” she says.

Rather than answer, I shimmy out of the sleeping bag, unzip the tent, and push out into the yard. Detective Palmer follows me as I keep going, marching to the driveway at the side of the house.

When I pass the garage, the security light above it snaps on, bathing me in brightness, my shadow stretching all the way to the curb. It shrinks as I hit the sidewalk, then stretches again as I run to another house on the cul-de-sac.

Over the lawn.

Up the porch steps.

Pounding on the door until it opens a crack and Russ Chen peers out of it, looking nervous. Looking, in fact, like an older version of the person I glimpsed through the tent slash thirty years ago. Those dual views—one remembered, one happening right now—tell me I’m right.

“It was you,” I say. “It was all you.”

Saturday, July 16, 1994

12:32 a.m.

One.

Five.

Ten.

Russ Chen collapses onto the floor, his chest tight, his arms pulsing. A feeling he’s grown to enjoy after his umpteenth set of push-ups for the day. He especially likes the way it clears his head. There’s no anger when he does them. No sense of inferiority. Just the strain of forcing his body past a point of resistance.

Only after he’s done do the bad thoughts trickle back in. Of Johnny. Of Russ’s likely futile plan to become just like him. Of the way Ethan chooses Billy over him every time, even though Billy isn’t worth it.

He now regrets the way he followed Billy around earlier in the day, pretending to like him because he thought it would make Ethan see him in a different light and decide that the three of them could become best friends.

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