Page 4 of Middle of the Night

That was seven years ago and, contrary to what I let Dr. Manning believe, I still can’t sleep.

Right now, my insomnia is manageable. I catch up on rest with midday naps, snoozing on the couch as the evening news murmurs in the background, sleeping in on Sundays until noon. That’ll change when the school year starts in September. Then I’ll have to be up by six, whether I’ve slept or not.

Tonight, though, is still mid-July, allowing me to roam from room to room. I’ve done nothing to the house in the week since I moved in while my parents moved out, and the place now has a disjointed, temporary feel. As if all of us—my parents, the movers, me—gave uphalfway through. Most of my possessions, including half my clothes, remain in boxes stacked in corners of empty rooms, waiting to be unpacked. They’re joined by everything my parents left behind—furniture that was either too big to fit into their downsized Florida condo or too unloved to make the trip.

In the dining room, chairs surround an empty space where a table should be. In the kitchen, the cabinets have been raided of most plates, utensils, and glasses, leaving only mismatched stragglers behind. In the living room, the sofa remains, but the matching armchair in which my father falls asleep every evening is gone. As is the TV. And the grandfather clock. And at least one end table, although the crystal bowl that once sat atop it now rests on the beige carpet.

Each time I notice it reminds me that I need to do something with the place. I can’t let it stay like this for much longer. But I also have no desire to settle in for real, which would make this feel less like a temporary situation and more like the sad, permanent move I fear it is.

Until last week, it had been almost thirty years since I lived here full-time. I didn’t go back to school the fall after Billy vanished. Rather, not the school I’d been attending. The one with familiar halls and teachers I knew and friends I never saw during the summer even though we lived only a mile or so apart. Instead, my parents sent me to a private school in upstate New York where no one knew who I was. Or what had happened in my yard. Or how I’d rarely slept a full night since.

It was a relief living in a creaky dormitory, surrounded by boys who were blissfully incurious about me. I used that to my advantage, blending in with the crowd until I graduated. No one noticed me, and I made every attempt to keep it that way. The few close friends I did have were still kept at arm’s length when it came to Billy. Even though I told no one about him, they couldn’t help but notice how gloomy I got right before the holidays or summer breaks—and how happy I was to be back at school when they ended.

I think my friends assumed I hated my parents. The truth was that I hated this house. I hated being reminded of what happened here. I hated waking up in the middle of the night, looking out my bedroom window, and seeing the same patch of grass where Billy vanished. Most of all, I hated the guilty feeling that overcame me every time it happened.

Billy was gone.

I was still here.

Somehow, that didn’t seem right.

When it came time to choose a college, I picked one even farther away from home. Northwestern. There, it was even easier to blend in with the crowds of students tramping through golden summers and brutal winters. I fell in with a group of misfits. The same kind of video game geeks and comic book nerds who are popular now but definitely weren’t back then. Even among them, I was bit of an outcast, preferring books to Game Boys, quiet gatherings to parties.

It was at one of those small gatherings that I met Claudia, who’d tagged along with a friend of a friend. We found ourselves standing next to each other in a corner, pretending to enjoy our lukewarm beer.

“The upside to huge parties,” she said, unprompted, “is that their sheer size provides good cover for introverts like us. Here, we just stand out.”

I eyed her over the rim of my plastic cup. She was pretty, in a bookish way. Brown hair. Willowy frame. Shy smile.

“What makes you think I’m an introvert?” I said.

“Your expression,” she replied. “Your demeanor. Your body language. The fact that you’re standing here with me, president of Introverts Anonymous.”

I grinned, surprised and delighted to be so easily pegged. “Yet you talked first.”

“Only because I have a weakness for guys in glasses.”

That single sentence gave me enough courage to ask her out on a date. We went for deep-dish pizza and beer, that most clichéd of Chicago first dates. Not a cliché was what I told her as we walked back to campus—that the summer I was ten, my best friend was taken from a tent in my backyard and never seen or heard from again.

“Jesus,” she said, appropriately shocked. “Who was your friend?”

“Billy Barringer.”

Claudia recognized the name, of course. Everyone had heard of Billy.

The Lost Boy.

That’s what the press started calling him in the weeks following his abduction, when you couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about it. And it’s what he continues to be called in those shadowy, conspiracy-laden corners of the internet that still talk about him. To them, Billy has entered the realm of urban legend, even though what happened isn’t as mysterious as those girls who vanished from that summer camp or as terrifying as that group of teenagers killed in a cabin in the Poconos.

Billy’s case still resonates because it happened in a quiet suburban backyard, which is generally recognized as one of the safest places in America. And if it could happen here, it could happen anywhere.

That night, fueled by nerves, too much beer, and Claudia’s lovely, searing gaze, I told her all of it.

About how, in the middle of the night, someone crept into my backyard, sliced open the tent in which we slept, and snatched Billy out of his sleeping bag.

About how I’d slept right through it, unaware of what had happened until I woke the next morning and glimpsed the sun through a slash in the tent that definitely hadn’t been there the night before.

About how weird those first few morning hours were, when none of us quite knew the gravity of the situation, our confusion outweighing our fear.

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