Page 53 of Middle of the Night

A rustle in the woods.

Light yet oddly loud in the otherwise silent darkness.

With it comes the same presence I felt two nights ago. This time, it’s unmistakable.

Billy.

And not a memory of him. It really, truly, utterly feels like he’s here with me right now.

With the flashlight gripped tight in my fist, I rotate toward the woods again.

Slowly.

So very slowly.

Slow enough that I can feel my thoughts changing from fearful to curious to borderline hopeful. What if it’s really him? What can I possibly say after all these years?

I’m sorry, for starters.I shouldn’t have said what I said and done what I’d done. And I definitely should have helped you, even though I had no idea you needed it.

Instead, once I’m facing the woods, the flashlight aimed at the trees, all I can think to say is “Billy? Are you out there?”

At first, there’s nothing. Just the white noise of insects and the faint flicker of fireflies and a stillness so vast it’s suffocating.

Then I spot a faint rustle in the trees and hear a whisper of leaves. Something emerges from the woods, low to the ground.

A baseball.

I lower the flashlight until it’s latched onto the ball. I stare, hypnotized, as the ball continues to roll across the lawn toward my feet.

When it knocks against the toe of my shoe, I run.

Into the woods, crashing through underbrush, searching for the person who just put the ball in my yard.

But there is no person on the edge of the woods.

Just me.

Spinning in circles as the flashlight beam shudders through the forest, illuminating the ground, the trees, their branches drooping with leaves.

I return to the yard and pick up this new baseball, which in reality looks decades old. The leather is slightly yellowed, and the redstitching is frayed in spots. Turning it in my hand, I see a few grass stains and teeth marks likely made by a dog.

It is, I realize, the very same baseball Billy threw into my yard when he was still alive.

Gripping it now, I understand everything.

Billyisback.

He’s been out here for days, trying to get my attention any way he can. Roaming the cul-de-sac, flicking on lights, tossing baseballs into my yard. And the meaning is the same now as it was thirty years ago.

It’s time to play.

Friday, July 15, 1994

12:15 p.m.

After eating lunch but before going out to play, Ethan takes a quick shower—another recent development. Until May, he’d been forced by his mother to take baths every evening. Something he used to like because baths inspired playful thinking. He’d imagine he was a sea monster or a shark or sometimes, flat on his back under the water, a person drowning. But ever since Russ Chen said he only took showers, the very idea of a bath made Ethan feel babyish, and so he begged his mother to let him switch to showers.

Once clean, Ethan dresses quickly—a neon-green T-shirt, cargo shorts, his white Air Jordans now scuffed gray from overuse. The reason for his speediness is simple: He doesn’t want to be around his mother anymore. She’d acted strange all morning. Angry. Not at him, which should have been a refreshing change but in fact only unsettled Ethan. He knows it’s because she lost her job. That much is obvious. What eludes him is what he can do about it.

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