The Sleepwalkers (3 page)

“It looks great, babe,” he says.

“What else?” she asks, and his heart sinks. Now he’s really screwed.

He squeezes the plastic cup in his hand, making an annoying clicking noise. Dent in, dent out. Dent in, dent out.

“Well?” Amber asks, then before he can respond, she says, “Hair extensions and a French manicure. Not a very observant boyfriend, now are we?”

Caleb wonders, suddenly, when this became his life. It almost seems, in this strange moment, as if he’s been sleepwalking for years. As if he’s gone through these grueling years of study and romance and sports and life without even being truly aware, without being really present. It’s as if it were all hardly real at all. Now, on this deck overlooking the black, endless ocean, he’s suddenly, disconcertingly awake. And for some reason, he thinks of the dream again, of when he was a kid.

“Cake time!” someone calls from inside. Caleb sees his mom bringing out a cake, lit with a bunch of candles as if it were somebody’s birthday. He stands there for a moment, wondering if there is any precedent for blowing out birthday candles at a graduation party, but Amber is already leading him back through the French doors with one of her newly manicured hands.

Everyone is gathered. Someone seems to have put the word out with the partygoers downstairs that the culmination of the festivities is approaching, because people are filing up the steps in droves. There’s Bean, hooting as if he were at a strip club. There are the guys from the track team, their girlfriends, his whole group of friends from school; even a few teachers. Caleb’s stepfather, Bob, and some of his stiff buddies from the glorious airline catering industry, of which he is a mogul, stand in the corner, and, of course, Mom, holding the cake, waits by the fireplace, still dressed in her suit from work, her hair a mess but her face beaming.

“Thanks,” he says as he approaches her.

“Happy graduation, hon,” she says. “Now blow out these candles. This thing weighs a ton.”

“Is it customary to have candles on a—?” Caleb begins, but he’s rejoined with a chorus of “blow out the candles!” so he says, “Okay, okay,” and blows them out. Everyone claps. As he looks around him, all the smiling faces seem at once familiar (because they
are
familiar, after all) and strangely, disturbingly foreign. It’s the dream. He knows it. The dream still hasn’t quite let go of him.

“Speech!” Mom cries, and everyone else joins in, “Speech, speech, speech.”

Caleb blushes in spite of himself (which, he thinks, is not like him at all) and waves them off with one hand.

“Later, guys. Cake first, speech later. I promise.”

Everyone accepts that, mostly because it’s a tasty-looking cake: chocolate marble layer cake with buttercream frosting, Caleb discovers as he takes the first bite.

“Mmm,” he says loudly. He feels like he’s in a TV commercial, but he can’t help it, it’s that good.

“I’m going to powder my nose,” says Amber.

“You don’t want cake?” Caleb asks.

“No,” she says, wrinkling her nose up as if he had just said, “Don’t you want Ebola?” She squeezes his hand once and lets go, heading off down the hall with her long-legged, strangely cocky but sexy gait. Caleb goes back to work eating. He has a method—cake first, then the frosting.

Bean saunters up, his mouth brimming with chocolate.

“Wats da eel, aam?” he asks.

“Did you come here on the short bus or what? Chew your food.” Caleb laughs. It’s good to have a friend you can say anything to.

“This cake is so rad,” says Bean.

“That’s not what you said, man.”

“No,” says Bean, a little reluctant, “I said: ‘What’s the deal?’ With Amber.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dude, she’s like the queen from
Alice in Wonderland
. Every time she comes around, my balls shrink up like they’re trying to hide. It’s uncomfortable.”

Caleb nods. “She can be a little . . . direct.”

“Yah. But, hey, dude. She’s your girlfriend; you guys have been together for a long time—God knows how—and I respect that. If you’re happy, more power to you.”

“Thanks, Bean.”

“Just between you and me, though, the Little Man’s making your decisions for you, isn’t he?”

“Oh,” says Caleb, “you must mean the Big Man. I don’t know, you’ll have to set up an appointment and ask him. He’s a busy guy, though.”

“Yeah,” says Bean, “busy getting smaller. I’m going to go flirt with your mom and see if I can make Bob jealous. Wanna come?”

“Yeah,” Caleb says, “right after I get some more of this bomb-ass cake.”

Caleb fights off the pang of guilt he feels at the thought of having seconds. Why shouldn’t he have more? Track is over forever unless he decides to pursue it in college. Still, to have seconds seems foreign. He’s used to walking a very narrow path.

He looks around the room for a moment before spying the cake’s resting place. It sits at the end of the dining room table. The table is covered for the occasion with a fancy white tablecloth and also seems to be serving as the gift repository. He walks down its length, surveying his spoils. There are only a few gifts, actually. Mostly, the table is littered with cards. The cards are full of money, of course— and that’s a beautiful thing because there are a lot of them.

He cuts himself another piece of cake then balances it between his finger and the knife in an attempt to transport it to his plate without getting too much frosting on his fingers. The attempt proves futile. He drops cake and gets frosting all over his hand anyway.

“Aw, son of a . . . ”

Using the knife and slipping the paper plate underneath, he manages to get the piece of cake to safety. As for the tablecloth, it’s pretty screwed . . . But it’s his special night, Caleb figures, so if he tells her right away, his mom won’t be able to get mad at him . . . And it’s actually not as bad as he was thinking because the cake landed mostly on one of the cards. He picks up the frosting-laden envelope, licking the sugary goodness off his finger at the same time. The envelope doesn’t look like it would contain a greeting card—it’s plain white, and letter sized. He turns it over. No writing on the back, and no return address on the front. There is a stamp on it, though, so it apparently isn’t from anyone at the party. Heck, maybe it’s not even for him at all— but he can’t tell; the address is covered in frosting. He glances at his mom—thinking he could ask her about it, but she’s rapt in a conversation with Bob and his terminally boring friends.

There’s only one way to find out who this particular piece of mail is addressed to, and if it involves eating more frosting, then so be it. He licks where the address should be. Delicious. But the writing is still illegible, which calls for one more lick and . . . there—it’s the correct address, all right, but as for who the letter is addressed to . . . He licks once more. And the revelation is: the letter is addressed to—“Billy.”

Caleb stares at the envelope for a minute, perfectly still. Billy. His first thought is that this letter was simply sent there by mistake. No Billy lives here.

He studies the handwriting on the envelope. It’s cursive. Almost childlike. He doesn’t recognize it.

Billy.

Of course, Caleb’s full name is William Caleb Mason, but no one calls him “Billy.” Not since he was a kid. Not since he moved to California.

His brow is knotted up and his forehead begins to feel heavy. He sits down, staring at the envelope. He hesitates, that weird foreboding washing over him again, then tears it open.

“Speech, speech, speech!” everyone calls—but the laughter, the clink of glasses, the music are all muted. There’s Bean, winking at him. There’s Amber, expectant. Everyone is waiting for him, everyone is listening.

Now Mom speaks: “Thanks for coming, everybody! I just wanted to say how proud we all are of you, Caleb. Valedictorian is a great honor, and I know great things are ahead of you. But you’d better be careful in Africa. If you get eaten by lions, you’re totally grounded, young man.” She laughs. To Caleb’s mom, that constitutes a joke.

“. . . And here’s a little something to help you on your trip into the heart of darkness.” She hands him an envelope. Now, he clutches two, because he still has the one from the table clenched in his trembling fist. He looks at the new envelope, dumbly. Everyone falls silent now, watching him. It occurs to him that this is another part of the dream— he still hasn’t woken up yet. This is the part where everyone’s looking at him, and he looks down and finds himself naked . . . or covered in blood. Out the window, he hears the sound of the ocean, unending.

“Well, open it,” his mother urges.

Fumbling, he crams a thumb under the flap and tears. It’s a cheesy card and a check for two thousand dollars. Mom is smiling at him. He tries to smile back and can’t. Everyone waits for him. Suddenly, his head feels light, unright. He puts the check in his pocket and looks at the other envelope, the one addressed to “Billy.” Awareness washes over him. Everyone’s watching him, everyone’s waiting.

Someone—Bean, probably—yells, “Speech!”

Caleb clears his throat, still looking at the envelope.

Silence swirls around him maddeningly. Except it’s not really silence.

Finally, he speaks: “I’m not going to Africa anymore,” he hears himself say. He hardly knows why he said it, but it occurs to him in that instant that it’s already said. It’s already in the air, too late to take back.

Now everyone’s going to ask him why. That’s the question percolating upon all of their lips, even now. And as he looks at the envelope in his trembling hand, he knows he will never be able to tell them the truth.

Chapter Two

Dear Billy,

I have been erased. The world doesn’t spin right anymore. Colors
run away from me. I know why the caged bird sings. His song means
“help me.”

Do you remember my sister? She was a beautiful singer. Much better
than me. She sang the same song. She still sings it, only very, very
softly now. You must remember my sister. My greatest fear of all is that
you don’t remember me anymore because there’s no one else who will. I
have only been here six months, and already the world is washed clean
of the faintest shadow of me.

I live in the House of White Walls now. You will be glad to know I
am making excellent progress. They send my mother letters every day,
detailing my fantastic advances. I am erased from the world. I exist
only in a one-paragraph report, biweekly delivered.

Horrible things unravel me more and more. Every night, it steals my
breath from me. My soul has grown dangerously thin.

I was just writing to let you know THE WORLD IS ENDING AND
THE DROWNED CHILDREN WHISPER TO ME EVERY NIGHT,
and it’s HORRIBLE. You Don’t Know. I hear them GASPING.

They are coming now. They come at night and steal pieces of me.
Save me, Billy

Billy, I love you
I love billy. Lovely billy. SAVE ME!!

Love, Christine

xoxox