He kept probing at the dark wall in his mind, behind which his entire
life was concealed. Diligently, he sought the tiniest chink through
which he might glimpse a memory. If he could find one crack, he was
sure that the entire facade of amnesia would come tumbling down. But
the barrier was smooth and flawless.
When he switched off the lights, he could not sleep.
The Santa Anas had abated. He could not blame his insomnia on the noisy
winds.
Although the amount of blood on the sheets had been minimal and though
it had dried since he’d awakened from his nap earlier in the day, he
decided that the thought of lying in bloodstained bedclothes was
preventing him from nodding off. He snapped on a lamp, stripped the
bed, turned up the heat, stretched out in the darkness again, and tried
to sleep without covers.
No good.
He told himself that his amnesia-and the resultant loneliness and sense
of isolation-was keeping him awake. Although there was some truth in
that, he knew that he was kidding himself.
The real reason he could not sleep was fear. Fear of where he might go
while sleepwalking. Fear of what he might do. Fear of what he might
find in his hands when he woke up.
DEREK SLEPT. In the other bed. Snoring so Thomas couldn’t sleep. He
got up and stood by the window looking out. The moon was gone. The
dark was very big.
He didn’t like the night. It scared him. He liked sunshine and flowers
all bright, and grass looking green, and blue all over so you felt like
there was a lid on the world to keep everything down here on the ground
and in place. At night the colors were gone, and the world was empty,
like somebody took the lid off and let in a lot of nothingness, and
looked up at all that nothingness and you felt you might just float away
like the colors, float up and away and out of the world, and then in the
morning when they put the lid back on, you wouldn’t be here, you’d be
out there somewhere, and you could never get back in again. Never.
He put his fingertips against the window. The glass was cold. He
wished he could sleep away the night. Usually he slept okay. Not
tonight.
He was worried about Julie. He always worried about her a little. A
brother was supposed to worry. But this wasn’t little worry. This was
a lot.
It started just that morning. A funny feeling. Not funny ha. Funny
strange. Funny scary. Something real bad’s going to happen to Julie,
the feeling said. Thomas got so upset, tried to warn her. He made a
warning to her. They said the pictures and voices and music on the TV
were sent through the air, which he first thought was a lie, that they
were making fun of his being dumb, expecting him to believe anything,
but then Julie said it was true, so sometimes he tried to turn his
thoughts to her, because if you could send pictures and voices through
the air, thoughts ought to be easy. Be careful, Julie, he thought. Look
out, be careful something bad’s going to happen.
Usually, when he felt things about someone, that someone was Julie. He
knew when she was happy. Or sad. When she was sick, he sometimes
curled up on his bed and put his hands on his own belly. He always knew
when she was coming to visit.
He felt things about Bobby too. Not at first. When Julie first brought
Bobby around, Thomas felt nothing. But slowly he felt more. Until now
he felt almost as much about Bobby as about Julie.
He felt things about some other people too. Like Derek. Like Gina,
another Down’s kid at The Home. And like a couple of the aides, one of
the visiting nurses. But he didn’t feel half as much about them as he
did about Bobby and Julie. He figured that maybe the more he loved
somebody, the bigger he felt things-knew things-about them.
Sometimes when Julie was worried about him, Thomas wanted real bad to