Free The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay Page A

sidewalk under me but I just keep on going. My eyes are locked on the library and its flagpole, the flagpole with vines made of white roses, and those roses are now blooming and growing bigger, just like the smoking and growling threat next to me.

T HIRTEEN
     
     
    I’m falling but not falling. I’m not falling because I am sitting, but I am falling because I am leaning and sliding, sliding down. My right hand shoots out and slaps against wood. It wasn’t expecting wood and I wasn’t expecting any of this. Adrenaline. Fear. My heart is a trapped rabbit and it frantically kicks the walls with oversized hind legs. Disoriented is a brain comparing short-term memories to what the senses currently report and believing neither.
    Goons, the DA’s goons. Sitting on a bench. Surgical implants. A bench. Red car. Feet planted in grass. Walking. Falling, sliding. A stone wall. White flagpole on my direct left, and there are no vines or blooming roses. . . .
    I blink and stare and look. If I was an owl I’d spin my head like atop and cover all 360 degrees, make sure there’re no holes in what I see. Okay. I’m sitting on a bench, the lone bench in front of the library.
    My legs hurt. They won’t bend at the knee without complaining. I did the walk. Pain is my proof. My next thought is about time. How much I hate it, and how desperate I am to know how much of it has passed.
    Here comes Ellen. Her little green car pulls into the library lot. I’ll stay here, wait for her, and reboot from my latest system crash, but there’ll be files missing. There always are.
    I feel inside my jacket. The manila envelope. I peek inside and the photos are still there.
    Ellen has mercifully changed out of her clown pants and into old carpenter jeans, faded, like my memories. She also has on a gray sweatshirt, part of her bingo attire. It makes her look older and tired, tired from all the extra years of hands-on mothering. I won’t tell her that maybe the clown pants are the way to go.
    Ellen says, “Have you been out here long?”
    I wonder if she knows how awful a question that is to ask. I could say
not long
and be correct; it’s relative. I haven’t been out here asleep on this bench for long when you compare it to the amount of time I’ve existed with narcolepsy, if you compare it to the life span of a galaxy. Or I could say
not long, not long at all, just got here.
    I say, “I don’t know.”
    Ellen ignores my response and its implications. She adjusts her monstrous bag on her right shoulder. She usually complains about that shoulder killing her, but she won’t switch the bag over to herleft. I don’t know anyone else who exclusively uses her right shoulder for load bearing.
    She says, “Did you get some work done? Get everything you need?”
    I say, “Some work done. Still more to do.” Still groggy. Speaking only in phrases is the ointment. For now, my words are too heavy for complex construction.
    “That’s good. Though you look a little empty-handed.”
    I had taken out the little Osterville history book. I check and pat the bench and my coat. It’s gone.
    Ellen says, “What’s the matter?”
    Maybe I hit the redheaded goon with the book after all, assuming there were real goons in the first place. I could verify some of my previous extracurricular activities. Go inside and ask if I had checked out that book, but I won’t. An answer of
no
would do too much damage to me. I’d rather just believe what I want to believe. It’s always easier that way.
    I say, “Nothing. I think I left a book inside.” I stand up and try not to wince. I’m going to have a hard time walking to the car.
    She says, “What’s wrong now, Mark?”
    Everything. I need to go back to Southie, try to put distance between me, the maybe goons, and whatever happened at the Sullivan house. I also need to give Ellen an answer, an excuse, something that won’t lead to a trip full of follow-up questions. “Nothing. My body is protesting another