There is a room in every house in which it is impossible to sleep. Something is just wrong. Actually, that’s probably not true. But for one thing, it’s true for Jimmy. He knows it’s true because that’s his room. It’s always been his room for twelve years, and for all twelve of those years, his room as been that room and he has always been unable to sleep. As long as he could remember it’s been impossible. E very other room of the house he can fall unconscious immediately, but for just this room, he cannot sleep. The issue has come up numerous times in family court (the equivalent of a family meeting, but more centered on who’s wrong and who’s right than on actual issues that matter) and the verdict is always the same: Jimmy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Jimmy, of course, is certain without a doubt that he knows exactly what he is talking about, and the dark lines under his eyes serve to underline that statement. One time during the week when he should have been in school, Jimmy was ill and given permission by his parents to stay home—a very rare thing indeed, but vomit speaks for itself—and, as he was unable to rest in his own bed as he was commanded, he called his church and requested that his priest come over to exorcise the room of all its evil. The priest, known lovingly by all as Father Matthias Pelican, rushed over to the house, sure immediately that the room was for certain possessed, and when Jimmy was not waiting at the door to answer on the first knock, Pelican leapt through a window to save his life from the demons that were so certainly tormenting him at that moment. Jimmy strolled into the room to his surprise, finding Pelican covered in broken glass and bleeding partially. Pelican, wholly unaware of the damage, demanded to be shown the room of the possession. They cautiously proceeded to Jimmy’s room, and entered with a shock.

Nothing.

Pelican gave the room a scan, looked under the bed and in the closets, putting his ear to the walls, turning on a disused lava lamp and turning away in disgust of the inactivity. Said a couple Hail Marys and other prayers down his rosary beads. Then, with finality, Pelican was certain. “How do you dare to mock me? You call me down to look at a possessed room and it isn’t even possessed? I was in the middle of doing very important things with grave spiritual implications! Are you trying to make a joke of me? Do you think it’s funny that I among few am capable of recognizing the spiritual realm? You enjoy forcing me to make a fuss over nothing? And I see you skipped school just to find the perfect time to play your little prank! First, I’m going to fall your father and mother, then I am going to call your principal, and I am going to have a stern talking with them about your little shenanigans! Come with me.” And Pelican drags Jimmy to the phone in the living room by the ear, which is a painful thing, and forces the boy to fall his father. Part of this castigation is to explain the crime himself. Another part is the fact that his father doesn’t like to be called at work.

“Why are you calling me? They have a great relationship.

“Dad, I um, called Father Pelican to the house to exorcise my room and he didn’t find any demons.”

“So?”

“Well, then he got mad at me.”

“I don’t have time for these games. Call your mother about it.”

His mother, in turn, panics to an extent thousands of times greater than the extent his father had panicked and starts screaming at him. Jimmy flinches and throws the phone to the floor and Pelican nods approvingly, arms folded and glancing around the room for the devil. As it would be rude to hang up, Jimmy keeps the telephone at a distance until the audible screams subside, and picks it up in order to hear the more subtle screams. In the case of the school principal, as his relationship with the issue is more complex, Pelican takes it upon himself to make the call, announcing that Jimmy was absent that day not because he was sick, but because he was playing pranks on his priest. Gravely, the principal sets in place the harshest sentence that can be given for skipping school: Jimmy is suspended from school for two days. Contented that Jimmy has been given his punishment, Pelican slaps the boy over the head and leaves by the window. However, just as Jimmy overcomes the shock of all these events and realizes that he has been left alone again, he learns a devious secret by way of a knock at the door: Pelican has called a parishioner as a sitter for the remainder of the day, that being from the hours of 11 to 5:30, at which time his father shall return. Jimmy recognizes the woman, as she had in past times sat for him and his brother, and now she must learn something herself, some bare fact of knowledge that disfigures her complexion and replaces it with another. She has come face to face with knowing just how big he’s grown since the last time she saw him. As a coping mechanism, she swoops over him and demonstrates exactly what height he used to be and then draws attention to his features that have over the years changed, nominally his face. On hugging him, she makes the motion of attempting to pick him up and takes that opportunity to exploit the fact that he is heavier than he used to be, and then that she used to change his diapers and a phenomenal number of aspects of his infancy that he would never know apart from her gracious explanations.

For one thing, however, he gleans on important sample of knowledge among all the other words which are unnecessary to him: he used to be fussy and refused to sleep in his crib, so she had to keep him cradled in her arms while she watched her soap operas. Now he can be certain that he has never been able to sleep in that room.

Guaranteeing him that things are never as bad as they seem, his sitter begins to clean the house, commenting with sheer vocal irony about his mother’s housekeeping habits, vacuuming not only the glass on the floor but the rest of the house, then dusting, then taping cardboard over the broken pane, all with an amuses smile on her face and nostalgic references in her voice. “Oh yes, I remember that picture…I can’t believe your mother still hasn’t gotten rid of it…do you still like Spaghetti-O’s? because I’m starving and I think I’ll make a big ole batch of Spaghetti-O’s. Sound good to you?” Certainly in no mood to argue, Jimmy submits and allows her to make him Spaghetti-O’s, though in reality he is also in no mood to eat. He is even amazed that there is still a can of Spaghetti-O’s in the cupboard at all. Who eats Spaghetti-O’s in this house? Apparently, Jimmy does.

Opening a can and microwaving its contents is a grueling job, so after lunch the sitter declares a nap time. She seats herself in the middle of the couch and directs the television to the same soap opera she has been watching for over a decade, which is the same episode repeated live every day and the same TV-G rated sex scenes every day and the same suspenseful string arrangement every day and the same trailer for next week’s episode every day. As his sitter has chosen the middle of the couch to fall asleep, Jimmy, supposing that he would ever want to sit on the couch too, would have to sit in such a way as to come into physical contact with the woman in more than one place. His only real chance of survival is in getting outside, but he suspects that she would be able to see him escape even with her eyes shut. On the other hand, he remembers that he is sick, most clearly brought to attention by the Spaghetti-O’s, and he rushes off in order to make ends meet. His other option is to spend time in his room, but there is nothing really that he can do there. It’s not that he has any terror of monsters in the closet or anything of that sort, but he simply cannot sleep in there. He doesn’t feel like sleeping anyway. Success is in waiting until 3 when his brother comes home, at which point he will have an acquaintance worth his attention, and if not that, then he can look out his window at the pretty girl that lives next door, who will also be home at that time. Until then, there is nothing really to do. No way to pass time.

His brother doesn’t come home. After all, it’s football season and that boy finally put enough meat on himself to get on a team. Unfortunately, he tips on the verge of two divisions, being either the biggest guy of Division III or the smallest guy of Division II. The only thing that this means to Jimmy is that he is alone and his brother has abandoned him for football practice. This disillusionment applies only to today, thought, for there are things he can do tomorrow. Until 5:30, Jimmy needs to squeeze blood out of stones. The blood that comes out is his own. The pretty girl next door isn’t home either, which means that she has tried out for cheerleading. The sitter still slumbers. Is it worth it to be outside rather than inside? Why do the extracurricular activities have to start today? Does that mean all his future chances for this season are over? Winter sports suck. Pacing the house isn’t fun but it whiles away the time. Walking by the stagnant couch, Jimmy just so happens to sneeze, awaking the sitter and setting her in an alert mode.

“Oh, dear, you’re sick. Let me take care of you.” So at least he has something to pass the time now.

Of course she’s been told nothing about the boy’s situation. Would you go sit for Jimmy? The details aren’t really all that important. Of course school is in session right now. Of course the specifics are strange. But really, none of that matters. This is a quality in the sitter that can be celebrated or bemoaned. How naïve, you think. On the other hand, forgiveness is a noble quality. It’s obvious that the boy has done something worthy of needing her to keep him in line. Even if it was Pelican that broke the window, that will never matter to the people that matter. She is the only one that won’t be accusatory of the boy. Her intentions are pure. He sneezes, which is a sign of illness for her ears. For that, the sitter can be given just a little bit of credit. But she’s still an easy target for cheap irony, a fact that must never make her less of a human in your eyes.

Jimmy’s temperature just so happens to be 99 and something, a disturbing fact indeed. Even one degree of change in the body is a danger, a danger that must never be underexaggerated. For one thing, she definitely must be kicking herself on the inside for feeding him Spaghetti-O’s, which is the wrong starch. Duh. He should have had a bowl of chicken noodle soup, made by the same company and condensed far beyond the thinness of a glass of water—hot water, that is. “Now I know you had a big bowl of Spaghetti-O’s, but do you think you could suffer a bowl of chicken noodle soup?” To the untrained ear, that would sound like a question, but Jimmy has undergone rigorous training in mothering techniques and identifies that this is really a command. Childless middle-aged women really are the best kind of sitters, in case you didn’t know. A serving of food is actually kind of small, a fact I ponder over severely especially when it comes to cereal. A regular sized bowl must contain at least three servings when filled conservatively. Accordingly, as Jimmy has, in fact, shared half a can of his previous lunch and didn’t even give it time to digest, he finds it absolutely impossible to understand his sitter’s perspective. The only thing it can be is she still sees him as though he will need her to change his diaper soon.

Again, like I said before, if he were to strain his soup, Jimmy wouldn’t find anything in the strainer. But it’s a cure for his illness, so whatever. Jimmy’s favorite time during the meal is when it’s over. Starve the cold and feed the fed. “Do you know how to play checkers? That always used to make me feel better when I got sick.” Checkers, of course, as the lowest form of recreation, is a sport based on luck and cloaked under the guise of a skill, created as a counter to chess for young children and old people, for the first group cannot understand chess’ complexity and the second group cannot remember it. The second part of checkers is the fact that one cannot simultaneously be adept at both chess and checkers. For that set of realities, Jimmy is incapable of overcoming his sitter’s savage double-jumping and king me bravado. Another thing I thought of: when a proficient chess player comes into contact with a proficient checkers player, the chess player will not come home safe in any sense. I will direct you to an activity to make me clear. Stand on a chair and try to pull someone onto the chair while he tries to pull you off the chair. It’s so much easier for him to pull you down. The same is true in the previous situation. A checker player that doesn’t know which one is the pawn will never get pulled up onto the chair, and the chess player, especially the unwitting chess player, will be forced into a trap that he often does not anticipate. I mean, come on. Checkers is so dumb. Who can’t do well? I warn you never to fall into that trap.

So the fact is that Jimmy is made a complete fool by his sitter and after goading him into some nine or ten quick matches, she realizes how embarrassing the scene must be for him and apologizes by letting him get away from the table. In order to counter the mood, the television is playing the same episode of the soap opera with the same plot and everything. Jimmy hasn’t missed a thing. But since he’s sick, he’s allowed to watch something different, and the choice is easy to make. Even cartoons are better than soap operas. Cartoons sometimes serve as escapism, like some sort of absurd and immature comic relief that any preteen or even regular teen and post teen can somehow enjoy. Especially animal violence. See, it’s funny because it’s animals that are being violent. What’s even better than animal violence is when the three R’s of environmental conservation are applied to screenwriting, but technically, reuse and recycle are the same word. But instead of TV-G rated sex scenes, there are the TV-Y, and the raunchier TV-Y7 for bigger kids. Soap operas seem somewhat to draw inspiration from cartoons, but honestly now, who wouldn’t?

A side note: slapstick and melodrama are the same thing, but one has a string section in the score.

5:30 is now a very important time for several reasons: daddy’s left hand and daddy’s right hand. While the sacrilege was certainly of no consequence to Jimmy’s father, the window is, for windows cost money. And even if Pelican was the man to break the glass, it can all stem back to Jimmy’s insistence that something is wrong with his room. A little corporal punishment can beat terror out of and into a boy. “Never let that crazy man into the house again!” he requests gently, at which point Jimmy’s sitter thanks them for a wonderful time and sneaks out the door, face drawn with the slightest bit of consternation. Don’t get me wrong: Jimmy’s father has not been overly violent for the situation. I mean, come on. It’s a window. Windows are expensive. Especially that window. And anyone would be peeved by learning that Pelican has been in his house. At some point during the lecture Jimmy’s brother comes home, face beaming with pride. Something amazing must have happened. This even warrants for his father to pay attention for a little bit.

“Division III? You’re in Division III? What mule is this year’s coach who would put a son of mine in Division III?” Jimmy’s brother Tyler naturally attempts to explain that no mule of a coach is responsible, but he is. By some miracle, he has managed to find a successful niche in weight and remains as the largest player in Division III as opposed to the smallest of Division II. His father, however, desires to have no part in celebration of mediocrity, warning, “When your mother comes home, she is going to cook you a double portion of supper. I don’t give a damn that you’ll be the smallest guy on Division II. No son of mine is going to play Division III. “One important part that had been involved in Tyler’s reasoning was that the cusp between III and II is 130 pounds and the cusp between II and I is 200 pounds. “You’d be out there playing with a bunch of stick figures. Playing with real men will make a man of you.”

Naturally, in order to still understand that these children are in fact preteens, the reader needs to suspend disbelief.

The arrival of Tyler is the sign of someone else’s arrival: the pretty girl next door, who is also a pretty cheerleader. As his father has grown disinterested with him, Jimmy takes this opportunity to escape to his room, and from his window, he sees her: his sitter. “I just remembered that I had baked some brownies the other day and I thought maybe you’d want one,” she calls through the pane. Jimmy opens the window and allows her to give him one, anything to be alone in theory with the pretty girl next door. Naturally, it’s important to the sitter that he eat the brownie right away so he can divulge the secret of the brownie’s taste, as her own judgment is inefficient to garner a proper rating. The correct adjective to use is delicious. The wrong adjective is something like good or okay, because no matter how good or okay something is, those adjectives are not what the sitter is looking for. She would need clarification. Superlatives are the only way to make people feel as though they had done something worth being accomplished. And delicious is his ticket to freedom, for the next exchange is even worse: she offers another. This isn’t a bad thing, seeing that the rules of etiquette allot for her to let him eat the second brownie on his own time. Is he alone yet? Can he finally bask in the light of his adoration? By an accident, a major accident, Jimmy glances up to her window and the sitter catches his eye’s direction. She glances at exactly what he is glancing at and from this point on, it’s all over. There she is, all the beauty in the world and he hates her, passionately feels abject hatred.

“She’s cute.” Innocent enough. “Maybe you should go talk to her. Better yet, I know her mother. I’ll go talk to her. We always have the best times.” And this is a guide on how to take puppy love to the back room of the animal shelter. Jimmy sinks lower than the carpet on his floor and curls up just as the moon eclipses the sun. Not even I could be more alone right now. The death to his dreams is having coffee next door in the kitchen. The death to your dreams is having coffee next door in the kitchen too. One important piece of information is the fact that Jimmy doesn’t even know the girl’s name. In order to avoid objectifying her like he does, I’ll give her a name. Caroline. In several years, Jimmy might have known her name and still objectified her, using such vulgar catch phrases as “I love North and South Carolina.” His sitter is sure to let him know her name, which kills a twelve-year-old’s fantasy completely. (Just so you know that I didn’t choose the girl’s name based solely on an inappropriate joke I could use, I assure you that if I had randomly chosen her name to be Virginia or something, I’d have to resort to “I love West and East Virginia,” which really isn’t as funny because there’s no such thing as West Virginia. My other choice, Dakota, would have just been redundant. The only thing I’m trying to say is that I chose the girl’s name randomly and the joke could have been built off any name, I think) On the other hand, the pretty girl next door did wave to him when she saw him, which is a step up from never seeing him, but a step down from the sitter having nothing to do with it.

The joy of having a mother is when she comes home. The joy of being a mother is when you come home. The door opens and everything’s a blessing: I’m home! I wish to never leave again! Be my family! Such is the case when Jimmy’s mother comes home. “Oh, my God! What happened to the window? Where’s Jimmy?” There is beauty in language. You can tell she doesn’t care about the window at all. Jimmy’s sacrilege connects everything. But she isn’t so violent now with her words. Encountering Jimmy in his room, she sits down with him and they talk on a personal level. When people talk everything is okay. It ends with a hug and something like that. Now that today’s conflict has been resolved, there really isn’t that much left to worry about.

Very early the next morning, so early that it would still be late last night, Jimmy isn’t sleeping, but that fact is an old fact. Of course Jimmy can’t sleep. Is there anything else that’s new? This pattern has gone on for years: Jimmy can’t sleep, Jimmy tries to sleep, Jimmy still can’t sleep. Jimmy tries harder, Jimmy fails harder. Eventually, what he does is he crawls out of his room and passes out on the hallway floor, something which earns him quite a bit of scorn from the family: from Tyler, for blocking his passage to the bathroom; from his mother, for leaving his imprint on the floor; and from his father, for wasting all that money on a bed that isn’t being used. Tonight feels different, though. It feels like he’s going to make it, like he’s going to finally fall asleep in this room. His head is so heavy that he couldn’t lift it up if he was standing, his eyes fall shut of their own accord, and his legs jerk, all indications of impending sleep, though the third is also an inhibitor of sleep, especially when I’m trying to fall asleep in class. But it’s coming. That sweet respite from a day, from consciousness, and it’s here, and it’s comfortable. The phone rings. No. He isn’t sleeping anymore. This is a time to be frantic, for should his father hear the phone, he shall be thrown into a rage over being awakened, an emotion Jimmy is assured he knows far better than his father does. His father dares to call himself a light sleeper, but certainly Jimmy can explain what it really means to be a light sleeper. Nevertheless, Jimmy grabs a hold to the telephone and, curious, answers. For one, he is surprised that he let off two rings before answering and still his father has not awakened in a furor, and for another, who would really be calling right now? The voice on the other end is one that I must classify as a Mysterious Voice in order to build suspense, although it is common knowledge that telephone conversations are terrible and not dramatic at all. What’s even worse is Instant Messaging conversations, which are probably even less convincing, mostly because the Mysterious Voice is replaced by the Mysterious Excellent Typist With An Amusingly Formal And Generic Screen Name and neither character has fun font and the only acronyms they use are the ones that nobody else knows and which are probably made up anyway. The Mysterious Voice, in any case, should probably come off to be convincing, and since I am a writer I am at great advantage in creating mood since it is my goal to show and not tell, meaning you are stuck with reading between the lines to fill in everything I don’t say, but you’re not stuck with it because you encourage me to write that way. One thing you would never guess is that the Mysterious Voice is connected to a mouth with slightly yellow teeth.

“Remember,” says the Voice, through a wet washcloth held over the mouthpiece and spoken through a deliberate affectation of the vocal chords to produce a loud whisper, disguising any attempts at recognition and followed by a background noise indicative of a baseball game, “paranoia is only a form of narcissism.” There’s only a slight bit of menace in the Voice, but plenty of menace, certainly enough menace to disturb a sleep-deprived preteen in a deep night. What follows is a loud static clearly produced by a mouth and then the baseball game again, just in time for Jimmy to hear the best news he’s heard all night: Home run! The news would be better if the home run was scored by the home team, but Jimmy doesn’t know about that. In the same manner of announcer-talk, Jimmy hears called from the background, “Look outside your window, Jimmy!” Or it sounds like he said Jimmy. If he said Timmy, it wouldn’t be so disturbing, but Jimmy is scary because that’s his name. The curtain is closed: does he dare open it? Would you open it? He does. He throws it open and sees the world for how it is: there’s Jimmy’s reflection in the glass, staring back at him.

Tyler, on his way to the bathroom, trips over Jimmy. He usually does, but this time it’s different. Jimmy is usually flat and Tyler only ever stumbles or steps on him, but this time, he actually trips. The truth is that Jimmy is curled into a tight ball, making the plausibility of being encountered on a journey less, but making an encounter more violent. Every morning it’s the same. Ow. This morning it’s thump. Jimmy does not repeat his mantra this morning. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move. Another sound Tyler hears is the beeping of a phone left off the hook too long. Jimmy’s surface area has been slightly increased by having a pair of curtains over him. I’m going to skip all the silly suspense and be straightforward: was Jimmy making it all up in his head? I don’t know. That means you don’t know either. All you have to know is that this event is a plot device used to create tension and a mood of uncertainty. Because I’m sure that you are uneasy right now.

This happens several nights. Mysterious Voice, baseball game, window: it’s all there. Or is it?

The weekends are times of joy and celebration and, for the benefited, sleeping in. Of course, for Jimmy, any sort of sleep is sleeping in. Another place Jimmy has tried sleeping in is the couch in the living room, but that is a dangerous place for sleeping. Should his father catch him on that couch, the immediate conclusion is that he has been watching television, and probably television of the TV-MA type. The solution to this grave intransigence is to take away the television, which he doesn’t watch anyway and which does not prove a deterrent to Jimmy’s living room sleeping habits. After the house wakes up, Jimmy’s mother gets a grand idea: to go shopping. And who is a better accompaniment other than her very own sons? Shopping is not a joy unless there are children involved because children make it better. Listen to their cries of joy: “Mom, I don’t want to go!” But you know how it is. They end up going anyway and have a miserable time, but the mother is capable of making it appear that they’ve had a wonderful time just by saying that they did. No one will ever remember the shopping.

I now have to introduce an arbitrary character in order to alter the course of this story a manner that is completely unpredictable. This character I shall call the Senator’s son. The Senator’s son is a creepy kind of guy with an odd smile that looks even worse on camera and in photographs. Being a creepy guy and so overtly destined to be a member of the story, it is his natural duty to do something creepy. Because it just so happens that he is also shopping at the same shopping place as the mother and her sons. It is at this moment that he sights them and begins to devise a plot. (I have introduced the Senator’s son as a plot device to keep the story from suffocating on itself) He approaches them and the woman easily recognizes the Senator’s son by his creepy face, something that gets her excited. Look, kids, it’s a man that’s related to the Legislative branch! He announces that they have won the random monthly selection for the Senatorial Award and get a chance to have a free dinner with the Senator. Absolutely overcome with joy, the woman leaves her shopping cart and force her sons to follow the Senator’s son out of the building amid the cheering of fellow choppers out into the Senator’s son’s car, which is a long one. For some reason the Senator’s son doesn’t have his own driver and he drives the car himself, with his three new friends all the way in the back where they can’t even see him. But what they can see is that they are not on the way to see the Senator, for they have taken the opposite direction on the highway. Since I’m not very good at building suspense and find it rather boring, I’ll skip right to the climax of the confrontation.

But first, suppose I wanted to get on the highway, but I wanted to go east and I took the west entrance ramp. Would you call that an occident?

The four characters are newly situated in some isolated place that probably never has and maybe never will exist, and the Senator’s son has somehow managed to keep all three of his subjects immobilized, possibly by tying them up, but I don’t really know how. The only thing that matters is this disturbing revelation: “I am going to kill one of your sons, then I am going to free you and the other son. The special part of the story is that the mother gets to choose which son dies. If you don’t choose one, they will both die.” Now I’ve set up an ethical dilemma that will make things morbidly interesting. The children are actually not present, as they would find some way to add some outside emotional information that isn’t really necessary. There are a number of rules to the mother’s situation that will not exonerate her from making a decision. The boy’s lack of presence is one, for the more selfless of the two may offer his own life and get in the way. The second is that she cannot choose her own life. This is the worst decision any mother could make, and though I have painted this woman unfairly in the past, it is true that she is not just a caricature, but a caricature given a moral dilemma, a moral dilemma that is the only reason I bothered with any of this crap. The agony is annoying so I’ll let that be the stuff you read between

the lines. Remember, if she doesn’t choose, they both die, which is worse, right? Right?

“Jimmy,” she moans, full of sorrow and hatred and every feeling imaginable.

I know something that’s worse than what you think is going to happen. The Senator’s son kills no one. He goes to the undefined secluded area where the boys are and tells them the story, relating especially the fact that the mother chose Jimmy to die, and then unties them, leaving them free to untie her while he escapes and becomes unimportant to the story again. The only important thing here is that all three of them have been permanently emotionally separated. The mother has one of the most painful demons to deal with for the rest of her life: was it right that I chose? Isn’t that better than choosing neither and letting both die? Jimmy, on the other hand, was once sentenced to die and is yet alive, but his own mother is the one that sentenced him. She would have chosen to let Tyler live. How can he ever look at her again? Tyler is plagued with grave guilt over being the survivor. Things would have been different if that man had done what he said he was going to do, but now a mother has to be a mother to a boy she had let die. There is no amount of reassurance that could ever bring him back to life. What’s it like to ruin someone’s life?

During election season some six or seven years later, Jimmy is driving himself to some destination that is unimportant to the story with his window open, listening to the radio loudly, when he runs over a large dead bird. This bird just so happens to be hit in the wrong way, in such a way that he knocks it into the air and into his car. It’s rather unpleasant to have a giant dead bird in your lap. Jimmy panics and hits a telephone pole.

To commemorate that spot, the campaign poster that was there at the time stayed there long after the election despite continual petitions by the people to remove it, being somewhat irreverent.

The moral of the story is that city hall is lazy.