It was so quiet that she couldn’t even hear herself think. Pava didn’t want to move and shake up brushing from her blankets because if she did they would know she was awake. The longer she stayed there, though, the louder it became.

She called them the Sombers. They were a small collection of droning tones that throbbed in and out of her ears at night when all of the TVs were turned off and the fan in the bathroom by her room was off too. The sound they made was not quite singing, but it was too rhythmic and harmonized to be considered just a noise. Sort of an “ahh” sound, or maybe it was “ohh.” Pava couldn’t really decide on it because when she listened to them too hard they would get louder, but not in a way that she could hear them better.

The dark of the room pressed on her eyes through the barrier of her blanket. It was getting hot and clammy underneath it and she pulled it down with small twitches of her hands until cold air touched her face, and by then she had her eyes closed tightly. The Sombers were mumbling low, a faint pulse in the back of her head. They had their backs to her, marching away in their line, “ohh”ing in and out of pitch.

She peeked at her room. Nothing to see, it was too dark. The small night light that was built into her light switch couldn’t be seen at the angle from her bed. It was a small peep of orange anyway, not strong enough to cast a glow. Someday it would be taken out.

When she had her eyes open the Sombers didn’t make their sound as loudly, although they loitered in the background. Eventually her sight adjusted to the dark and the shapes of her furniture felt there way out. Her desk crouched across the room with pitch shadows spinning off of it. One of them looked like a head. Pava stared at it and watched the shades of black ripple. It might have moved... Closing her eyes, she slowly turned her head away from the center of her room to face the wall that sided her bed. Her pillowcase shifted with her hair and she stopped.

“Pava-”

It was a tinny voice, far removed and closed in a box, but still very clear. Pava recognized it as her friend, Tijo. Another voice came out of the box.

“Pava-” It spoke longer but faded even as it did. “What is she doing...” One of her classmates who she didn’t really like.

Another, faint and soft, her teacher.

“Pava forgot again-”

“Pava-”

“Well, Pava-”

They were all talking at the same time and Pava stopped trying to separate them. Her mother and father were in there, and more of her classmates, and people that she’d met at camp. Teachers, cousins, bus drivers, people she didn’t even know said her name and talked about her with the others in the box. Eyes opened or closed, they would talk about her all night long if she didn’t do something to break the silence.

Sometimes people told her that she thought too much. It looked like she was staring at a tear in space or a mirror into the soul, something that took her mind from here and captivated it over there. They used to say she looked like someone she loved had died, but now they said she looked intense, irritated, not to be disturbed.

It made Pava a little weird. She never tried to explain it to anyone because she didn’t think they’d understand. When a voice started to talk about her, shouldn’t she stop to listen to it?

In the beginning she’d thought it was part of her imagination, a way to pass the time by daydreaming and wondering what other people thought about her, if anyone thought about her at all. She could imagine a person’s voice in her head without blending it into her own voice- in real life she was horrible at impersonations, but in her mind they sounded right.

Eventually she didn’t need to think about what people might be thinking about her. They just came to her naturally. What she had begun to find was that it was hard to turn the voices off.

“Pava-”

“Pava, stop it-”

The longer the night went on the louder they got, and they usually got angrier, too. If she didn’t do anything about it they would get so loud that she couldn’t even hear herself think-

“Pava didn’t-”

She pushed the blankets off of herself and couldn’t hear the material rubbing over the sheets or the creak of her mattress. Opening her eyes, the room was dark grey instead of black. Someone had turned on the hall light outside her room. A bright yellow strip filled the gap between her door and the floor. A loud, shaky whirling of noise erupted before smoothing out. The bathroom fan was on. Pava sat in her bed and looked at the slice of light coming through her door. No one was saying her name anymore.

Slowly she slipped off of her bed and went to her door. Upon opening it her eyesight blacked out as the light from the hallway crowded her, dark for a brief instant, and then cleared. The door to the bathroom opened and her mother came out. She looked surprised to see Pava.

“Pava,” she said, “you’re awake. Is something wrong?”

“Mommy- mom. No, I just- I can’t sleep.” Her mother frowned gently, hands moving into a vague akimbo.

“Do you want to sleep with me tonight?” Pava shook her head, already backing into her room again.

“It’s okay. I think I needed to get up, is all.” She didn’t want to look at her mother now, already knowing the face she was making.

“I see... All right... Good night, honey.”

“Night,” Pava mumbled. She closed her door.

The light in the hallway turned off and Pava’s room was dark again. It would be a while before she could make out her furniture’s shapes or the moving shadows. She felt her way to her bed and sat down, not getting all the way in. There was a low thrumming coming from outside. The bathroom fan was still on.

Long minutes passed and Pava sat still, listening to the noise. When she let her mind wander she could imagine it was saying “ahh,” or maybe “ohh.” It had a rattling scratch in the background, the first sign that the motor was getting old. She lied back on her bed and stared up at her ceiling. With the noise from the fan she couldn’t hear any yelling or calling.

Her eyes closed and the sound of the fan softened, purring in her head to lull her to sleep. In the black of her head she saw the glimmer of the Sombers marching back, their rhythmic groaning masked by the fan.