Drifting Off
The suspension of our usual nightly routine was disorienting. None of us had bothered changing out of our street clothes, and we kept all the lights on and the TV blaring to keep us awake.
Dennis, who sat with some toys in the middle of the carpet, only seemed happy to be able to stay up past his bedtime.
My brother and I had an unusually large age gap between us—he was only three years old, which prompted questions from other kids when my mom came with him to pick me up at school. When asked why they waited so long before having another child, my parents simply said that they felt the time was right. It could be rewarding at times to watch him grow up, but I often wished I had an older sibling as more of a peer I could be friends with—it got lonely sitting through family events with no other kids to talk to.
Eventually, though, he began to yawn, whining that he wanted to go to sleep.
My mom crouched beside him. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but you can’t go to bed yet.”
“Why not? Then when?”
She furrowed her brow and glanced to my dad on the couch beside me for support.
How to explain to a child who doesn’t know the concept of death?
I couldn’t bear to look at the scene before me in the living room. I stared at the TV, hoping the bright light would help keep me awake.
Earlier today, Emma Morales had collapsed in class. She was sprawled out on her desk with her head resting on her hands when our teacher noticed her. He had paused class to rouse her as we all laughed at her poor fortune for being caught. When he gently shook her shoulder, he displaced her head enough to loll off her hands, where it slipped off the desk entirely, and her body followed after. We were ushered out the door as snickers became whispers of concern. She was carried out by paramedics on a gurney, and we were all sent home.
That was when I received the email. It had read that school was closed indefinitely for quarantine. Emma’s death had been linked to the strange new virus that had cropped up in Venezuela. It was morbidly simple: if you were infected and you fell asleep, it would kill you.
Now, our entire class was probably infected. I never knew Emma very well, so though I certainly felt sorry for her, I couldn’t help but harbor a little ember of frustration. Obviously, she couldn’t have known she was a carrier, but I was bitter that she had spread the virus to me. To my family. To our town.
According to the news segment I was watching with tired, dry eyes, scientists had dubbed it Dyssomniac Encephalopathy, which was a vague term that meant little more than a sleep-related brain malfunction—however, since that was quite a mouthful, the media had taken to calling it the Repose. They were advising anyone who suspected they were infected to stay awake until a treatment was found.
That was all we could do, now. Stay awake.
But more than just the anger at my situation was the fear. I was terrified. Sleep was so tantalizing, and it was terrifying to know how close I was to potentially dying. Just a slip in concentration away.
I thought achingly of my bed upstairs. It had been a long day, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up under the covers and snooze.
My first year of high school had been rough. I never had to worry about academics in middle school and breezed by my classes with minimal effort. This year, I had been faced with homework that took longer than the length of the car ride home and more material than I could learn in the night before a test, and I lacked the study skills to grapple with them. Long nights had been spent hunched over my desk facing the consequences of my procrastination, but with summer so close, my attention invariably wavered. Of course, I had had to pull yet another all-nighter the evening before.
I rubbed my eyes, casting splotches of colors on the inside of my eyelids.
“I’m not sure when we can sleep again,” my mom finally said. “Do you remember when you had the sniffles?”
Dennis nodded.
“There are a lot of ways to get sick. Some diseases make you sneeze; some make your nose runny. We might have a special one: if you sleep, you might not wake up.”
“I’d sleep forever?” he asked, marveling at the prospect.
My mom nodded, which dislodged one of the tears streaking down her cheek. “We don’t want that.” She pulled him into a hug. “Don’t sleep, sweetie. Stay awake with me.”
“But I’m tired,” he moaned.
My mom retreated into the kitchen and returned with a bowl full of ice cream. “Here,” she said. “For being such a good boy.”
“Do I get ice cream too?” I joked with a slight smile.
My mom looked blankly at me for a second before sputtering a laugh despite herself. She dabbed at her tears with her sleeve before joining me on the couch and wrapped me in my own hug. “Thank you for being brave,” she said.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, at the moment, I was feeling anything but brave.
~/~/~
The box fan feebly spun in the windowsill, casting shadows in the room with each rotation of the blade. It did painfully little to combat the sweltering heat. My sweaty hands were making my phone slippery, so I tossed it on the couch next to me, sighing.
I had been constantly refreshing my news feed hoping for some breakthrough cure, but I was only greeted with more dispiriting news that the Repose had spread further. Our entire town had been quarantined, and they said that everyone who lived here or had been here recently should assume themselves infected. I saw one article confirming that various countries around the world were working on a cure, at least. All we could do was wait.
I peeled my bare back off the leather couch and swung my feet over the side. The rising sun had brought sweltering heat, which, combined with my groggy head, made everything feel vaguely dreamlike: the lights seemed brighter, and the shadows darker. Every movement I made felt disconnected and out of sync with the rest of me. I stumbled into the kitchen and poured a glass of water.
My dad came in behind me. Though he had showered and gotten dressed, he still looked ragged with heavy bags under his eyes. “Hey,” he said. “I’m going to go to work. Everyone is infected anyway, so might as well.” He gave me a kiss on the top of my head. “Don’t fall asleep, alright?”
I nodded, and my vision swam with the motion.
My mom joined us in the kitchen dragging Dennis by the hand, who was squinting against the light from the window above the sink. His face looked puffy, as though he had been recently crying. “I have to stay here and take care of Dennis, but could you go and do some shopping?”
She handed me a list, and I looked at the items. “Coffee” on the first line caught my eye since it was fiercely underlined. “I don’t even like the taste of coffee,” I said, “but I think I could really use some right about now.”
My mom smiled weakly and gave me a hug.
I decided I would text my friend Brian to ask if he wanted to come along while I shopped. He eagerly agreed, saying he was going stir-crazy sitting on the couch all day, which I could relate to.
I slipped on a shirt and my shoes and headed outside. A draft of warm air met me as I opened the door, feeling thick in my lungs. My head throbbed as my eyes slowly adjusted to the blinding sunlight. My senses eventually adapted enough for me to get my bearings, and my mind reeled from the sight.
A few doors down, my neighbors were being laid on their lawn, draped in white sheets. Paramedics in hazmat suits were buzzing around their property as police officers hung back on the road talking and taking notes.
Their son used to babysit me when I was younger. I had been over to their house and eaten dinner with them countless times. I glanced at their vague shapes shrouded by the thin fabric before snapping my head forward and trudging ahead down the street. I tried to focus on calming my rattling breath and clear my head from dark thoughts, but I could still feel tears threatening to spill forth. The salt stung my exhausted eyes.
I considered the excruciatingly thin transition between where I stood and they lay. All it would take was a single moment of letting my guard down, succumbing to the thrumming of every fiber of my body demanding sleep, and I would slip away. What frightened me was that some small part of me craved that release; the world lay heavy on my groggy mind.
I passed more dead bodies piled along the street as I walked. I kept my head down to avoid the sight.
At last, I saw Brian standing outside the supermarket on his phone waiting for me. We exchanged a brief wave as I closed the distance between us.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey yourself.”
“How are things with your family?”
He shrugged. “Neither of my parents are going to work, so we’ve all just been hanging around the house. You know, trying not to die.” He cast me a glance as we headed inside the store. “I’m just glad to have an excuse to leave.”
“You and me both,” I said.
The store was packed. Throngs of people bustled around through narrow aisles or waited in lines stretching to the back of the store. Arms and carts were overflowing with supplies. Many were bickering amongst themselves, or else just looking very grim—the exhaustion had everyone on short tempers.
As I feared, the essentials were picked clean from the shelves: the only coffee that remained were scattered instant coffee pods on the highest shelves; displays for energy shots and other caffeinated drinks were entirely bare; it looked like even the cigarettes behind the counter had been ransacked.
“Tell me you’ve heard some good news,” I said as we gathered the rest of the items on the list. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay awake.”
“I did hear about some people who knocked themselves out with anesthesia since apparently that doesn’t trigger the Repose—something about not triggering the brainwaves associated with sleep.”
“Buying time,” I said wistfully. “Sounds expensive.”
“It is,” Brian said. “Very.”
Definitely not an option for us, then.
He continued, “I also read that a lot of scientists in Venezuela accidentally got infected before they realized what they’re dealing with. They’re on the clock too. I heard their research into a cure is slowing since they’re too tired to think properly.”
My heart pounded in my chest. “I said good news, you dick.”
“Look on the bright side,” he said, gently elbowing me in the ribs. “At least summer vacation came early.”
I smacked his arm aside. “Can you—” I stopped myself. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Sorry. It’s all really getting to me.”
“I get it,” he said softly. “I’m scared too.”
I stared at my feet. “I don’t want to die,” I said lamely.
The line we were waiting in moved, and we took a step forward. I saw one of the adults in front give us a sad look, perhaps having overheard our conversation.
We eventually reached the front and paid for our food. I heard a commotion in the register behind me and turned to look: two men were fighting over a bag of coffee grounds. They were tugging it back and forth between themselves.
“Give it back!” the man on the left screamed. “You took it out of my cart!”
The man on the right briefly relinquished his grip on the coffee to swing a punch at the other man’s jaw. He snatched it from his hands while he was still reeling from the pain.
“Sorry, I have a wife and kids at home,” he said as he dashed out the door with his prize.
A cashier tried to call after him to pay, but it was lost over the din of the crowd, which was stirring itself into a frenzy after the display of violence. Some other customers began their own spats over products. A display case for candy was knocked over when someone was pushed into it.
I looked at Brian, my heart pounding. I quickly took my change from the cashier, who was gawking at the furor, and we quickly made our way out of the store. The automatic doors opened wide to let us pass through the curtain of cool air back onto the scorching pavement. The cloudless sky, which would be beautiful under different circumstances, offered no respite from the glare of the sun.
We walked in solemn silence for a while. “It’s scary how quickly it can all change,” Brian said at last.
I nodded. Two days ago, my biggest concern was studying for my geometry exam, or stressing out about that awkward thing I said to the cute girl in my history class. Now it felt like civilization was coming apart at the seams.
“Even if we find a cure, what if they can’t distribute it to everyone on time?” I asked.
As we walked, we passed by a coffee shop. The line stretched down the block.
“I think you know the answer to that,” he said quietly.
~/~/~
Screaming echoed down the hallway, and my panic overwhelmed my relief at making it home. I dropped the grocery bags, kicked off my shoes, and sprinted toward the source. Dennis was crying inconsolably on the carpet with my mom hovering over him helplessly.
She gave me a desperate look. “He wants to sleep, but we can’t let him.”
Dennis was writhing on the carpet, incoherently screaming through a throat raw with overuse. My mind already sensitive, the sound immediately triggered a headache.
“Dennis,” I said weakly. I wasn’t even sure if he heard over his own sobbing. I bent down and scooped him into a hug. He struggled against me, little arms pushing against my chest, but I held firm. “We’re trying to protect you, buddy.”
He remained wholly unmollified. I desperately wanted to retreat into my room and collapse in my bed, but I pushed the thought out of my mind. The looming threat of the Repose had been gnawing on me all day, getting worse and worse as I tired, and though I had been pushing forward, the lack of any end in sight was demoralizing. Now, with Dennis bawling in my arms, the idea of staying awake any longer seemed unsustainable.
He twisted out of my grip and collapsed back on the carpet. My mom bent down to gently rub his back. “Thank you for doing the shopping,” she said over the screaming. “Please tell me you got—”
She stopped as she saw me shaking my head. “All the coffee was gone.”
My mom giggled, unrestrained. It was an unnervingly inappropriate reaction.
“Are you alright? I can watch Dennis for a while.”
She took a deep breath, pausing before answering. “No, it’s alright. I can take care of it. Just put the groceries away? Your father will be home soon to help, anyway.”
I nodded, retrieving the bags from where I dropped them in the foyer. The headache from Dennis’s screaming lingered in my mind, the pain cutting through the haze in a way that exacerbated—not clarified—my disassociation from reality. As I trudged up the stairs to my room, I refreshed the news on my phone, praying for a cure to come soon. Instead, I was only met with advisories stressing to be careful with stimulants after a long series of reports of overdoses on cocaine and amphetamines as people struggled to stay awake.
Eventually, my dad came home, and we made dinner—a process that ended up taking about twice as long as usual as we tripped over each other and fumbled with preparations: my dad cut his finger chopping an onion, and I dropped a bag of shredded carrots, which was a pain to pick off the tile.
Though my parents usually liked to dim the lights at dinner, this time they were on full brightness. Dennis managed to stop crying just long enough to eat, though I could see him swaying in his seat. I was strangely ravenous and eagerly ate. None of us were really up for conversation. The little talk we did share was only more grim news: my mom heard about the neighbors down the street, and my dad lost a couple coworkers to the Repose.
After eating, my mom, Dennis, and I gathered in the living room with the volume on the TV cranked all the way up like last night. My dad said he had some work to do in his study upstairs, but on my way to get my phone charger from my room, I thought I heard him crying through the door. I wanted to knock and check on him, but he had isolated himself for a reason—he must have wanted some time to process alone. I hurried back downstairs, pushing dark thoughts out of my mind, but my chest felt tight with anxiety.
In silent agreement, we decided not to watch the news to avoid more unpleasantry. My mom kept occasionally prodding Dennis to ensure that he was still up, receiving angry grumbles in response. Meanwhile, my headache still hadn’t gone away. I also kept catching myself falling into microsleeps; if my mind wandered from focusing on the images on the screen, I could feel the tantalizing spiral of my mind receding into slumber. I kept wrenching myself out of it, but my heavy eyelids and nodding head betrayed my efforts to stay awake. The heavy heat of summer didn’t help, making me feel as though I were snuggled under the covers in bed.
After another risky dip into unconsciousness, I abruptly stood. “I need some fresh air,” I announced. I lurched outside as my mom called after me to be careful. The crisp breeze combined with the activity of walking helped keep my body active, though my mind still felt sluggish. I kept seeing street signs and mailboxes out of the corner of my eye and thinking they were people or mistaking the gentle buzz of insects in the bushes alongside the road as whispers in my ear. The streets were surprisingly active, though, considering how late it was at night. I passed several people on their own midnight strolls.
I couldn’t help but dwell on what Brian had said about anesthesia. It was the only hope to latch on to. I wondered if there could be some way of getting a loan to pay for it in time, or if our town’s hospital even offered the service. What if the doctors administering the anesthesia fell asleep while you were under?
My meandering mind was interrupted by a car that suddenly swerved in front of me, briefly illuminating me in its headlights. It mounted the sidewalk before colliding with the side of a house. I could see the driver with his face buried in the inflated airbag. He must have been wedged against the horn because the sound was blaring, echoing throughout the neighborhood.
Asleep at the wheel.
The owner of the house stormed out following the crash, faltering when he saw the corpse in the driver’s seat. He suddenly exploded in anger, screaming and kicking the doorframe beside him, before he noticed me standing there gawking at the scene. I turned on my heel and swiftly headed back in the direction of home, the adrenaline in my veins contradicting my exhaustion.
I felt like I had seen more dead bodies in the past couple of days than anyone ever should, let alone a 15-year-old.
I slammed the door behind me, panting, when I heard my parents screaming and sobbing in the living room. My blood froze. I slowly walked down the hallway, bare feet padding against the carpet, before I rounded the corner.
My mom and dad were hunched over Dennis, who was unconscious on the floor between them. The furrow in his brow had finally dissipated in sleep, leaving him looking peaceful.
My mom noticed me standing in the doorway, and her sobbing erupted anew. “I’m sorry!” she screamed. “It was my fault! Oh god!”
My dad had bunched up the carpet in his fists, mouth cocked open in a silent scream of rage and anguish.
“He fell asleep,” I said quietly. I didn’t make it a question.
“I left him alone for one second,” my mom croaked. “I needed to go to the bathroom. I shouldn’t have let him out of my sight! Stupid!”
I wanted to console her, tell her it wasn’t her fault, but I couldn’t find the words. Instead, I maniacally laughed as I climbed the stairs to my room. “We’re all gonna’ die!” I sang.
~/~/~
My dad had his arms wrapped around me in a hug. He had found me standing in the middle of my room, where I had been pacing for the past two hours, lost in thought. Tears had been continually streaking down my face, and I hadn’t bothered wiping them off, leaving my face wet and puffy as he buried it into his shoulder.
The first light of dawn was beginning to creep over the horizon, casting beams through the clouds refracted in various hues of oranges and purples. It occurred to me that this was the first sunrise without Dennis.
I peered above my dad’s shoulder at the state of my room. My soccer trophy from middle school was still on the shelf beside my bed, its burnished gold plating glinting in the light that streaked through the window. On my dresser lay the plastic knife from my Halloween costume last year—I had done the fake blood myself. Beside it were the ticket stubs from the amusement park I visited on my first real date with a girl. My mom had had to drive us there and back, and her forced attempts at playing the cool mom were forever seared into my memory.
There was something painfully innocent about the assortment of mementos I had collected along the way—tokens of the steady march of time that left my brother behind.
So many things he would never see or experience.
My dad led me downstairs, and I noticed the bare carpet. Apparently, they had called the paramedics, who had carried off my brother’s small, lifeless body for processing. My mom sat on the couch, eyes glazed over and unseeing. She barely reacted to us walking in.
We sat beside her, and I noticed that the TV was now tuned to the news. It felt like it made sense to watch it now. Seeing the rest of our town struggling alongside us seemed to elevate our suffering—a reminder that we weren’t in this alone.
The anchors looked as frayed as the rest of us, even through their makeup and carefully styled hair. They were on some story about the halting of travel and trade in and out of Venezuela due to the inability of pilots to fly safely when they were interrupted by a breaking news bulletin.
A group of biomedical engineers in Sweden, who had taken non-stop consecutive shifts, had found a cure for the Repose. They were expediting production and distribution of the treatment, prioritizing reaching those areas that were affected first.
That meant us.
My heart fluttered in my chest, and the news anchors seemed similarly elated. One anchor gripped the shoulder of his co-host as tears streamed down his face. He could barely get the words out as he smiled.
“They did it,” I whispered. I jumped up from the couch. It was the first glimmer of home in a long, long time. I turned to my dad who stood beside me, and we hugged.
“We’re so close,” he said. “Just have to hold on a little bit longer.”
We pulled away, and I felt a sinking feeling in my chest that I couldn’t place.
I felt as though the world were pulled out from under me as I realized why: my mom hadn’t joined us in celebration.
My dad seemed to realize at the same time I did. We slowly turned around and were met with the sight of my mom asleep on the couch, a faint smile on her lips.