I know I should be studying. I know I’ll completely regret it in the morning when my Windsor Achiever app attacks me like a NORAD alarm during an alien invasion. But after stuffing ourselves on Duke sandwiches and toasting Dad with cups of apple juice, Frankie and I zonk out in front of the television and watch bad reality shows. It’s strangely the only programming we can actually agree on.
By nine o’clock, Mom is still at the office, and I can’t stop yawning.
“Time for your Dormidrome,” Frankie says, grabbing the remote and flipping to the science channel.
“There’s that word again. What’s a Dormi—whatever?”
Frankie squints at me. “A Dormidrome.”
“Yeah. Sequoia said something about that the other day when she dropped me off after school. What is that?”
“Oh,” Frankie replies knowingly.
“What?”
But he doesn’t respond. He turns off the TV and beckons for me to follow him.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Just come with me.”
When we get to my bedroom, he yanks open the top drawer of my nightstand and I leap back as though a snake has slithered out.
“What is all that?”
“Your sleeping pills.”
I gape in disbelief at the contents of the drawer. There’s no way those are mine. There are like seven different bottles in there. “I take all of those?” I squeak.
“Well, not at once!” He starts pointing at the various pills. “This one is for when you can’t fall asleep. This one is for when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep. This one is for napping. This one—”
“Okay. I get it!” I shut the drawer, narrowly missing his finger. I am so not taking any of those. “Does Mom know I have all those pills?”
Frankie chuckles. “Who do you think got them for you?”
* * *
An hour later, I lie in bed, thinking about everything sitting in my task list that I still haven’t checked off yet. There’s a little voice in the back of my head telling me that I should probably do some reading before I go to sleep. Maybe just one AP history chapter. Or a few pages of Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant for AP French. But I’m too tired.
Tomorrow will be the official catch-up day. Tomorrow I’ll work extra hard and plow through all of those pesky little alerts. Now that my interview is finished and the fund-raising gala is over, I can focus one hundred percent on my schoolwork.
I curl onto my side, sighing into the pillow. It feels so good to just close my eyes and go to sleep. Just drift off into peaceful dreams.
Any minute now the sweet, sweet darkness will come and pull me under.
Any minute now.
Seriously, what’s taking so long?
I groan and roll onto my back. My body is so tired. My eyeballs are so strained. Yet I can’t seem to fall asleep.
You can do this, I tell myself. Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out.
Just relax and allow your brain to switch off. Just think of peaceful meadows and chirping birds and … my unfinished AP calculus problem set and my paper on the Civil War and …
Gah! This isn’t working.
I sit up, turn on the light, and open the top drawer of my nightstand, staring at the pharmacy of sleep aids. I’ve never taken anything to help me sleep before. What if they’re not safe? What if they chew at my brain like mice gnawing at the wires inside the wall? You don’t even realize you have a problem until the whole house goes dark.
That’s ridiculous. They must be safe if my mother got them for me.
And Sequoia knows about them. In fact, she probably takes them, too. I bet everyone at Windsor takes something to help them sleep. It’s a small price to pay to go to such a prestigious school and be handed a golden ticket to the college of your choice.
A very small price to pay.
I reach out and grab one of the bottles, twisting off the cap and pouring a small white tablet into my palm. I toss it onto my tongue and grab the nearby glass of water, positioning it against my lips.
But I can already taste the bitter, acidy flavor of the pill in my mouth. I can already feel the chemicals seeping into my bloodstream.
I spit the capsule back into my hand.
You don’t need it, I tell myself. It’s all in your head.
Maybe Other Me is used to taking these kinds of things, but I’m not. I’ve gone eighteen years without taking a single sleeping pill, there’s no reason to start now. It’s not like I have to do everything she did. I can make adjustments to this life as I go. There are no rules to this dimension-hopping thing. At least none that I know of.
I toss the pill on the nightstand and turn off the light, determined to do this the old-fashioned way.
It’s just falling asleep. It’s not like it’s hard.