Naomi started sleeping into the afternoon at the beginning of the year, but now it’s August, and her dreamy exhaustion is no longer endearing to our family. In June, we started to find her tucked between the folds of our hammock or sprawled in the grass with her white socks still on, limbs constricted by the picnic blanket. Mosquitos swarmed in front of her face and she unconsciously batted them away with her thin fingers. Our parents used to nod their heads, smile, and tuck her in, but now, all they do is watch from the kitchen window and confer, whispering about what possibly could have afflicted their poor daughter.  

My mother grabbed me by my shirt sleeve and pulled me onto the porch one day while Naomi slept on a lawn chair. She sat down and gestured to the cushion next to her on the swing. I obeyed. 

“Do you know if your sister sleeps at night?” she asked. “Do you hear her sneak out?” 

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.” 

“Do you think she’s depressed?” 

“Maybe.” 

“Why? What reason could a fourteen year old girl possibly have to be depressed?” 

I shrugged. Why would I know? My mother flattened out the wrinkles in her skirt and tightened her lips. I couldn’t give her the answer she wanted. She gently put her hand on my shoulder, and I was dismissed.  

In July, our family decided that even if Naomi was ill, we would still go on vacation to our grandparents' cabin by the river. They had given up trying to keep her awake by the end of the week. She slept on sunlit white sand while the rest of us fished. Every previous summer, we had walked on the bank and watched anole lizards climb on the sides of rocks. She shrieked and laughed as she wrapped her fingers around the bases of their bellies. Their stomachs expanded and their tails slapped against her skin before she let them go and watched them crawl up the length of her arm. Back in the cabin on our bunked beds, we had whispered through the night. Neither of us seemed to get a moment of rest before the sun would rise. This year, she slept away her entire vacation, only awake for meals and family photos. 

  Back at home, even when Naomi was awake, she operated with such an exhausted stupor that our parents had given up trying to talk to her. They never asked if she wanted to be present for the many house calls our father made to somnologists, therapists, and various physicians. He leaned on the edge of the wooden kitchen island, legs crossed at the ankle with the house phone up to the right side of his face. He raised and hushed his voice intermittently as he got frustrated and then remembered his unconscious child on the couch. 

“All I know is that my daughter sleeps eighteen hours a day. Do you think I know what to do about that?” He paused. “Of course I don’t. That’s why I’m paying you.” 

When they heard from Naomi’s school that she had started falling asleep in class, they ruffled her hair and told her to go to bed earlier. By the end of the semester, they hired a private tutor to help her with her slipping grades. By the summer, they locked her windows at night, put caffeine supplements in her food, and dabbed peppermint and rosemary oils onto her wrists each morning. 

Our grandparents even eventually started a fundraiser in Naomi’s name. Grandma took pictures for the campaign of her beautiful sleeping granddaughter from the doorway, but never ventured into her room. When an envelope came into the mail with a five-thousand-dollar check, my mother gasped and wrapped her arms around my father’s neck. He later clapped his hand on my back and held my frame close to his for the first time in years. But the money didn’t keep Naomi awake. It covered the cost of the sleep experts and home remedies for a while, but nothing worked. 

By the end of the summer, my parents hopelessly drifted around the house. When Naomi was awake, they congregated in the bedroom. When she was asleep, they haunted whatever room she was in. My father always asked me if he should move her to her own bed, but never did. My mother put a plate of cheese or fruit next to her for when she next woke up. They approached her with quiet hesitation, like if they stroked her face or touched her back as she slept, she would break. 

One Sunday morning, Naomi knocked on my door. Her hair was matted around the long braid she had made a few days before and her clothes smelled slightly sour. We both laid on my bed anyway. The only sounds were the rickety rhythm of the fan and the footsteps in the master bedroom above. After a few moments, I said, “Mom asked me if you were depressed.” 

“Yeah,” Naomi said. 

“Are you?” I asked. 

“I don’t think so. But I’m exhausted,” she paused. “Everyone keeps saying that they miss me, but they forget that I’m missing everything. Nothing touches me anymore, and I’m afraid. God, I want to be awake.” She looked at me. “Please believe me.” Her confession came out breathy and labored. We both stared at the wall. I held her hand. 

After a couple minutes, I said, “We’re all just worried about you.” 

“I know,” she replied, and rolled onto her side. I wanted to tell her that she should talk to our parents, but when I looked to my left she was already asleep. I picked her up. Her legs dangled from where I held her on the warm insides of her knees. I felt old, unexpectedly old, with my little sister limp in my arms. When we were young, at our grandparents’ cabin, I had lifted her from where she stood at the edge of the dock and jumped in. Our parents didn’t approve, but Naomi just laughed. She pulled my wet hair and pushed my boyish chest. By nightfall, we had left the lake with caked mud stuck on our bodies from when she wrestled me back into the water. She used her fingernails to gently scrape the mud off my back and to pick it out of my hair. I did the same for her. We ran back to the cabin as children should, as if we were flying, light as anything.

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Savannah Bell is a creative writing student at Emerson College. Her fiction has been published in So to Speak Journal and the White Wall Review. Her poetry has been recognized by the Poetry Society of South Carolina and published in the Spellbinder Quarterly. She can typically be found wading in a river, lying on the grass somewhere, or, to put it simply, Hanging Out.