Verity

The smell is different when I open my eyes. So are the noises.

I’m not confused about where I am. I know I’m in Jeremy’s house. I just…I’m not in my room.

I’m staring at a wall. The wall in the master bedroom is light grey. This wall is yellow. Yellow, like the walls in the upstairs bedrooms.

The bed beneath me begins to move, but it isn’t because someone in the bed is moving. It’s different…like it’s…mechanical.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Please, God. No. No, no, no, please don’t tell me I am in Verity’s bed.

I’m trembling all over now. I open my eyes, slowly, and turn my head at the slowest pace possible. When I see the door and then the dresser and then the TV mounted to the wall, I roll out of the bed, falling to the floor. I scramble to the wall and slide up it with my back against it. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can hardly hold myself up I am so hysterical.

My body is shaking so badly, I can hear it when I breathe. Whimpers at first, but as soon as I open my eyes and see Verity on her bed, I scream.

Then I slap my hand over my mouth.

It’s dark outside. Everyone is asleep. I have to be quiet.

It’s been so long since this has happened. Years, probably. But it’s happening and I am terrified and I have no idea why I ended up here. Was it because I was thinking about her?

“Sleepwalking is patternless, Lowen. It has no meaning. It is unrelated to intention.”

I hear my therapist’s words, but I don’t want to process them. I need to get out of here. Move, Lowen.

I slide across the wall, keeping as far from that bed as I can while I make my way to Verity’s bedroom door. I’m flat against the door, tears streaming down my cheeks as I turn the handle and open it, then flee the bedroom.

Jeremy flings his arms around me, pulling me to a stop.

“Hey,” he says, turning me to face him. He sees the tears on my face, the terror in my eyes. He loosens his grip, and as soon as he does, I run. I run down the hall, down the stairs, and I don’t stop until I slam the bedroom door and I’m back on my bed.

What the fuck? What the fuck?

I curl up on top of the covers, facing the door. My wrist begins to throb, so I grip it with my other hand and tuck it against my chest.

The bedroom door opens and then closes behind Jeremy. He’s shirtless, in a pair of red flannel pajama bottoms. It’s all I see, a blur of red plaid as he rushes toward me. Then he’s on his knees, his hand on my arm, his eyes searching mine.

“Lowen, what happened?”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, wiping at my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

I shake my head and sit up on the bed. I have to explain it to him. He just caught me in his wife’s bedroom in the middle of the night, and his head is probably swarming with questions. Questions I don’t really have answers to.

Jeremy takes a seat next to me on the bed, lifting a leg so he can face me. He puts both his hands on my shoulders and lowers his head, looking at me very seriously.

“What happened, Low?”

“I don’t know,” I say, rocking back and forth. “Sometimes I walk in my sleep. I haven’t in a long time, but I took two Xanax earlier and I think maybe… I don’t know…” I sound just as hysterical as I feel. Jeremy must sense that, because he pulls me to him, putting pressure around me with his arms, trying to calm me. He doesn’t ask me anything else for a couple of minutes. He runs a comforting hand over the back of my head and as good as it feels to have his support, I feel guilty. Undeserving.

When he pulls back, I can see his questions practically spilling from his mouth. “What were you doing in Verity’s room?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I woke up in there. I was scared and I screamed and…”

He grabs my hands. Squeezes them. “You’re okay.”

I want to agree with him, but I can’t. How am I supposed to sleep in this house after that?

I can’t count how many times I’ve woken up in random places. It used to happen so often, I went through a period where I had three locks on the inside of the bedroom door. I’m not unfamiliar with waking up in strange rooms, but why, out of all the rooms in this house, did it have to be Verity’s?

“Is this why you wanted a lock on your door?” he asks. “To stop yourself from getting out?”

I nod, but for whatever reason, my response makes him laugh.

“Jesus,” he says. “I thought it was because you were afraid of me.”

I’m glad he finds levity in the moment, because I can’t seem to.

“Hey. Hey,” he says gently, tilting my chin up so that I’ll look at him. “You’re okay. It’s okay. Sleepwalking is harmless.”

I shake my head in profound disagreement. “No. No, Jeremy. It’s not.” I hold my hand up to my chest, still clutching my wrist. “I’ve woken up outside before, I’ve turned on stoves and ovens in my sleep. I even…” I blow out a breath. “I broke my hand in my sleep and didn’t even feel it until I woke up the next morning.”

A rush of adrenaline surges through my body as I think about how I can now add what just happened to the list of disturbing things I’ve done in my sleep. Although unconscious, I still walked up those stairs and crawled into that bed. If I’m capable of doing something that disturbing, what else am I capable of?

Did I unlock the door in my sleep or did I forget to lock it? I can’t even remember.

I push off the mattress and head for the closet. I grab my suitcase and the few shirts I brought with me that are hanging up. “I should go.”

Jeremy says nothing, so I continue to pack my things. I’m in the bathroom gathering my toiletries when he appears in the doorway. “You’re leaving?”

I nod. “I woke up in her room, Jeremy. Even after you put a lock on my door. What if it happens again? What if I scare Crew?” I open the shower door to grab my razor. “I should have told you all this before I ever stayed the night here.”

Jeremy takes the razor out of my hand. He places my bag of toiletries back on the counter. Then he pulls me to him, wrapping a hand around my head as he tucks me into his chest. “You sleepwalk, Low.” He presses a comforting kiss into the top of my hair. “You sleepwalk. It’s not that big of a deal.”

Not that big of a deal?

I laugh halfheartedly against his chest. “I wish my mother would have felt that way.”

When Jeremy pulls back, there’s worry in his eyes. But is he worried for me or because of me? He walks me back into the bedroom, where he motions for me to sit down on my bed while he begins to hang up the shirts I shoved into my suitcase.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

“Which part, exactly?”

“Why your mother thought it was a big deal.”

I don’t want to talk about it. He must see my expression change because he pauses as he’s reaching for another shirt. He drops it back into the suitcase and sits on the bed.

“I don’t mean to sound harsh,” he says, pegging me with a firm stare. “But I have a son. Seeing you this worried about what you’re capable of is starting to make me worry. Why are you so scared of yourself?”

A small part of me wants to defend myself, but there’s nothing to defend. I can’t tell him I’m harmless, because I’m not sure that I am. I can’t tell him I’ll never sleepwalk again, because it just happened twenty minutes ago. The only thing I could probably say to defend myself is to tell him I’m not nearly as horrific as his own wife, but I’m not even sure if I believe that.

I’m not horrific yet, and I don’t trust myself enough to say that I never will be.

I drop my eyes to the bed and swallow, preparing to tell him all about it. My wrist begins to throb again. When I look down at it, I trace the scar over my palm. “I didn’t feel what happened to my wrist when it happened,” I say. “I woke up one morning when I was ten. As soon as I opened my eyes, I felt this intense pain shoot up from my wrist to my shoulder. And then it was like a bright light exploded in my head. I screamed because it hurt so bad. My mother ran into my bedroom, and I remember lying on the bed in the most pain I’d ever been in, but in that second I realized my door had been unlocked. I knew I had locked it the night before.”

I look up from my hand, back at Jeremy. “I couldn’t remember what had happened, but there was blood all over my blanket, my pillow, my mattress, myself. And dirt on my feet, as if I’d been outside during the night. I couldn’t even remember ever leaving my room. We had security cameras that monitored the front of the house and several of the rooms inside it. Before my mother checked them, she took me to the hospital because the cut on my hand needed stitches and my wrist needed an X-ray. When we got home later that afternoon, she pulled up the security footage of our front yard. We sat on the couch and watched it.”

I reach to the nightstand and grab my water to ease the dryness in my throat. Before I continue, Jeremy places a hand on my knee, his thumb rubbing back and forth reassuringly. I stare at it as I finish telling him what happened.

“At three o’clock that morning, the footage showed me walking outside, onto the front porch. I climbed up on the thin porch railing and stood there. That’s all I did at first. I just…stood there. For an hour, Jeremy. We watched the entire hour, waiting, hoping to see if the footage was broken because no one should be able to remain balanced for that long. It was unnatural, but I never moved. I never spoke any words. And then…I jumped. I must have hurt my wrist in the fall, but in the footage I showed no reaction. I pushed off the ground with both hands and then walked up the porch steps. You could see the blood already coming from my hand and dripping onto the porch, but my expression was dead. I walked straight back to my room and I fell asleep.”

My eyes return to his. “I have no recollection of that. How can I inflict that much pain on myself and not be aware of it? How can I stand on a railing for an entire hour without swaying, not even a little bit? The video frightened me more than the injury did.”

Again, he hugs me, and I am so grateful that I cling to him tightly. “My mother sent me away for a two-week psychiatric evaluation after that,” I say into his chest. “When I returned home, she had moved farther down the hall, into a spare bedroom where she placed three locks on the inside of her bedroom door. My own mother was terrified of me.”

Jeremy buries his face in my hair and sighs heavily. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“And I’m sorry your mother didn’t know how to handle it. That had to have been hard for you.”

Everything about him is exactly what I needed tonight. His voice is calm and caring, and his arms are protective, and his presence is comforting. I don’t want him to let go of me. I don’t want to think about waking up in Verity’s bed. I don’t want to think about how much I don’t trust my own mind in my sleep, and even when I’m awake.

“We can talk more tomorrow,” he says, releasing me. “I’ll try to come up with a plan to make you feel more comfortable. But for now, just try to get some sleep, okay?”

He squeezes my hands reassuringly and then goes to the door. I feel panicked by the thought of him leaving me alone in here. Of going back to sleep. “What do I do about the rest of tonight? Just lock my door?”

Jeremy looks at the alarm clock. It’s ten minutes to five. He stares at the clock for a moment and then walks back to me. “Lie down,” he says, lifting the covers. I crawl into the bed and he scoots in behind me.

He wraps his arm around me, tucking my head under his chin. “It’s almost five, I won’t go back to sleep. But I’ll stay until you do.”

He’s not rubbing my back or soothing me in any way. If anything, the arm that’s holding me is stiff, like he doesn’t want me to misconstrue our position on this bed in any way. But even with how uncomfortable he is right now, I appreciate he’s making an effort to make me comfortable.

I try to close my eyes and sleep, but all I see is Verity. All I hear is the sound of her bed upstairs, moving.

It’s after six when he assumes I’m asleep. His arm moves and his fingers end up in my hair for a moment. It’s quick, as quick as the kiss he plants on the side of my head, but his actions linger long after he leaves the bedroom and closes the door.