The Somnambulist

So there’s a benefit to having a roommate. The last time I’d sleepwalked, I’d been seven, and my parents had simply put a little hook and eye on the inside of my bedroom door, too high for me to reach easily. Pretty unsafe, but effective: To get it open, I’d have to unfold the chair beside the door, which had been the loudest, squeakiest chair in the house, and that had been enough to wake up and alert Ma and Ta that I’d been out of bed.

After that, the sleepwalking had waned, a curiosity for my old friend Chaykie Fruchter to tell our bunkmates about at summer camp or for me to laughingly mention on a faltering date. (Current faltering date count: one. Current date count: one.) Once in a while, if I don’t get enough sleep the night before, I’ll stumble halfway across my room in a woozy daze and then awaken. Never more than that.

It’s strange that it’s begun again. Ma suggests a doctor’s visit after Tehila mentions it, and I hurry to decline. “Shidduchim,” I say. “This is just too weird to be a thing.”

I know Tehila is worried, and I almost can’t resent her for spilling the truth to my parents. It’s hard to resent Tehila for anything, really. She’s just too nice. We’d been roommates in seminary, where I’d adored her from the very first day. I spent the rest of the year in a sort of disbelieving fugue, because how could someone like Tehila — popular, brilliant, stylish, gorgeous, perfect — befriend mousy, ordinary me, whose biggest moment in the spotlight had been a solo in 11th grade?