The Annoying Sleepwalker novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Withdrawn

The RA called a floor meeting for eight that night.

She had not planned it to be about me.

I asked her to put Kelsey on the agenda, and she looked at my face and said yes.

The whole third floor squeezed into the lounge, forty people on couches and the carpet.

Kelsey sat in the corner armchair with Colson standing behind her.

She had her cardigan on and a tissue in her hand.

Casper plugged his laptop into the TV.

"I'm only going to play two things," I said. "Then I'm done."

The first clip showed my desk at 3:05 a.m., with a phone and a gold locket beside the charger.

Everyone watched Kelsey cross the room with her eyes wide open.

They watched her reach past the phone and past the locket.

They watched her tear forty pages from the binder without a single smear on her own things.

"She didn't touch her grandmother's necklace," the girl from 3C said softly.

"She's walked past it for three years," I said. "And it's the thing she'd cry hardest over."

Kelsey did not answer.

"Second clip," I said.

Casper played the bedside camera.

The screen lit up Kelsey's face in the dark, awake and reading.

Her thumbs flew over the keys.

*Done. Binder and drive. Both fake, she's smarter than we thought.*

The answer came back, and Casper froze it on the screen.

*Then stop guessing. Next time go for the thing she can't replace.*

A low murmur went around the room.

"Sleep texting," Kelsey said at once. Her voice was thin and fast. "It's in my diagnosis. People do it."

"Who's M?" the RA asked.

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