Reborn to Leave Her Behind novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sleeping Through the Night

At Fairmont Alec sleeps past two for the first time, until Pauline appears at his dorm with Erin's failing grades.

Gabe Hosmer slept with a night-light shaped like a cartoon duck.

He told me on the first day that if I laughed, he would move out.

I laughed.

He did not move out.

By the third week of September he had labeled every shelf in our dorm room, including mine, and the label on mine said ALEC'S SHELF (HE KNOWS WHY).

"What do I know?" I asked.

"That you're hiding something," Gabe said. He was lying on his bed with his round glasses pushed up into his curly hair. "Nobody checks the lock three times before bed unless they're hiding something."

"I'm not hiding anything."

"You also don't drink milk. It's a carton in the fridge with your name on it, and you've never touched it."

"I'm lactose intolerant."

"You put milk in your cereal on Tuesday."

I had, but only after I opened the carton myself in the lounge, in front of three people.

"Mind your business, Gabe."

"I'm a first-year civil engineer," he said. "Minding your business is what I'm for."

I turned off the light, and for a second the duck lit the ceiling green.

In my first life I had woken every night at two in the morning for no reason I could name.

Then I had lain there until five, listening to Erin breathe, and never worked out what I was waiting for.

That night I closed my eyes in the dark and opened them to sunlight and Gabe snoring.

I lay still and waited for the two o'clock feeling to arrive.

It never came.

I had slept through.

The next day was my first studio critique.

I stood in front of a professor and nine classmates.

I held up a bridge model I had been drawing in my head for ten years.

The professor turned it over in her hands.

"This span is too clean," she said. "Where did you get it?"

"I don't know," I said. It was almost true. "I've been drawing it since I was young."

She set it down gently.

"Come to my office hours," she said. "Bring more."

In the hallway Gabe slapped my back so hard I dropped my pencils.

"You got an invitation!" he said. "She's never invited a freshman! You're going to be a legend and I'm going to be your sidekick!"

"You're my roommate."

"Sidekick is a promotion."

It was the best day I had had in either life.

My phone rang at midnight, and the screen said Erin.

I stood in the stairwell, and the cinderblock was cold through my shirt.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was bright and too fast. "I just wanted to say hi. I'm fine. College is great."

"Good."

"The food is awful. But it's fine. Rhett says the cafeteria uses the same grease as the garage. It's very funny."

"Is it?"

"It is if you know him."

She laughed, and it stopped halfway.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I said I'm fine. You don't have to do the voice."

"What voice?"

"The voice where you already know the answer."

I leaned my head against the wall.

I wanted to tell her everything.

I wanted to say that I knew where this road ended, and that I could not stop it.

"Call me whenever you want," I said. "I'll pick up."

"That's the nicest and meanest thing anyone's said to me," she said, and hung up.

I went back to the room and lay awake until three.

In the morning someone knocked on our door before eight.

Gabe opened it in his boxers and said, "Hello, ma'am, I'm decent from the waist up," and Mrs. Hartigan walked past him into the room without answering.

She was in her work cardigan, with her car keys in her fist and her mouth in a hard line.

"Alec. I need to talk to you."

"Mrs. Hartigan, how did you find my building?"

"Your mother." She put a folded paper on my desk. "That came from Briarwood on Friday."

It was a progress letter with Erin's name at the top.

Two of her three classes were circled in red, and the word FAILING was printed beside them.

"She has not called me in three weeks," Mrs. Hartigan said. "She does not answer. Her roommate says she hasn't slept in her dorm in nine days."

Gabe had stopped joking.

I picked up the letter and read it twice.

"You said it was her life," she said.

Her voice shook for the first time since I had known her.

"You told me to ask her. Well, I'm asking you. Where is my daughter?"

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