Sheep
Sometimes, when all else fails, I count sheep. Not once has it worked. Sheep only excite the wolves in my head.
Thalia once said to me that if you can’t sleep, you should drink warm milk. I didn’t listen to her. Thalia says too many things, and people listen to her because she has pretty red hair and sometimes you can see her nipples through her shirt. But I have known her too long to be fazed by this. I told her that warm milk makes me gag, and she was quiet for nearly thirty seconds.
Last night, I got to four hundred and thirty seven sheep. At that point, the sheep started to turn blue, or wear funny hats, and that made me smirk, not sleep. When I opened my eyes, the blackness of my room pressed at the corners of my eyes and for a moment I could see turquoise-fleeced sheep prancing their way across my vision like the dark was solid footing. And right behind my ears the wolves started up their howling again.
Today, I told Thalia, “The wolves are back.”
“I thought Dr. Farrow helped you with that,” she said. Thalia does not know how to make the wolves go away. She tries, sometimes. Sometimes, when she talks to other people at a party or tells me that warm milk always helps her sleep, she makes them louder.
I picked at a thread on my sleeve as I said, “I thought she did, too.” The thread was more than a foot long. I wrapped it around my finger until the tip turned purple.
Last year, my mother bought me twenty shirts. I came back from school with the cuffs shredded, sleeves trailing thread sadly like streamers the morning after a party. She stopped buying long sleeved shirts. I shredded the hems of all my tees, braided them together, twisted them up into little knots upon knots upon knots. My mother bought me stretchy shirts, the kind that you cannot pull a single thread from, and my fingers drummed against my hips and my breath hitched in my throat.
Thalia hated the stretchy shirts as much as I did. She does not like friends who lack fashion sense. I told her that when I wore the stretchy shirts, the wolves had no way out. She asked if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I said I didn’t know.
Last night, I was thirsty after counting four hundred and thirty seven sheep, but I could hear something in the dark. Perhaps “hear” is the wrong word. I could feel a presence, as acutely as if it had spoken to me. I did not get out of bed to drink water. Of their own accord, my fingers tugged threads from my pillowcase.
Dr. Farrow said the paranoia was normal. “Normal” meant that many anxious people experience it. “Normal” did not make it feel any less real. Once I asked Thalia, “If so many people have it that it’s normal, how can anyone prove it’s not real?”
“Maybe it is,” Thalia said. “Maybe you’re the one who knows what’s really going on.” And that made me feel better, for a while.
Today, I told Thalia, “I don’t want this to be real.” “Did you count sheep?” she asked, and I said, “Wolves like sheep more than I do,” and I thought about how we sounded like little kids again, playing an imaginary game, and I wished so hard it hurt.
Today, Thalia smiled at me, the way she did when we were little, and her teeth shone right through a decade of friendship so that I could feel the months and years dropping off me, so that I stood there, shivering, without cover or protection or weight, so that my head echoed with childish emptiness. And Thalia, chatterbox Thalia who doesn’t understand the wolves, today she outsang them, today her words upon words upon words were the only things that rang behind my ears. “I like you more than the wolves do,” she said, and with my fears fallen, scattered around my feet, today, I believed her.
Author: Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey
Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey is an 18-year-old writer from Petaluma, California. She is the founder of her school’s creative writing club and editor of the school literary magazine, and her work has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Her work has been published in Teen Ink, Blue Marble Review and Amaryllis. When not writing, Esmé enjoys taking walks and spending irrational amounts of time making playlists.
