Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“I am stone in love with her,” Akhil said to Amina a month after the dance, in one of the only direct exchanges they would ever have on the subject. They were just starting out for school. It was spring and everything was rain clean, and new, tiny shoots of green just beginning to dapple the fields. When Amina sneaked a look at his face, she saw that spring had come to Akhil as well, his insides finally catching up with his outsides, leaving him altogether reborn. He had finally found an America he could love; an America that would love him back.

Thomas was home for dinner. What exactly the occasion was, neither Amina nor Akhil knew, but they had come home from school to find him chatting in the kitchen with their mother, stealing pinches of carrots from her cutting board as she grated them.

“What are you doing here?” asked Akhil, never one to wait for a reveal.

“Case finished early. Thought I’d get some rest.”

“Oh.”

“Carrot halwa!” Kamala announced, like anyone had asked.

“How was school?” Thomas smiled and the children mumbled vaguely at him, a little scared of his enthusiasm.

“Wash up!” Kamala commanded. “We’ve got lamb curry and rice.”

Half an hour later, they sat at the table, Kamala ordering everyone to try everything, as though they had never had her cooking before.

“So I’m going to prom,” Akhil said, trying not to look pleased.

“You are?” Amina said.

“What’s a prom?” Kamala asked.

“It’s a dance. A formal one. That you go to. With a date.”

“Neat!” Thomas said. “And you’re going?”

“A date who?” Kamala asked.

“A girl in my class. Paige Anderson.”

“Paigean?”

“ Anderson , last name. Paige , first.”

“Oh.” Kamala nodded. “How do you know this Paige?”

“Through Mathletes.”

Kamala smiled. “A nice girl!”

“Well, yeah.”

“You asked her?” Amina asked.

“We asked each other,” Akhil said haughtily, as though she had missed some essential point he had made earlier.

“We should meet her,” Thomas said. “You should bring her here before the dance.”

“Dad, it doesn’t work like that.”

“What do you mean? Shouldn’t the parents always meet the date before the outing?”

“Only if you’re the girl’s parents. It doesn’t matter for the guy’s.”

“Oh.” Thomas looked fleetingly disappointed. “Well, no matter, we could simply meet her afterward.”

“No, no, no.” Akhil shook his head. “Afterward is the casino party, and then after that is … another party.”

“So many of parties?” Kamala asked. “Who is having them?”

The parties after prom, Amina knew (well, not knew firsthand, but knew in that Dimple had told her), were always conducted in hotel rooms on the side of the highway. Akhil put a chunk of lamb in his mouth, chewing and stalling. He swallowed and said, “Just some friends of mine in the class. Nice kids. Mathletes.”

The last line blew it a little, Amina could see, her father’s features darkening slightly. “We should talk to the parents.”

“What parents?”

“The parents of the kids with the parties. Just to make sure it’s okay.”

“What do you mean, make sure? Of course it’s okay.”

“We’ll see,” Thomas said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that unless we feel good about it, you’re not going anywhere.”

“You can’t do that!”

“He’s going to need to rent a tux, you know,” Amina said, to change the subject. “It’s required.”

“Tux?” Kamala asked.

“Tuxedo,” Amina said. “They’re, like, required. All the boys have to wear them.”

“One of my patients has a tuxedo rental shop!” Thomas said, sounding pleased. “We can go see him together. Bill Chambers. Nice man. You’ll like him.”

Akhil said nothing.

“Eh, Akhil? We can go see him?” Thomas stopped eating, his cheek bulging with a pocket of unchewed rice. “Akhil?”

Across from him, head tucked to his chest, Akhil didn’t stir. His breaths were light and shallow.

“What’s wrong with him?” Thomas asked.

“Nothing. He’s asleep,” Amina said.

“What?”

“Don’t worry, he’s just tired,” Kamala said.

“What do you mean? He was just asking us if he could stay out all night. He was getting upset.”

“And now he’s sleepy,” Kamala said. “So what? Growing boy, you said it yourself.”

“He’s done this before?”

“He’s always tired during dinner,” Kamala said, wiggling her hand for the curds, which Amina handed her. “He needs to get more sleep.”

Thomas rose from his chair, walking around the table. He hovered over Akhil, peering at his face, but when he moved to pick up his wrist, Kamala slapped him away.

“ Chi! Let him have some rest.”

But Thomas would not be deterred. He leaned over Akhil, first waving his hand across closed eyelids, then pulling them up, one by one, exposing two pockets of white. He lifted his wrist and pinched it between two fingers, listening to his pulse. He turned to Kamala. “How often has this happened?”

“How often has he fallen asleep?” Kamala snorted. “At least once a night.”

“Fallen asleep in the middle of doing something else.”

“He hasn’t! He just sleeps a lot. My God, I told you that months ago! But he’s getting better. Ask Amina.”

“Have you seen him do this?” he asked Amina.

Amina looked at him uneasily. “Yeah.”

“During normal activity? When he should otherwise be in an alert and stable condition? Are the triggers usually emotional?”

“I …” What was he asking her? “I don’t know.”

“How often has it happened?”

“I don’t remember. A few times.”

Thomas tugged at his beard, frowning at his watch. “And when did it start?”

“I’m not sure. Six months ago, maybe.”

Thomas kneeled down, his brow furrowed into dark canyons. He held Akhil’s hand, stroking it lightly. Watching them, Amina realized it had been years since she had seen her father do anything so intimate as touch any of them. When Thomas pressed his brow to Akhil’s sleeping face, she had to look away.

“What are you doing?” Akhil asked, jerking awake.

Thomas backed up. “Hey. Are you okay?’ ”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“You just fell asleep.”

“No I didn’t.” Akhil looked at Amina, who tried to nod with just her eyes. “I just shut my eyes for a second.”

Thomas sat back on his heels.

“Finish eating,” he said. “We’ll talk after.”

Two days later, they left for the hospital.

“What are they going to do?” Amina asked as she watched Akhil place his pillow and his backpack in the backseat of Thomas’s car. They would not be coming back until late the next afternoon, Thomas had explained, checking his pager mid-sentence. Now her father was in the driver’s seat, his mouth moving over words that Amina could tell were directed not at her brother at all but at whoever was on the newly installed car phone.

“Who knows? Some stupid dream-monitoring nonsense.” Kamala frowned.

“But why does it take so long?”

“Measuring nighttime and daytime activity or some idiot thing.”

“But what does Dad think is wrong?”

“Nothing! Nothing is wrong, he just wants to perform some tests to make sure nothing is wrong.”

Did Kamala hear herself when she said things like this out loud? Amina’s annoyed disbelief was abruptly tempered by her mother’s face, the fevered anxiety of someone treading water with no shoreline in sight. She squeezed Kamala’s shoulder and went upstairs to read.