FROM SLEEPLESS

CHAPTER ONE

MICKEY PRIMA

 

The cold mist vaporizer sends a moist cloud up into my nostrils. It smells like Bigfoot’s armpit but it’s actually called Midnight Breeze. It’s supposed to relax you and help you sleep.

“Good night!” my mother calls from downstairs.

Fat chance.

The humidifier is for my allergies. Allergic rhinitis, Dr. Malachi, my allergist, calls it. It’s a medical way of saying sniffles and a never-ending trickle of gunk down the back of my throat – nothing serious, just enough to choke on.

Over the hiss of the machine, I hear the front door close. That’s Mom, leaving for her twilight shift at Mercy Hospital. Dad’s already at his second job, working the overnight hours at our local newspaper, the Shagbark Telegraph.

There’s a scratching at my bedroom door and I open it to admit Baldie. She’s an American hairless terrier – Google it. It’s a real thing. She’s pretty funny looking with all that gray-brown skin where a coat should be. But she’s the only breed I’m allowed to have because of my allergies. Hairless terriers are the most hypo-allergenic dogs in the world, because there’s no fur to be allergic to. Personally, I think Baldie is kind of impressive with those stand-up pointy ears and sharp, intelligent eyes.

Baldie spends her nights in my room, because with Mom and Dad away so much at work, I’m where the action is. Plus I have snacks and she’s 100 percent in favor of that. I pour her out some potato chips and while she’s munching, I play video games.

She watches me for a while – sometimes I wonder if she thinks Call of Duty is a really exciting TV show that’s always on in my room. Then she trots over to her doggie bed in the corner, executes half a dozen turns to settle herself, and snuggles down for the night.

After about two minutes, she opens one eye to look over at me, as if to say: Are you coming or what?

“Don’t let me stop you,” I call over my shoulder. “Sweet dreams!”

That doesn’t sit well with Baldie. I get a little yip of complaint.

“I’m in the middle of a game,” I protest.

Baldie emits a guttural sound like an old man muttering under his breath.

In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten really good at Call of Duty. Practice makes perfect as Dad says, and I’ve put in a lot of practice.

There I sit, thumbs just a blur on the controller, wiping up the competition. There’s only one problem: The voices I hear coming over my headset are high-pitched and they all have accents. It may be bedtime here, but in Australia, the elementary school kids are just getting home to their consoles. Here I am, celebrating my dominance as a gamer, but in reality, I’m probably beating up on a bunch of eight-year-olds!

Baldie snorts in exasperation – a very horse-like sound to be coming out of a little dog.

I shut off the game. “All right, I hear you, you big bully.”

I turn out the light, throw open my comforter and crawl into bed. Within fifteen seconds, I’m getting dog snores over the hiss of the humidifier. Those are the only sounds in the whole house. Perfect conditions for a good night’s sleep.

That’s where it gets complicated.

Time passes – ten minutes? An hour? A month?

I have to admit it: I have not slept in a month.

I don’t mean I have trouble falling asleep. I don’t mean I toss and turn in bed – although I do that too. We’ve all experienced that thing where you lie awake, losing your mind, for what seems like hours and suddenly it’s morning so you must have slept at some point, right?

That used to be me, but it isn’t me anymore. I don’t remember exactly where or when the change officially kicked in. When it’s happening to you, you don’t really believe it – not until it’s been going on so long that you’ve run out of lies and excuses to tell yourself.

I don’t sleep at all. Not a night. Not an hour. Not a minute. I don’t half-sleep; I don’t cat-nap; I don’t even doze off. I’m awake, period. That’s a twenty-four-hour condition.

I reach over to my nightstand and take a sip of warm milk – yuck. There’s always warm milk when you’ve got sleep troubles. I turn on my white-noise machine, which produces the sound of waves washing up onshore. No, that’s no good. Water noises make me have to go to the bathroom. I switch to soothing harp music. Baldie loves it. Her little tail is wagging while she sleeps.

I remain unsoothed.

I flip over onto my face, but then I’m suffocating. With my allergies, it’s tough to find a good angle for breathing. Dr. Malachi says I have to keep my airways clear.

More time passes. How much? It all blends together when you’re sleepless. A half hour might as well be a year.

I get out of bed and pace up and down in my room. The floorboards squeak, but there’s nobody to hear it. Mom and Dad are at their night shifts and you couldn’t disturb Baldie with an artillery cannon once she nods off.

My parents didn’t always work so hard, but last year, they lost almost all our savings in a real estate deal gone bad. It’s been pretty stressful for our family.

Stress – that’s supposed to be one of the main causes of insomnia, which is what I have. Or maybe I don’t. People with insomnia have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, but sooner or later they do it. For me, it’s more like sleep is something I used to do but don’t anymore. It’s annoying and it’s boring and it’s very, very frustrating. But as time goes by, it becomes something else too – scary. This is just not normal. What is happening to me?

I crawl back into bed and try counting sheep. That has to be the most idiotic sleep aid of them all. First of all, it’s just counting because – let’s face it – there aren’t any sheep. And if there were, you’d have bigger problems than just being sleepless. Shoveling comes to mind.

I guess the idea is you bore yourself to sleep. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve counted thousands of sheep. That’s a lot of boring. It doesn’t get me so much as a yawn.

I switch off the harp music and turn on the light. It doesn’t disturb Baldie, who is still snoring.

“You don’t have to rub it in,” I mutter resentfully.

Doesn’t it figure? The owner of the number one slumber-dog of Snooze Land turns out to be the sleepless guy.

At my computer, I perform the same Google searches I’ve been running night after night. The links pile up: Ten Keys to Better Sleep; Insomnia and You; Relaxation and Rest; Thirty Tips for Thirty Winks; Catching Z’s – a User’s Guide; Get Your Beauty Sleep; Sleep Like a Baby, Baby! …

These websites tell you how to sleep longer or better, but there’s nothing for someone like me, who’s just stopped. It’s almost like I outgrew sleeping. Except nobody outgrows sleeping. Mom and Dad sleep. My grandma in Florida sleeps so much that she eats dinner at four-thirty so she can be in bed by six. My dog could bring home the gold in the sleep Olympics! Characters in books, in movies and TV shows – they go to bed; they wake up. It’s a natural thing! Am I the only one who doesn’t?

The internet is also full of pills and elixirs you can take to help you sleep, but I wouldn’t touch them. First of all, I get allergy shots every other month from Dr. Malachi, so I’m scared any new medicine might interfere with that. Besides, that stuff is expensive and money is the one thing there’s never enough of in our house.

Next, I write in my sleep journal. Yes, I keep a sleep journal – which is like a boa constrictor buying tap-dancing shoes. That’s the advice Mom got from the sleep expert at her hospital. I’m supposed to keep a complete record of everything to do with me and sleeping: When I sleep. How long I sleep. Do I dream? What wakes me up? Is my room dark enough? That kind of thing.

A couple of months ago, I had stuff to write because I was dozing a little here and there. But as the problem got worse, I was left with nothing to say. I couldn’t list my wakeups because there was no sleep to wake up from.

So I started faking it. My mother expects a story, so I give her one: Sleep three hours, bathroom, warm milk, back down till Jake Whitman disturbs whole neighborhood with motorcycle, relax into really good dream about hummingbirds. Okay, maybe not hummingbirds. Racecars. That sounds more believable.

Believable but 100 percent baloney.

I put away the journal and take stock of myself. It’s 3:45 a.m. Mom and Dad won’t be home for hours. That’s another part of the sleepless lifestyle. According to Google, the average kids sleeps eight to ten hours per night. That’s so much time to fill! Oh, sure, it sounds great. You can do whatever you want – even play video games all night.

Well, I’ve tried it and you can’t. Not eight to ten hours. I doubt even the world’s biggest video-game-addicted couch potato can do that, or even wants to. You can’t talk to friends, or FaceTime, or text, because everybody’s asleep – everybody but you. And in my case, I can’t even wake up my parents and ask them what I should do, since they’re not home.

I’m stuck. Period.

I look at myself in the mirror. My face reflects exactly the despair I’m feeling inside. Oh, sure, I get that there are people with worse problems than mine. I’m not being murdered, or tortured, or handcuffed to a beehive with honey poured over my head. And sleeplessness isn’t a horrible disease, at least I hope not. But when just passing the time through a normal night stretches you to the limit, it’s pretty miserable. And the worst part is tomorrow you’re going to have to do the whole thing over again.

The frown on my face belongs on a comic book character – an inverted U. And it doesn’t help to have stick-out ears – like an Uber with both doors left wide open. No wonder Carlo Myles calls me Mouse – although being named Mickey doesn’t help. And look at the rest of me. Skinny as a broom handle. Yeah, I’m only twelve but so is Carlo and he’s built like an M-1 tank. He’s starting linebacker on the Shagbark Middle School football team, even though he’s only a seventh grader.

Carlo can do no wrong at our school, even though the only thing he’s good at is knocking other people down. He probably builds a lot of muscle lifting all that food to his big mouth. He trains – and he doesn’t even have whole nights to kill.

It makes me stop and think. I have more free hours than Carlo. I have more free hours than anybody. If I spend some of them exercising, can I get to be as big as him? Probably not, but it can’t hurt to try. All it takes is time – and I’ve got plenty of that.

Baldie is awake on her dog bed, peering quizzically up at me. That’s the problem with having a smart dog. You always feel like you’re being evaluated and somehow you just don’t measure up.

“I know it’s a dumb idea,” I snap. “Have you got a better one?”

I trade my pajamas for shorts and t-shirt, kick into sneakers, and head downstairs. Baldie follows me, but she keeps glancing in the direction of the steps, my room, and her abandoned dog bed.

“Nobody’s forcing you to come along,” I tell her. “You can go back up there and sack out.” I try to keep the jealousy out of my voice.

As if to make a point, she yawns in my face.

It feels weird to step outside at four o’clock in the morning. The neighborhood is dark and deserted. There are no cars, no people. Just the standard moths and mosquitoes. To them, I must look like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Baldie shoots me a “woof?” and I can almost hear the question mark at the end. What is this change in routine? Night and dark mean sleep, not wandering the neighborhood.

I start jogging along the street. It takes about ten steps for me to remember why I don’t do this. I hate it. It’s like gym class minus the obnoxious guy with the whistle. Baldie trots gamely along beside me. She’s not quite sold on this night mission. But running around feels a lot like playing, and she’s always up for that.

I’m out of breath before the end of the first block. I stop in my tracks, bent double, sucking air. Baldie doesn’t have this problem and disappears into the gloom. I try to call her back, but I have no wind. After a few minutes, she shows up on her own. And … is that an impatient expression on her pointy face?

“What?” I pant aloud. “No ambulance?”

I almost give up but one thing turns me around. According to my phone, I’ve been running for a grand total of forty-five seconds. Me – the guy with multiple hours to fill every night – can’t even manage a full minute.

I start again, slower this time, but steady. The fatigue comes back, but now I’m expecting it.

Keep running, I exhort myself.

Baldie adjusts her pace to match mine. That dog might really be smarter than me – which is kind of humiliating, when you think about it.

I fight through the pain. It’s not that I don’t want to stop. I don’t let myself.

No matter what, just keeping putting one foot in front of the other.

Before long, sweat is streaming down my face, stinging my eyes. My breath is on fire. But my feet keep moving. It isn’t athleticism, because for sure I don’t have any of that. It’s pure stubbornness that keeps me going – that and the fact that I refuse to lose to a twenty-pound dog.

I don’t let up until my timer hits twenty minutes. Only then do I allow myself to slow to a walk and start for home. Baldie is keeping her distance because droplets of sweat are showering off me. I’m as wet as if somebody had dunked me in the river.

My feet hurt, too – either that I’m outgrowing these sneakers. My entire body aches, but I’m kind of pleased with myself. I set a goal and I followed it, even if it was painful.

Baldie has her second wind and doesn’t want to go back inside the house. She’s has a taste of leash-free night activity and she wants more. She picks up her Frisbee from the lawn and pokes me in the shin with it.

“No,” I tell her firmly. “I’m too tired.”

But as I let myself back into the house, I realize I’m not tired – not even a little bit. Exhausted – yes. Wiped out – absolutely. But sleep-wise, I’m wide awake. No drowsiness, no heavy eyes, no headache. I check my phone. It’s almost five in the morning. So it’s not just that I can’t sleep; I don’t need to sleep.

I jump in the shower, get back in pajamas, and crawl into bed. Not for sleeping, obviously. I hear Dad’s key in the lock. He usually gets home from his night shift around now and he always peeks in my door to make sure all’s well with me.

So I fake it and my father sees what he expects to see – a sleeping kid. Baldie, the traitor, is bouncing off the walls by now, hoping for a new playmate now that I’m out of commission.

“Shhh!” Dad admonishes. “Don’t wake Mickey. He needs his sleep.”

I almost choke on that one, but I disguise it with a fake snore.

Eventually, it’s time to “wake up” and get ready for school. I eat two giant bowls of cereal for breakfast. Running gives a guy an appetite.

Mom raises both eyebrows. “Nobody likes corn flakes that much!”

I grin sheepishly. “Maybe I’m going through a growth spurt.”

I spend so much time stuffing my face that I almost miss the bus. I have to run to catch it, nearly tripping over Baldie who is sacked out by the front door. She opens one eye and casts me a baleful look as if to ask: Just what is the difference between bedtime and playtime in this house?

God bless America, I wish I knew.

I sprint up the block and sneak in through the doors of the bus as they’re folding shut. I scramble up the steps just in time to meet the spitball that bounces off the center of my forehead.

“Hey, Mouse!”

Carlo – he’s as accurate with his projectiles as he is with his bone-crushing tackles. Plus his spitballs are always extra-juicy. Ugh.

I experience a brief, wild impulse to get right in Carlo’s face and make him pay for treating me like a punching bag. I’ve never done anything like that before. Maybe I’m thinking of my run last night. If I can make myself do that, who knows what else I might be capable of?

The feeling passes and I take the first open seat. Good thing, too. Carlo probably would have killed me.

Besides, he’s right. I’m a mouse.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

SKYE BERENGER

 

Pages read this week: 842

Art projects: 7

Knitting: 1.3 sweaters, 0.5 scarves

Academic average: 98.4%

 

“… and our student of the month for September is – drumroll, please….”

Oh, how I hate when she does that. Everybody raps with their fingers on the seatback in front of them until the auditorium reverberates with machine gun thumping. Mostly, it gives Jeremy Bismarck the chance to do his drumming on the back of my neck instead of the chair. One of these assemblies, I’m going to turn around and bite his head off, but I can’t do that now. For reasons that are about to become obvious, this would be a terrible time for me to get in trouble.

“Skye Berenger,” the head of school announces. “Congratulations, Skye!”

I stand up, mostly to get out of range of Jeremy’s drumming fingers. As I make my way to the stage to collect my certificate, I can’t help noticing that the many eyes on me are kind of resentful – a mismatch for the polite applause I’m receiving. This is the Oxlade School, where everybody is above average. That’s not even a joke. They actually tell us that. You have to do interviews and pass tests just to get in. It’s the most competitive school in Shagbark. That’s why most of the looks I’m getting are pretty sour. It has less to do with the fact that I’m student of the month than the counter-fact that they aren’t.

“In addition to maintaining a near-perfect grade-point average,” Dr. Stern goes on, “Skye has begun studying Latin and Greek. And I’m sure you’ve seen her beautiful painting displayed in the main lobby outside the office…”

There’s more. The head of school goes on about the classics I’ve tackled with my speed-reading skills and my high seeding in the county Math Olympics. The atmosphere in the auditorium goes from merely hostile to medium toxic. I can’t even blame them. As I listen to the long list of my talents, I’m starting to hate me too. Their parents are paying just as much tuition as mine. So how come I’m grabbing all the glory? How did this showoff come out of nowhere and steal everybody’s thunder?

The fact is I have an advantage, but nobody knows about that.

Onstage, Dr. Stern hands me my certificate. By this time, the applause has died down to crickets, so it’s pretty awkward. Luckily, I don’t have to make an acceptance speech.

“That concludes our assembly,” the head of school announces. “First period begins in four minutes. Have a Oxlade day.”

Finally things are looking up. Maybe now I can melt into the crowd leaving the auditorium and stop being glared at.

Alas – not going to happen. Cynthia Aranoff catches up to me in the hall.

“Congratulations, Skye! I’m so proud of you!”

Since when is Cynthia proud of me? Who does she think she is – my mother? We’re not even friends, really.

“Thanks,” I mumble.

“Did Dr. Stern say you’re a speed reader? How’d you learn that?”

“I just Googled it,” I reply. “There are these websites –”

Cynthia doesn’t wait for me to finish my explanation. “And you’re studying Latin?”

“In my spare time,” I admit.

I know exactly what’s eating Cynthia. Last year, she was student of the month for like seven of the nine months of sixth grade. She doesn’t give a hoot about speed-reading or Latin. She just wants me to go away so she can be number one again.

We’ve reached the main lobby. I try to plow forward with everybody else, but Cynthia holds onto my arm and stops me in front of the painting Dr. Stern was just talking about. It’s a crowd scene of kids pouring off a yellow school bus. I’m actually really proud of it – at least I was before Dr. Stern singled me out and made it something to be embarrassed about.

“It’s really good, Skye.” The more praise Cynthia heaps on me, the redder her complexion becomes. Right now, she reminds me of an overripe tomato. “There’s so much detail. How long did it take for you to paint all this?”

I want to tell her to mind her own business, because her line of questioning is homing in on the heart of the matter. The truth is, it took a heck of long time to paint all that detail. I can’t remember exactly how many hours, but that’s beside the point. The real issue is why I have so many extra hours to devote to painting, and studying ancient languages, and teaching myself to speed-read.

Something very strange has happened to me – something I can’t explain. I’ve stopped sleeping. I don’t mean I stay up later or I sleep less than I used to. I mean I don’t sleep at all. What’s more, I don’t get tired because of it, which must mean I just don’t need to sleep anymore.

It was scary at first to toss and turn for whole nights on end. Mom told me not to worry about it. When you make the transition from little kid to my age, your body needs less rest, and some people experience sleep problems while they’re adjusting. Well, it’s been weeks now and I’m still adjusting. And it isn’t less sleep. It’s none at all.

But once you get over how nuts it is, not sleeping is kind of awesome. I’ve always been a serious student. What held me back was the fact that there was never enough time to do all the things I wanted to do. But now I have that time and I’m making the best of it – in the middle of the night, when everybody else is asleep. I can take as long as I want on my homework. No pressure. Thanks to speed-reading, I blow through a 300-page book in an hour and a half and still have time left over to work on painting or whatever I want.

I stopped complaining to Mom about my sleep problems. She probably thinks everything got better when in reality, everything got worse – which is better for me. I wouldn’t go back to my old life for anything. What a waste of time spending more than a third of your life lying there like a rock doing nothing.

When I talk to friends, the complaint is always the same. Between piano lessons and karate class and homework and Sunday school and bar mitzvah lessons, they’re pleasing the world but not themselves. Every single kid has this problem – every kid except me. When it comes to doing what you want to do, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Well, actually, there are enough hours – more than enough – when you don’t squander them sleeping.

It’s like I have two different lives. The first is the one every other kids gets, where I wake up, go to school, spend time with my mom. But when she turns in for the night, my second life begins. And it’s all mine, to share with no one.

Weird? Maybe. Unnerving? Definitely. I have no scientific explanation for why it’s happening to me. But just because I can’t explain it doesn’t make it bad.

Back in prehistoric times, all creatures lived in the ocean until the very first one grew legs and lungs and crawled out onto the beach and started breathing. That must have been pretty freaky for him, but he did it anyway. He was an advanced animal leading the way to life on land. So how do I know I’m not the same kind of thing – leading the way to a human race that doesn’t need sleep anymore?

“Skye?” Cynthia persists.

We’re still standing in front of the painting and I never gave Cynthia an answer.

“Sorry,” I laugh. “I guess I didn’t get enough sleep last night.” That’s a little sleepless humor. I got exactly the right amount of sleep last night: None. “The painting didn’t take that long,” I add answering her question at last. “Just a few days.” And nights.

Cynthia seems dissatisfied but I can’t help that. The only reply that would have made her happy would have been that I paid Picasso to do the picture for me. After all, how could I unseat her as student of the month without cheating? Maybe I did cheat in a way. For sure, I used hours that Cynthia doesn’t have access to. But there’s nothing I can do about that. I didn’t ask for this to happen to me and not to her.

At my locker, I stash my certificate and grab my books for period one. A few doors down from mine, Cyrus Teitelbaum unzips his backpack. To my surprise, a bright light shines out of the bag, illuminating the contents of the pack and the locker. Efficiently, he transfers books and papers between the locker and bag and starts down the hall for his first class.

I rush to catch up with him. “I love your backpack. Where can I get one that lights up like that?”

“You can’t. It’s one of a kind.”

“So how did you get it?” I persist.

“I invented it,” he explains. “I was always digging around trying to find stuff, so I mounted an LED light in there. The zipper activates it.”

“You’re an inventor!”

He looks pleased. “I guess I am. I like to mess around with stuff in my basement. I’ve got a workshop down there. Hey, congrats on student of the month.”

I laugh without humor. “Oh, sure. When I was up on stage, the whole school looked at me like they wanted me to burst into flame.”

Cyrus shrugs. “I didn’t. I’s no skin off my nose if somebody else does well.”

I take a closer look at him. He’s not kidding. He’s just happy to tinker in his basement, installing LED lights in his book bag.

I’ve got all night every night to do whatever I want, but it would never occur to me to spend that time creating something useful.

Maybe Cyrus should be student of the month, not me.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

LEVI MACKENZIE

 

Rio from Hawaii has a post that’s been liked more than seventeen thousand times. It’s a video clip of the Incredible Hulk from the Marvel movies, his mouth open in shock, his eyes widening in horror until his head explodes on his muscular green shoulders. The caption is: Me suddenly remembering school starts again next week.

It’s Rio’s second most popular post. But number one – a baby spitting up mashed bananas all over a guy in a tuxedo – doesn’t really count. People love stuff like that on social media. Stick in something cute and mix it with something gross and you can get twenty thousand likes, easy.

Dog Biscuits usually gets online a couple of hours after Rio. Posting from his home in Osaka, Japan, Biscuits has a big following, mostly of Anime fans. His thing is to take pictures of celebrities and Photoshop gigantic cartoon eyes onto them. He does everybody – rock stars, actors, rappers, sports heroes, presidents, prime ministers, and even kings. My favorite is the one of LeBron James in full flight, slamming a basketball while looking into the camera with tear-filled googly orbs.

Gripester, based in Perth, Australia, is a born crab who uses social media to do his complaining to the whole world. His profile picture is a rotten apple with an angry worm sticking out of it. Gripester posts about everything, his point being that it all bugs him. You name it, he’s either enraged, disappointed, repulsed, heartbroken, and just generally ticked off about it. He can complain about anything. He has seventeen posts about an old Star Trek episode from sixty years ago: Okay, so the transporter’s broken. What about the shuttlecraft? What – it’s got a flat tire or something? As a fan, I’m personally offended that the writers aren’t paying attention to their own world-building!

When Gripester complains, he almost always starts with “As a fan,” which is pretty funny, considering the guy hates everything so he isn’t a fan of anything.

Then there’s Tomato Red. He lives in London, England, so I guess it’s pronounced Tom-ah-to. He only posts about things that are at least partly red, like fire trucks, apples, Prince Harry, scarlet fever, the Canadian Flag, Clifford the Big Red Dog, sunburn – you get the picture. He’s against red cabbage because it’s actually purple. He’s doesn’t like Band-Aids because they cover up bleeding. It seems limiting but he always finds something to write about. He chose red because he supposedly has red hair, but in the profile picture, it’s bright green. You might be colorblind, reads the description. It drives some people bananas, but others seem to like it. His followers post photos of their own red stuff in reply – Santa hats, strawberries, cars, and some really impressive zits.

Rio from Hawaii, Dog Biscuits, Gripester, and Tomato Red may be pretty different, but they have something important in common. They’re all me.

I know that sounds bad – like I’m one of these guys who gets his jollies creating fake identities on the internet. But there’s a reason for it. Honest.

When I stopped sleeping, I needed something to do for another nine or ten hours a night. No problem there. I love social media. It’s such a great way to express yourself. And it’s so much easier than dealing with people in real life. I’m in seventh grade, so for me, real life means middle school. Sure, you can express yourself in middle school – but only if you wear the same clothes as everyone else, listen to the same music, watch the same shows, root for the same teams, etc. I’m no clone; I like to be myself – which I know sounds weird because online, I’m all these other people.

But on social media everything is time-stamped. So if anybody follows my posts, it won’t be too hard for them to come to the conclusion that I’m staying up all night. Even if I use an alias, there’s still the chance that someone might read my posts and figure out it’s me. Sooner or later, it would get back to my parents, who definitely wouldn’t like the idea that I’m not sleeping anymore. And even though I have no choice about the no-sleeping part, I really don’t want to have to try explaining it to them. I can’t even explain it to myself.

That’s where my online identities come in. I usually send out my first post around midnight. That’s late for me, but it’s right around dinner in Honolulu, where Rio from Hawaii lives. Dog Biscuits becomes active a couple of hours later, just about noon in Japan. By the time Gripester starts airing his grievances, it’s early afternoon in Perth. And after a long night of posting, I don’t get to Tomato Red until it’s almost dawn here in Shagbark. But that’s okay, because in London, where he’s supposed to be, it’s five hours later.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a social media star with millions of followers or anything like that. But because I’ve got all night every night to fill, I can generate a lot of traffic. Yesterday, Rio sent out fourteen posts, Biscuits eleven, Gripester twenty-three – there’s always a lot to complain about – and Tomato nineteen. You’d be amazed how much red stuff there is in the world.

By the way, my hair is dark brown, not red, but I use a picture of Carrot-Top for Tomato Red’s profile. I made the hair bright green using an Instagram filter. It’s a statement. That’s the beauty of social media. You can make a statement even if you don’t know what that statement is supposed to mean.

My favorite part is when the replies start rolling in. That’s when I see which of my posts is generating the most heat. People get really mad at Gripester. Those posts about Star Trek got over a thousand replies – dead serious stuff about the challenges of captaining a starship in outer space. So Gripester (me) responded that all these people had to get a life instead of being obsessed about a TV show from way back before they were born. And they replied that Gripester was the obsessed one because he spent all his time on social media. It was almost a war. Definitely one of my better nights.

A lot of my posts are funny, or outrageous, or designed to mess with people, but not all of them. Like now: I have a video I shot at the Shagbark Middle School talent show on Friday. It’s this girl Thea Davidson singing an opera song. I think she’s really good, but I have to edit out a few parts where Carlo Myles and some of the other football players are hooting while she’s trying to sing. Meatheads.

Next I run it through this AI program, which is where I get the Anime eyes for my Dog Biscuits posts. I doubt Thea will ever see it. But even if she does, she won’t know it’s me. Biscuits is supposed to be some random guy in Japan. Where did he get hold of a clip from a talent show in Shagbark, USA? That’s for me to know and her to find out. It’s the beauty of the internet. Stuff gets around. Who knows how things go viral?

I hit a key and a spinning wheel tells me Thea’s video is uploading. I wonder if I’m making her famous. Maybe – a little bit. In Japan, anyway. I check the clock on my nightstand. It’s three a.m., which makes it four in the afternoon in Osaka. I picture kids coming home from school and watching Thea sing on their phones and computers. It makes me feel powerful, like I can reach people, make an impression on them, from thousands of miles away.

I wonder if they’ll think Thea’s in Italy because she’s singing in Italian. There’s nothing in the clip to identify my school or my town, but there’s one moment I couldn’t edit out where you can hear a little of Carlo’s whoop. It sounds like something between a police siren and a constipated owl, but there’s no chance it could be used to identify Shagbark. Morons like Carlo are a global phenomenon.

By 3:05, east coast time, Thea’s video gets its first like.

I can’t help smiling.