I CAN'T SLEEP. THE NIGHT is wide and moonless and splinters of rain shatter the sky, creeping through the windows in unseen cracks and spilling onto the carpeted floor in swathes of darkness. Stars speckle the sky like a million tiny dots; like someone spilled salt over a black tablecloth. I lie awake beneath it, covers pulled up to my chin, my eyes forgetting to shut after every passing moment.
I don't think I'd mind never sleeping again. In sleep, the deadened activity of your brain brings up the unconscious traumas your conscious mind fights to push away in every waking moments. Full colour; high definition. A stroke of paralysis, so fear leadens my veins and I become vulnerable to any onslaught of imagery my brain can conjure for me in the dead of night.
I shiver, and bury myself deeper in the covers. Nothing seems to hide me from the silence. It penetrates every surface and embeds itself in my brain. Maybe I can't escape it.
Maybe no one can.
I disentangle myself from the covers. The biting chill is no better, but I hold onto it regardless, attempting to rub the warmth back into my arms.
Rain smatters against fogged up windows, ghosts of vapours of clouds. I trail my finger against the diamonds of droplets; they catch the moonlight, silver prisms swallowed by darkness.
When I creep out into the hallway, a sliver of light escapes from beneath Ebony's closed door: a dim, sickly yellow that is vulnerable in the face of the dominating presence of shadow. Knives creep under my skin as I rap my knuckles against the door, taking his unintelligible murmur as consent before slipping inside and letting the door click shut behind me.
His book snaps shut as he tilts his face up to regard me, lightning strokes across his copper eyes painted in slashes of light. He's reading Contes Jumeaux, a book of children's stories. Despite our one-year age difference, my mother used to read from that book to us when we were children, the two of us tucked up in her bed while our Papa was at work solving cases, clamouring for Les Trois Petits Cochons. To this day, the age-old words of that story are the only French Ebony and I know. After my father was presumed dead by the police when I was ten, my mother no longer cared to teach us.
Part of her disappeared with him, and mostly it's easier to forget his existence than remember.
"Ivory?" Ebony snaps his fingers in my face. "You look zoned out."
"Sorry," I say, pulling my legs up to my chest. I'm sat on the foot of the bed, back pressed against the solid wood of his endboard. "I was thinking about Papa," I add, then wince. The rule is unspoken, but in more ways than one, his name has become taboo in our household. "I also couldn't sleep."
Ebony nods with sympathy. "I figured as much."
"Yeah." I shrug a shoulder, releasing a sigh that expels into the air with a shudder. "It's just...I always knew Mum's reaction being that way was a possibility, but I was always just hopeful that it wouldn't be like that. I just hoped she'd understand, you know?" I face him with wide doe eyes, and a tight smile adorns his lips in response.
"It's not like I'm any better," he offers, and my shoulders sink.
"You stuck up for me when it mattered," I say, plucking at the hem of my pyjama top. "Means more than someone who can't see things my way. Bringing some random guy home, not even bothering to introduce him as her boyfriend...who even is he, anyway? What kind of guy goes around hugging people he hasn't ever met before?"
"He was like that with me," my brother says. "I think he's just one of those types. Treats everybody like an old friend,"
"Yeah," I drawl out dubiously. "I know."
I don't know, and I know Ebony knows that, but he chooses not to comment, raising his arms above his head.
He's tired, now. I'm the only thing keeping him awake. So, I feign a yawn, pretending to be snuffed out like a candle.
"I should go back to my room," I say, my voice thick from the facade of exhaustion. He nods, and in his eyes fluttering shut, I see the lines of tiredness running deep into his face; years of sleepless nights written in rhyme and mantra, painted like tar beneath his eyes. "Night, Eb."
"Night, Ry," he says, and I smile when I'm at the doorway.
The room is shrouded in darkness before I'm even able to allow the door to fall shut behind me.
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