i.
The first time he sees his grandfather, he sees the machine first. It's not so big but it's more interesting than an old person in a chair. It has a lot of knobs and buttons and things he knows instinctively he's not supposed to touch. His dad holds his hand just firmly enough that Nate knows he knows Nate knows. And maybe to hint he should be paying more attention to the old person, even though the old person does not seem to see him.

"Hi grandpa," he says, thin, stupid-sounding eagerness in the face of utter disinterest. But then, his grandfather lifts his hand, wordlessly weary. Maybe it's for Nate's dad. Maybe his grandfather just greets anybody who walks up to him this way. His dad talks to Grandfather like this is normal. He tells Grandfather about all sorts of things, and maybe it's Nate's personal bias, but he thinks Grandfather doesn't give a good goddamn, as Nate's mother says but has said he must not say. There is something so tired about Grandfather. It makes his eyes distant and cold. Or maybe, that's just how you look when you get to be that age, and you have to be hooked into a machine so your kidneys work properly.

Nate's dad has not let go of his hand. This is okay, although Nate is bored. They don't hold hands a lot, which is also okay because it makes times like these feel special — usually. Right now, it feels dutiful, and even a little insulting. He knows better than to mess with the kidney machine or run around and bother the other old people. He's almost seven. This is one of the longest afternoons of his life. A stuffy room of dying people, full of the noise of keeping their organs working, the drone of the talk of their boring lives, grandfather's strange disapproval.


ii.
What Nate has found himself unable to explain to anyone, especially not his mom, is that the nightmares do not end when he wakes up. They continue, crawling from any space immediately out of sight, somehow spilling out from beneath his tightly clenched eyelids with the ceaseless regularity of tears. Unlike tears, they have their own mind; they talk to him, not as loudly as they did before because now they know he'll scream and scream even though if you'd told him, before, that these things would be frightening, he'd have scoffed and probably kicked you in the shin for good measure. He's seen worse in movies, hasn't he? He and Jamie would dare each other, stay up late. Monsters which are really monsters, monsters which are differently scary because they're people, guts and severed limbs and the frozen feeling the uncertain dark gives you, he knows those. This is not that.

This is the sound of wasps in the walls, which are also many small voices, which are the same voice, which is trying to be his father's voice but is not. Dad died. It was an accident. They didn't show his face. Nate had not seen his face for over a week before he had died in the hospital. That's why the wasps think they can trick him.

It is also things that can't move, moving. Not flying across the room like Poltergeist, but little squirms, like Jonathan when he's just waking up or a worm half-crushed by a tire or a dog with the skin come off — which he has never seen, not in person, not in a movie, he could not say where he has seen it, but the knowledge is with him, somehow. It is that too. A robe hanging on a hook does not move like a salted leech. A knife on the table does not nudge invitingly at his hand. It isn't happening. It is a nightmare.

The nightmares retreat without regularity. Their absence is no relief. It only makes him more unprepared for their return. In the movies, there are violins. He's always imagined a whole section bowing like mad at a stabby gesture from the conductor. It made him laugh. Now there are no violins but that stab reaches a dark wet place beneath his heart. When the nightmares come, when his eyes are open.


iii.
The secret of their relationship success, unbeknownst to anybody including her, is that he would let her choke him if she wanted. This is not something he thinks about often.

What he usually thinks about: what kind of sandwich he would like to make her. What kind of dinner he could put together so she doesn't have to stop studying, because she will be a brilliant doctor, because she works and studies with a single-minded intensity that he admires. It is not only beautiful. It is safe.

She is taller than him, more athletic. She's smarter, obviously, and more sexually aggressive, and doesn't need him in any way and will probably dump him in a few months once his domestic devotions grow boring. This is the first girlfriend he's ever had. This is the first sex he's ever had. Because for the first time in years, he has silenced his grandfather — hopefully for good — and the shame, the fear, the inability to be sure of reality, is almost all gone. He would let her do anything. On some level she must know it, and that's probably the only thing that makes him interesting.

Fortunately, she is always a little too busy to figure it out for real.


iv.
Everything is moving, even when it seems to be perfectly still. The earth rotates, it revolves, and it and everything are made of atoms which are mostly empty and also move. Nothing is truly solid. Nothing is truly there. If you could perceive years, decades, and centuries like seconds, you would see it, too. That you're locked down to a limited human perspective is an illusion as well. All you need to do is step out.

But grandpa, I can't step out of me. I am me. I'll turn inside out.

You've never tried.

I'm afraid.

I'm with you.

That's why I'm afraid.

I can make you do it.

I'm not doing it. I won't.

We'll see.


v.
Late at night, something wakes him. He is ten again, inured to the sound of Jonathan's wheezy breathing in the dark. It was another sound. Their room is closest to the family room and kitchen. He always can tell when someone is up.

Across the carpet, silent, open the door just a crack, and there's mostly darkness out there still. Nate listens a few seconds longer. What is the noise the TV makes when it's on mute? He doesn't know how to describe it. Maybe it's the sound of electricity, the sound of the light moving behind the glass. The TV is on and he knows exactly how and where to move to get a look at who's watching.

Houses at night have a heavier silence. You only have to be careful not to displace it and it'll do all the work for you. Nate makes his way down the hallway, and careful, slow, looks into the family room.

His dad sits in the armchair, blank-faced, unseeing, the light moving jagged and frantic over the front of his body. He sits with his knees splayed, both arms limp along the rests, hands gripping nothing. All the features which to Nate mark him as dad seem to have been carefully excised, as if people as well as houses follow different rules at night. His father has soft curly hair that his mother loves to touch and that all three Harris children have, as babies, gleefully pulled; it is barely visible in the play of shadows, color leeched, lying lank. His father is tall and active. His face is kind, his expressions playful. Not now. Nate has seen his father asleep, thoughtful, resting. This is not those.

But even he is different at night, perhaps. At night you have more patience. You can wait and watch things you could not in the day, not only because they would never happen in the day. Nate at night has turned into a silent creature, a rabbit like the one belonging to Jamie's sister, who is indifferent to both petting and rough handling. He does not know how much time passes. Neither he nor his dad change their night's nature. Eventually, though, with no discernible shift of expression or gaze, Nate's dad says, "Go to bed." And he goes.


vi.
The therapist says, there are side effects.

What kind? He asks, neutral. Hoping.

A lot of people report a decreased sex drive.

Nate manages a philosophical shrug. If you asked me to choose...

Well, you may change your mind once you're on it. In any case, if anything really bad happens — headaches, dizziness — you should stop taking it immediately and call me.

Okay, he says, watching her watching him and then, when she looks down to start writing, knowing his relief was not obvious.


vii.
His birthday is next week and he can't concentrate on anything. Grandfather likes to give him 'presents'. He doesn't do it every year. Anything that predictable isn't fun. And there were a few years, of course, where he was unable to act. Nate tries not to think bitterly of those years, or of the birthday the year Grandfather had returned. These things are in the past and cannot be changed. And he had been very thorough in assuring himself that nobody was hurt or killed.

Possibly, it is like an alcoholic steeling themselves for St. Patrick's Day. Possibly, that analogy is insulting to alcoholics. Probably, the analogy isn't helpful to him either. It's just something he keeps turning over and over in his mind, unable to stop thinking or worrying. Trying to be ready. Two for flinching.

Jonathan's birthday was last month. Nate sent him a present without a card. Jonathan has a lot of friends. He won't know it was from Nate, not for sure. Anyone can read an Amazon wish list. He hopes Jonathan will not call. Surely, by now, Jonathan is no longer hurt by the unexplained distance, the aggressive disinterest in his life, the lack of acknowledgment on holidays. Jonathan has a lot of friends. They can be his brothers. Nate has never done anything for him. This lack of action is something he hopes to continue indefinitely.

(Even now, he can feel his grandfather smiling.)