Chapter 6
I didn't knock that morning. I waited until her backpack was by the front door and her sneakers squeaked down the hall toward the kitchen before I slipped into her room.
The light from the hallway cut across her bed, unmade, the blanket twisted like she'd kicked it off all night. Her pillow had that shallow dent that never quite puffed back up. I sat on the edge and pressed my hand there. Still warm.
She'd always been a heavy sleeper. When she was little, I'd have to call her name three times to get her up for school. Now the dark circles under her eyes weren't just morning puffiness. I'd seen them for a week and told myself it was the winter light in our apartment, the gray mornings, maybe a cold coming on. Up close, in the quiet of her room with the door still cracked, I could see the fine red veins in her lower lids. She'd been awake.
I opened her closet to put away the sweater she'd left on the floor. That's where I saw them.
Behind her row of paperbacks, pushed against the wall, was a stack of white disposable paper cups. Not two or three. Ten, maybe twelve, nested together. The same white cups from the bathroom vanity. Clean, unused, but stored. Hidden. My hand hovered before I touched them. I lifted the stack. Light, cheap, a faint crinkle. She'd been taking them one at a time so I wouldn't notice the package in the kitchen getting low. I hadn't noticed. I set them back exactly as they'd been, the top cup a little crooked where she'd pulled one free.
In the bathroom, her timer sat on the vanity where I'd seen it that night, black dial facing up. Beside it, a fresh cup. I picked up the timer and turned it over. On the bottom, in her small, tight handwriting with a ballpoint pen, she'd made marks. Four straight lines, a fifth slashing through them, then again. Groups of five. Three full groups and two extra lines. Seventeen. I counted again. Seventeen nights she'd tracked.
I found the rest in the kitchen drawer where we kept takeout menus. A folded piece of loose-leaf paper, torn from her math notebook, the blue lines faded. She'd made a log. Dates down the left, times down the right in her careful numbers: 11:58, 12:03, 12:01, 11:59, 12:04. Every entry near midnight. No misses for the last two weeks. At the bottom, she'd written 12:00 and circled it hard enough the pen tore the paper a little.
My phone was on the counter where I'd left it charging. I unlocked it and scrolled back through my own nights without realizing I'd been keeping a record too.
I opened the screen time and the Do Not Disturb history. 12:02 AM Tuesday — screen lit. 11:57 PM Wednesday — I remembered waking to the soft click of the bathroom door and telling myself it was the pipes. 12:06 AM Thursday — I'd rolled over and checked the time, annoyed, and gone back to sleep. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Every night near twelve, a small interruption I'd explained away. The blue glow I'd held in the hallway wasn't just that one night. It was every night. She'd been in there, behind the white paneled door with the black handle, and I'd been half-awake on the other side of it, not putting it together because I didn't want to.
I heard her backpack zip in the living room and I folded the paper back the way it was and slid the drawer closed.
That afternoon after I picked her up, I watched her at the kitchen table. She did her homework with her head propped on her hand, and her eyelids kept fluttering. She'd write three words, stop, stare at the page, then force herself to keep going. When I asked if she slept okay, she said yeah and gave me that quick smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Did you finish the water in the bathroom cup?" I asked. I kept my voice light, the way I'd practiced.
She glanced up, just for a second. Her fingers tightened around her pencil.
"I used it," she said.
That was all. One short answer, a little evasion, but it was enough. She wasn't going to offer more unless I cornered her, and I didn't want to corner her in the kitchen with her math worksheet in front of her.
After she went to bed at nine, I stayed up. I sat on the couch with the hall light off and the apartment quiet except for the heat clicking on. My husband was working late, his spot on the couch empty. I didn't text him. This was not for him yet.
At 11:55 I carried my phone into the hallway in my socks. The bathroom door was closed again. I could see the thin line of light underneath. I didn't knock. I stood there the way I had that first night, listening to her breathe on the other side, listening to the faint tick of the black timer she'd set. I had my thumb over the screen so the blue glow wouldn't spill under the door.
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I was going to watch one full cycle. I wasn't going to open the door, I wasn't going to ask why, I wasn't going to fix it. I just wanted to see, start to finish, what she did between 11:59 and 12:04 and why she needed that cup and that timer to do it. To understand the toll it was taking without making it about my worry.
I leaned my back against the wall across from the white door and waited for midnight to come.
