The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson

earlier.”
    â€œYeah, what the fuck?”
    â€œIt’s another thing with … the thing.” For somebody who usuallythrows around so many words, when Eric talks about his “thing” he gets extremely vague. “Every couple of weeks, I’ll have a twenty-four hour-period where … I don’t know. Essentially it’s miserable. I start hallucinating. These extremely vivid hallucinations. I get headaches. I sort of have to lock myself away and there’s nothing to do until it passes.”
    You can’t sleep it off, I almost say but don’t. “Jesus, dude. You never told me about this.”
    â€œYes, I don’t know, I guess … I know it’s troublesome. I’ve never seen myself from the outside, I guess. Was it bad?”
    â€œYou looked really bad.”
    â€œJeez, I’m sorry, I guess I should’ve warned you about it before …”
    â€œHow does your mom not know? Or your dad?”
    â€œI just shut myself in my room. I just shut myself in my room and they don’t really bother me.”
    I think about the way I spent all day, and think that I guess it’s not that implausible for a teenage boy to spend the whole day in his room, with nobody bothering him and no reason for them to, especially on a weekend.
    Monday at lunch I’m Eric, which means I’m the one who’s spent all weekend obsessing over something, and I’m the one with diagrams and charts and pitches and ideas. Well, I don’t really have diagrams or charts or anything written down, even. But I have been thinking about this one thing a lot and I can’t wait to talk about it.
    â€œSo this thing this weekend,” I say.
    At first I was mad at Eric for not telling me about these fits when he told me about his not-sleeping thing. And I’m mad at him for not letting us talk about or even name his “thing,” beyond it being just a “thing.” Remaining nameless makes it harder to talk about, which is probably what he wants. But either way, it is a part of his thing. It makes it more real and it means that whatever wecall it, or don’t call it, it might go beyond just Eric lacking the ability to sleep. And of course it does, and I always sort of knew it did, but we can’t really explore it unless he lets us, and he hasn’t.
    â€œI have a theory about it,” I say. “When you sleep, your body works out shit in your subconscious. That’s what dreams are. But you don’t sleep so you never have a chance to work any of that stuff out. So it just builds up and builds up and it comes out when you’re awake. Which is always. But in these, like, superconcentrated bursts.”
    A second goes by. I’m waiting for Eric to say it’s genius. Instead he says, “Yeah, I know.”
    â€œYou know? Know what?”
    â€œI know what they are. I’ve had them my whole life.”
    â€œWell first of all, you don’t know what they are, you don’t know anything about this or where it comes from or what causes it, you said so. So you don’t ‘know’ it any more than I do, and I’ve just … like I said, it’s a theory. And the other thing is, you pretend like you don’t think about this, your secret, but that’s bullshit, you think about everything, you obsess over details, and this has to be the biggest most interesting thing in your life, and you’re telling me you don’t think about it? Of course you think about it. Like, you already ‘know’ why you’ve had these hallucinations, you’ve thought about it, so quit acting like …”
    â€œActing like what?” Eric says.
    â€œLike this isn’t important. Or I guess stop acting like it isn’t amazing. Just fucking admit to the fact that you’re special.”
    â€œI told you,” Eric says, “people can’t find out because …”
    â€œI know!” I