I can't sleep again. The childhood bed is too short for my legs, and the walls are too thin.
I pad to the attic and pull down the ladder. Eighteen rungs. I count them every time, like a prayer.
The latch is loose. It's been loose since I was twelve, and nobody ever fixed it. So I go up to the roof.
I sit on the shingles, legs dangling over the edge. The neighborhood floods every spring, and you can see the waterlines on the trees like bath rings.
Down in my room, the rain-warped paperback sits on the windowsill. A friend gave it to me years ago. We used to fish every Saturday until his boat got claimed by a storm surge.
He doesn't fish now. Says he lost the feel for it. I think he just lost the place where it made sense.
Up here, I'm nobody. Not a substitute teacher, not the one who moved back home after the lease ran out. Just a shape against the night sky.
The moon is almost full. I stay until my fingers go numb, then climb back down the eighteen rungs, one by one.
Tomorrow I'll dry the paperback in the sun. But tonight, I let it stay damp. It's a kind of proof. Proof that things happen here.