Eventually, I was calm enough to go back inside. It had been an hour, and I didn’t feel anything, so maybe Daniel was right. Maybe I freaked out for no reason. We browsed the house’s time-capsule video selection and picked out some weird fantasy film calledLabyrinth.“It’s got Jim Henson puppets and a kidnapping and David Bowie playing the Goblin King,” Daniel informed me excitedly, showing me the back of the videotape sleeve.
“It sounds insane.”
“It is. You will love it.”
We put it in and sat on the couch together. Then he scooted me around and lay back against me, kicking his socked feet up on the armrest. Which felt... charmingly intimate.
Slowly, like a light dimming, my limbs began to loosen. He’d said that I’d relax eventually, but I wondered if it had more to do with his pleasant weight on me and the scent of his hair falling over his shoulder and less to do with the candy. Was I feeling something? Maybe. I was less panicky about it. I tried to enjoy it and concentrated on the TV screen. What was this movie even about? Some chick running around inside a goblin maze trying to save her baby brother? But suddenly there was David Bowie in a crazy wig, looking like a mad vampire, and then a little later... wow. What was I seeing?
“Those tights are pornographic,” I said.
Daniel laughed. “It’s a famously epic film bulge.”
“That’s not a bulge. It’s a sentient entity.”
A sentient entity? Oh my God, I think I’m high.
“Ha-ha!” I laughed so loud, it made Daniel jump.
And then the worst possible thing happened: my muscles stopped working.
I was about to have a cataplexy episode.
No, no, no! Not now!
The blood left my arms. Then neck, then face. And I was absolutely frozen. I could still hear. I was conscious. It probably wouldn’t last long—a few seconds. A minute at most. But I couldn’t tell Daniel this because I couldn’t talk. My jaw had fallen open, which was utterly embarrassing, and my face was twitching.
And Daniel was freaking out, shouting my name, shaking me.
I zoned out for a moment, and then—all at once—my muscles suddenly thawed. I closed my mouth and moved my arms to stop him from shaking me.
“I’m okay, I’m okay!” I told him.
“Oh my God,” he said, anxious. “I thought you passed out. Your entire body just drooped all at once.”
“It’s happened before a couple of times, usually when I laugh really hard.”
“What?”he said, mildly hysterical.
“Stop. It’s fine,” I said, still trying to shake off the tingling feeling. “My grandpa calls it going boneless, because it feels like your bones disappear. It feels a little like when you’re on an elevator and there’s a strange moment when you can’t tell if you’re moving or if the walls are moving.”
He stared at me, blinking. Completely dumbfounded.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “One time it happened to me when I was sitting in Madison Diner, and I laughed really hard, and the next thing I knew, people were picking me up off the floor. I slid right out of my seat,” I said, whistling. “I could hear everything they were saying, because they were talking about calling an ambulance. It never lasts long.”
“Birdie?” he said carefully. “Do you have... narcolepsy?”
“Wha-a-at?” I said, sounding like some kind of stoner in a bad teen movie.
“Oh my God, you do!”
“Maybe? Not officially. I don’t like doctors, so I’ve never been checked.”
“Jesus! It all makes sense now. That’s why you’re sleepy all the time. Why you fell asleep in the hotel lobby before we went to Kerry Park.”
“It’s possible I may have inherited a few pesky sleepy genes.”
“Hello! That’s called narcolepsy!”
