Years ago, on lazy mornings in his dorm room, Wren would hear Arthur pacing around the room fully dressed, zipping and unzipping his backpack, aimlessly shuffling the contents inside as he got ready for the day’s classes. She wasn’t stupid. She knew it was all a performance, meant to make just enough noise to rouse Wren from her slumber. She would be tucked under the covers like a lump of mashed potatoes and he’d be eager to start the day; that was their natural state. But she would play along by poking a single squinting eyeball out of the bedding, as if she hadn’t been listening the whole time. And he’d come over and apologize: “Oh gosh, did I wake you? I’m sorry.”
She’d grumble and bury her head in the covers. And he’dsay, “Since you’re up, we’ve really got to get to class.” She’d pretend to ignore him, or that she’d fallen back asleep. And she’d wait until he got closer to check on her, and when he was close enough she’d reach out and grab for him like a monster, pulling him into the bed, trying to trap him under the covers. And he would try to escape, but not that hard.
She’d nuzzle and kiss him and say, “I wish we could stay in bed together all day.”
But that was then. When she was younger and had all the time in the world. Now the clock was ticking on her freedom, her life. And sitting around doing nothing with it was the absolute last thing she wanted to do.
But she had brought this on herself. She had wondered aloud why she couldn’t be satisfied just spending time with Arthur and Ferdie, and now that’s exactly what she was going to get, in the most highly concentrated version possible. Since it was her own karmic fault, she had to give it an honest effort. Arthur went face-to-face with a vampire ballerina for her. The least she could do was lie here and try to relax.
“Uh-oh,” Wren said.
“What’s wrong?” Arthur said, barely looking up from his book. They’d been lying there for an hour already, he absorbed in a book—The Happiest Baby on the Block—and she doomscrolling. It was like the social media algorithms knew what was happening to her. Through no fault of her own she was being bombarded with content from the crunchy moms, the child psychologists, the pediatricians. It was barely 10:00 a.m. and she’d already been accused of ruining her unborn child’slife in numerous ways. The sudden tingle in her bladder was a welcome excuse to get up and move around.
“I think I have to pee.”
“OK?”
“How does that work?” she asked.
Arthur blinked. “You usually start by sitting on the toilet.”
She slugged him playfully. “How can I pee if we’re supposed to stay in bed all day?”
Arthur laughed and doubled over, burying his face in the covers.
“I’m serious!” she said. If she was going to play, she was going to play by the rules.
“We’re allowed bathroom breaks, obviously,” he said, coming up for air.
“Come on, that’s weak. Where’s your commitment?”
“My commitment stops well short of a pee-soaked mattress. Just go!”
Wren scanned the room as if hoping an answer would appear.
“What if…” she started, a nugget of an idea forming in real time, “we can’t touch the floor?”
“Like Floor Is Lava.”
“Exactly.” She hadn’t had much of a childhood to speak of, but evenshehad played Floor Is Lava. She’d played with her brothers, when they all still lived together, and was known for her ability to balance on just about anything, including her now legendary tightrope walk along the length of an extension cord running through the living room. That one had earned her a spontaneous round of applause.
He threw up his hands. “If you want to go for it, I support you.”
“Good. Give me your pillow.”
“What—” He yelped as Wren yanked his pillow out from under him, causing him to bump his head on the headboard.
“Sorry,” she said. “All for the cause.”
“What are you doing?”
She dropped Arthur’s pillow on the floor, close to the bed. Then she took her own and tossed it a few feet farther. From there, it was a couple more feet to the edge of the bedroom carpet, the threshold where the scuffed hardwood began, and a few more feet from there to the bathroom door.
“Here goes nothing,” she said, taking a deep breath, taking the first step onto Arthur’s pillow.
“You are so extra.”
An extra-long lunge got her to the next pillow, where she stood and steadied herself. She turned around to grab the first pillow again, to build a stepping-stone bridge as she walked across it, but she had misjudged her first stride. It was too far. She wouldn’t be able to reach that first pillow again without stepping onto the carpet. Wren squatted down and reached as far as she could and nearly toppled over in the process.
