St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell Read Free Book Online Page B

up elbowing her in the nose.
    “Are you ready?”
    “Ready.”
    What can you do but take a girl at her word? But I hope she really is ready. Being unconscious with somebody, that’s a big deal.
    I take a deep breath, pull on the rip cord, and plunge the clearing into darkness.
    The Insomnia Balloon is in a clearing at the shallow end of the woods. You may have been there; it was public island property until Zorba started the camp a few years back.
    The Insomnia Balloon isn’t an airship of the literal, sky-flying variety. Zorba says it’s for mental flights. The “balloon” part is actually an enormous lightbulb, suspended over a wicker basket by copper wires. It’s okay to be awake here, even after Lights Out. Sometimes, Zorba tells us, as a precursor to sleep, you need to let your thoughts dry out beneath the electric light. Eventually dream helium begins to fill your lungs. When you’re ready to soar inward, you pull the rip cord and turn the giant lightbulb off.
    “How many sleep-disordered campers does it take to change a lightbulb?” Zorba likes to joke, and the punch line is, all of us. Every six months a three-hundred-pound replacement bulb arrives from Norway. The Insomnia Balloon buzzes around the clock, its filaments glowing in a giant glass vacuum bulb. It turns the surrounding forest into an undulant sea of pines. They seem to grow larger when we turn the balloon off, their blue shadows billowing out beneath the low stars. A froth of gully grass pokes through the holes in the wire basket. Emma’s blue eye is half open, a quarter of an inch from mine. She is staring at an ant crawling along one moon-limned strand of grass. She won’t look at me.
    “Elijah, I can’t.”
    “Do you not trust me? If it’s that you don’t trust me, just say so.”
    “That’s not it! I just…” She bites her lip. “I shouldn’t have to explain it, you know, I just can’t….”
    “Well, not with
that
attitude, you can’t.” My heartbeat thumps in my chest. Not exactly the pace I want to set if I’m going to deliver the eight hours of sleep I’ve been promising her. After all that big talk, I’m afraid my sleep latency period is going to be eye-blink brief. Slow down, and lengthen, I coach myself, trying to match my breath to hers. Slow down—
    “Look, Emma, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, okay? Just relax—” And lengthen.
    This night is the culmination of weeks of practice. Oglivy has been tutoring me in smooth rock-a-bye technique. I hum a lullaby into her ear, one that Ogli says is guaranteed to make the ladies go limp. She throws her head back in an exaggerated, feline yawn, which I take to be a good sign. I hum louder.
    “Are you sleeping?”
    “Oh!” she breathes. “Yes!” She makes some theatrical breathing noises that I guess must be Emma’s approximations of what a deeply sleeping girl would sound like, but actually make her sound like her trachea is obstructed by a golf ball. I try humming a little more softly.
    And then, just when she’s started mumbling in that softly demented voice that precedes sleep, Oglivy comes crashing out of the woods, staggering into trees and generally destroying the ambience. Emma bolts upright. “Who’s there?” She wriggles away from me and tugs the balloon back on. The light startles her sleep-blurred face back into sociable lines. Damn. All my progress, erased.
    “Oh, crap, sorry, guys.” Ogli whistles. “I didn’t, uh, mean to wake you….” He gives me a big, shit-eating grin.
    “Ogli!” Emma looks relieved to see him. She claps a hand over her mouth, but not before she lets out a coy yawn in Ogli’s direction. I wish she’d save that stuff for me.
    “Annie’s giving her Inspiration Assembly.” He coughs, averting his gaze with a showy gallantry while Emma rubs her eyelids back to their sentient position. “I thought we could all walk over together. Not that I care, but we’re gonna be late, Elijah.”
    “We’ll be there in a