It was one of those moans, one of the desperate, forsaken kinds that shakes the walls and disturbs the dust balls beneath the couch. One of those long, drawn out waiting-for-the-lightning-strike moans that really signals nothing but the coming of a really well-planned whine.

And it came from Box.

"Nice John Merrick impression." Jack peeked over the edge of his League of Extraordinary Gentleman comic just long enough to raise an eyebrow at the sounds.

"Uh-huh," Box said, "keep reading. Pretend you understand all of those literary references. It's cute."

"Why don't you go to bed, you dumbass."

"Okay, did you miss the part about the insomnia? I know this reading-while-thinking thing can take a lot out of you, but…"

"Here's an idea," I said, shaking a small white canister.

They both looked over at me as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I'd been crashing in the spare room while mine was being painted, except sleeping in a mess of drop cloths and semi-toxic fumes had to be better than listening to these two argue at 3 a.m.. "Take this." I tossed the bottle of valerian root to Box, who ducked, squealed, and watched the bottle as it hit the floor and rolled under the couch, with all the wide-eyed wonder of a small child and his first balloon.

"Aw, Pea, that stuff smells like…"

"Don't say it," I warned.

He pouted. "Well, it does."

"Take it anyway," I said, before I turned on my heel and went back into my room. I figured the door slam would be a pretty strong hint. As usual, it wasn't.

But luckily, I didn't suffer from insomnia.

"She's trying to poison me," Box said, as he reached beneath the couch for the herbs.

"Pea wouldn't poison you. Tables with two legs tend to fall over."

Box cocked an eyebrow, obviously confused. "Thanks Captain Metaphor, have you smelled valerian root? It's like the end of the world in caplet form."

Jack turned the page. "Right."

"Don't make me make you smell this."

"No wonder you can't sleep." Jack closed the comic book. "You're like a whole bunch of little insane atoms all taking up the same space."

"I think I'm stuck." Box tugged at his shoulder as he tried to pull his arm from the thin slice of dark between the couch and the hardwood floor.

Jack raised a hand to his mouth, stifling a pretend yawn. "Gosh, I'm sleepy."

"Dude, man, I'm totally..."

"Christ, you are stuck." Jack hopped off the ancient corduroy recliner and slid across the floor to where Box was lying. "I'll lift it up, count of three." Jack heaved and counted, managing to lift the couch up a few inches. Pea had always said a sofa-bed would be good for company, but she'd never had to lift the damn thing up.

"Gah!" Box gasped as he ripped his arm from the confines of the sofa's underneath. "Do we not clean? Ever?"

"Is that rhetorical?" Jack turned and flopped back onto the sofa, staring down at Box.

Box lay flat on his back, his head tilted so he could see Jack. "I have yet to see you with a vacuum, young man."

"We have hardwood."

Box opened his palm and released the valerian root, watching as again the white bottle rolled down the slope of the floor and stopped aside a pile of old dishes. "See what I mean." He laughed.

"What else is in your hand?" Jack pointed with the tip of his nose.

"Nothing, now that I liberated the foul-smelling poison Pea gave me."

Jack shook his head. "The black stuff."

Box held his hand in front of his face and turned his palm over. Three shiny black teardrops stuck to his skin. "It's probably flax. I bet she doses our smoothies with flax." He pushed his tongue on to one of the black spots.

"It'll make you regular." Jack paused. "You think that made the five second rule?"

Box released his pose. "Oh, maybe not."

"Yeah," Jack said, as he reached for his comic book.

"It's probably flax anyway." Box winked as he licked the palm of his hand.

"Attractive." Jack made a face.

"That's me, still the prettiest."

"What did he do?" I said as I pointed at Box, asleep on the floor.

"Ate some black stuff from under the couch," Jack said as he reached into the cupboard.

Jack was in the makeshift kitchen, constructing breakfast. No more than a bar fridge and a couple of cupboards, the real kitchen was one floor up, but since we were all living more or less downstairs this week, cereal seemed easiest.

Or, we were lazy.

"Did he take any valerian?" I said, balancing my cereal bowl on my forearm as I twisted to get a look at my watch.

"No, he wouldn't, because it smells like..."

I sighed. "Don't say it. So he won't take the valerian, but he's eating mystery crap from underneath the sofa?"

"Pretty much."

"It's two p.m."

Jack shrugged and his jet-black, fuzzy-spiked hair danced on the top of his head, "So Mickey tells me." He nodded towards his own watch.

"When did he fall asleep?"

"Around four."

"By dinner time, we worry."

Box had been known to sleep through weekends, apocalypses, tornadoes and various other acts of man and god, but there was still a reason why our moms told us not to eat stuff off the floor - you never knew what it might be. I didn't think we'd left any errant sleeping concoctions or weird naturopathic mixes lying around, but it was possible. The boys hadn't quite trusted me since the time I'd suggested a fine cup of rosemary tea as our after dinner drink, and Jack had thrown up for three hours straight, but I took my own remedies, and I was surviving quite nicely.

At the very least I slept well.

By nine Box still wasn't up. It wasn't that he hadn't woken, but that he hadn't moved. Jack was sitting on the floor beside Box's head, tugging at the boy's sandy-shaded dread locks when I interrupted.

"I don't think that's gonna wake him up," I said, "but dinner's ready."

Jack made a face, the scrunchy-thinky face that usually meant he was about to make some decision or another, but all he said was "Okay" as he leaned over and kissed Box's forehead. I tilted my head, puppy dog style. "You two must be getting along this week." I laughed. Truth was we always got along, closer than brothers or sisters or lovers, blood bonded but we'd never pricked our fingers over the glow of a campfire. It was just something we knew, something everyone that had ever entered into our lives knew, and we never explained it, and never thought to defend it.

Jack stood up, walked across the room and placed an arm around my waist. "He's just sleeping."

I shrugged. "Let's go eat."

We checked on him at ten and eleven and twelve. By twelve-thirty, we'd doused him with ice water, stuck pins in the bottoms of his feet, and I'd even suggested triggering the smoke alarm, but our neighbors were nosy and the roar of the alarm traveled something crazy. I crawled into the guest room around two, and Jack followed at three. We didn't usually sleep together, but he had nightmares, terrors really, and when things were out of synch, everything fell apart. I knew it was pretty bad when the door opened, and in the glow of the hall light I saw him standing there in his Star Wars pajamas.

"Oh," I mumbled, even though I wasn't even close to sleeping.

"I tried to wake him up again," Jack said, "but he won't turn over. I leaned in, really close, thought he said something, but I didn't understand it."

"I'm up," I said, rolling out of bed and walking towards Jack.

Together we padded back out to where Box was sleeping. Jack had dropped an afghan across his body, but in the middle of all that hardwood, Box just looked cold.

Not for the first time I wished we weren't broke. Box had enough money to help us live on, but our commune-inspired living arrangements didn't allow for luxuries like medical insurance. Box had messed his knee up pretty bad last year and we knew we'd be paying off that bill until we were long retired. The way Jack figured it, if we even stepped into a medical facility the alarms would go off and we'd be escorted out right quick for presumed lack of payment.

"We can't make him go," I stuttered, and I think I was crying.

I don't know when we fell asleep. I hadn't planned on it, figured I'd just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for a while until the sun came up and told us she'd been playing a bit of a joke. But we had fallen asleep, and I'd forgotten to close the shade, and by eight a.m. the sun was already streaming in, making my obnoxious pink comforter even more obnoxious, hot pink paisley and lime green. This was Box's house, by way of family inheritance, and he'd decorated it, and although this comforter had come with me, it fit the rest of the décor just fine. Jack used to complain about the decorating, but Box and I had finally convinced him that since he wore nothing but black, he was the center point, and without him the house would have spun totally, and outrageously, out of control. He hadn't believed us, until one day when we were watching the Home and Garden Network and Linda Reeves, Queen of Beige, had popped on and said "Use a spot of black to anchor the room." After that, Box had called him Popeye for three weeks and Jack right there and then had sworn of spinach.

I was up in my room, in the attic, the paint fumes not quite as bad as yesterday, but I'd opened the window and was staring out into our neighborhood, watching as much of our street as the tiny pane of glass allowed. Even though I was two floors up, I could hear Jack banging around in his part of the house, just as lost as I was.

Footsteps outside and it sounded like someone was coming up the fire escape - the only way into my part of the house - and I turned around, towards the door.

"I made smoothies."

Jack. "Strawberry banana?"

"Mango Watermelon."

"Oh," I said, and reached out for my glass.

"You don't normally put flax in yours, do you?" Jack asked and took a sip.

"No, never." I pulled out my straw and drank straight from the cup.

"Didn't think so."

"The banging was you, right? Not Box?"

"No, not Box. But his eyes are open."

"He's awake?"

"No, his eyes are just open."

"Maybe he's turned into an elf."

"I checked. His ears are still lopsided, not pointy. I think he's still whispering something, though. But he always talks when he sleeps."

I took another swig of the smoothie, thick and cold on my tongue. "Thanks for breakfast."

"We should take him to the doctor, Pea."

"How? I don't think they'll take buttons, or magic beans."

"Maybe we could sell 'em the seeds Box ate. Pretty cheap sedative," Jack shrugged. "We gotta wake him up."

"I know," I said, no matter that I had no idea how we were going to do it.

We were back downstairs, Jack sitting at our pretend kitchen table, his feet up on the bashed-up blue wood.

"Did you say the seeds were black?"

Jack shook his head no.

"But you asked about flax, were they black?"

Jack made the face. "Yah, three of them, black, shiny."

"Poppy."

A wobbly kitchen chair skittered across the floor as Jack jumped, "He od'd!?"

"No," I held out my hand, "sit down. You can't OD on poppy seeds; otherwise there'd be no market for muffins."

"Oh. But they weren't small like muffin seeds, they looked like flax."

"But I don't think they were flax, Jack. Work with me here."

Jack was usually the quiet one, the observer. Box made the obnoxious comments and I spent most of the day sighing and shaking my head. With Box out of commission, Jack was doing a fine job of filling in.

"You said he had insomnia."

"Right."

"And what do we do when we have insomnia?"

"Bitch and moan, if you're Box."

"And what would I do?"

"Take the stinky valerian root."

"Or?"

For the second time his face did the squishy-crunch, "I dunno, count sheep or something."

"So what's Box doing?"

"What? Pea, what?"

"He ate poppy seeds, he's mumbling." I smiled, "And you call yourself goth."

"I never said any such thing," he muttered.

"Box is counting. He's in a loop."

"What, like some sort of seizure?"

"Jack, less CSI, more Practical Magic."

"Ah-ha!" He paused. "So now what we need are some crazy aunts in good hats, and maybe a wooden stake just in case." He tossed his head.

He really was channeling Box, but at least we were both finally on the same page.

"Sure, but when we get Box back, I'd like you two to switch bodies. I've just about had enough of this Freaky Friday thing you've got going on."

Jack sighed as his shoulders slumped.

"Kiddo?"

"I just thought," he said, "that maybe you didn't need me right now. Box makes you laugh, not me."

I reached to hug him, "I need the both of you."

Jack grinned. "We need Box back, lest we drown in a sea of melancholy."

I smiled back, "Yah. I'm starting to depress myself."

"P is for Penelope who died of ennui."

I giggled. "That would make Box done in by bears, and I'm pretty sure that's not the trouble."

"How we going to stop him from counting?"

"If he's counting, if he's in a loop, we need something to shake him out of it. Something to interrupt the cycle."

Folks said that people reincarnated because they hadn't finished their purpose on earth. People laid poppy seeds on graves so that the dead would be so busy counting they wouldn't rise as vampires. All sorts of numbers had magic, nine and thirteen and three. I knew Box wasn't finished here, but I also knew it was entirely possible he'd got stuck counting.

My nose twitched. "It even stinks down here now," I said, and Jack nodded and grabbed on to my arm.

"Smells like paint," he said, and he wasn't even just grasping the obvious, one look at his face and I knew he was remembering, knew the smell of wet latex and oil had turned him twelve years old again.

"I never saw that room finished, Pea. But Box is going to see yours."

I could imagine new paint still wet on the walls and a tiny little Jack waiting with the neighbours for the parents that had never made it home from the emergency trip to the hardware store. Little Jack just waiting for his brand new room, for the crazy hornet-green paint to dry. He still carried the paint chip in his wallet.

"Smells like this wake you up." Jack kept talking. "Hit you in the head like a hammer. It might wake him up, Pea."

"Maybe?"

"I'm sure we can lift Box up the stairs."

But I wasn't sure; we couldn't get Box up the fire escape, that much was true. He wasn't much bigger than either Jack or I, but I was pretty girly, in the more princess-than-tomboy way, and Jack was all kinds of pale and frail, cultivated certainly, but what muscles he had were no good for heavy lifting. Although he did argue that he had lifted up the sofa all by his lonesome.

"But Box is dead weight, up stairs; I don't think we can do it."

"Do we have paint left?"

"Just what's on the walls."

"Oh," he mumbled.

"Yah," I agreed.

Just then, Jack made the other face he makes, and I realized it might mean he had another idea.

"So, what?" I said.

"You know that valerian root smells like..."

"Don't say it."

He didn't say anything, I watched him scurry down the fire escape, little pasty white rat down the stairs and into the other door. It took me a second, but then I figured I'd better follow him; there was no way he was pulling Box up stairs by himself.

When I caught up with Jack he was crouched over Box like some sort of alley-thief, careful in his catburgler best. "Jack?"

"It stinks, Pea. Might just stink enough. No matter, sometimes smells can be good reminders." He uncurled his fingers, the valerian root in his hand like some sort of illicit drug. Smiling at me he flipped the cap, releasing a pungent, muddy, entirely indescribable stench in the room.

The boys were right. How had I never noticed the smell?

I'd closed my eyes as if that would help control the stink, all I heard was some coughing and Jack laughed and said, "See I told you it smelled like..."

I opened my eyes, glanced at Box. Box who opened his mouth just wide enough to say it:

"Ass."

The good part?

The End

Bio

She is not refined, nor unrefined. She keeps a parrot. --Mark Twain