Leisha sat, looking appreciatively at the wall posters, shifting green on blue, like ocean currents. “I like those. Did you program them yourself?”
“You’re not at all what I pictured,” Richard said.
“How did you picture me?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Stuck-up. Superior. Shallow, despite your IQ.”
She was more hurt than she had expected to be.
Richard blurted, “You’re one of only two Sleepless who’re really rich. You and Jennifer Sharifi. But you already know that.”
“No, I don’t. I’ve never checked.”
He took the chair beside her, stretching his stocky legs straight in front of him, in a slouch that had nothing to do with relaxation. “It makes sense, really. Rich people don’t have their children genetically modified to be superior—they think any offspring of theirs is already superior. By their values. And poor people can’t afford it. We Sleepless are upper-middle class, no more. Children of professors, scientists, people who value brains and time.”
“My father values brains and time,” Leisha said. “He’s the biggest supporter of Kenzo Yagai.”
“Oh, Leisha, do you think I don’t already know that? Are you flashing me or what?”
Leisha said with great deliberateness, “I’m talking to you.” But the next minute she could feel the hurt break through on her face.
“I’m sorry,” Richard muttered. He shot off his chair and paced to the computer and back. “I am sorry. But I don’t…I don’t understand what you’re doing here.”
“I’m lonely,” Leisha said, astonished at herself. She looked up at him. “It’s true. I’m lonely. I am. I have friends and Daddy and Alice. But no one really knows, really understands—what? I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Richard smiled. The smile changed his whole face, opened up its dark planes to the light. “I do. Oh, do I. What do you do when they say, ‘I had such a dream last night’?”
“Yes!” Leisha said. “But that’s even really minor. It’s when I say, ‘I’ll look that up for you tonight’ and they get that funny look on their face that means, ‘She’ll do it while I’m asleep.’ ”
“But that’s even really minor,” Richard said. “It’s when you’re playing basketball in the gym after supper and then you go to the diner for food and then you say, ‘Let’s have a walk by the lake,’ and they say, ‘I’m really tired. I’m going home to bed now.’ ”
“But that’s really minor,” Leisha said, jumping up. “It’s when you really are absorbed by the movie and then you get the point and it’s so goddamn beautiful you leap up and say, ‘Yes! Yes!’ and Susan says, ‘Leisha, really, you’d think nobody but you ever enjoyed anything before.’ ”
“Who’s Susan?” Richard said.
The mood was broken. But not really; Leisha could say, “My step-mother,” without much discomfort over what Susan had promised to be and what she had become. Richard stood inches from her, smiling that joyous smile, understanding, and suddenly relief washed over Leisha so strong that she walked straight over to him and put her arms around his neck, only tightening them when she felt his startled jerk. She started to sob—she, Leisha, who never cried.
“Hey,” Richard said. “Hey.”
“Brilliant,” Leisha said, laughing. “Brilliant remark.”
She could feel his embarrassed smile. “Wanta see my fish migration curves instead?”
“No,” Leisha sobbed, and he went on holding her, patting her back awkwardly, telling her without words that she was home.
Camden waited up for her, although it was past midnight. He had been smoking heavily. Through the blue air he said quietly, “Did you have a good time, Leisha?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad,” he said, and put out his last cigarette, and climbed the stairs—slowly, stiffly, he was nearly seventy now—to bed.
They went everywhere together for nearly a year: swimming, dancing, the museums, the theater, the library. Richard introduced her to the others, a group of twelve kids between fourteen and nineteen, all of them intelligent and eager. All Sleepless.
Leisha learned.
Tony Indivino’s parents, like her own, had divorced. But Tony, fourteen, lived with his mother, who had not particularly wanted a Sleepless child, while his father, who had, acquired a red sports car and a young girlfriend who designed ergonomic chairs in Paris. Tony was not allowed to tell anyone—relatives, schoolmates—that he was Sleepless. “They’ll think you’re a freak,” his mother said, eyes averted from her son’s face. The one time Tony disobeyed her and told a friend that he never slept, his mother beat him. Then she moved the family to a new neighborhood. He was nine years old.
Jeanine Carter, almost as long-legged and slim as Leisha, was training for the Olympics in ice skating. She practiced twelve hours a day, hours no Sleeper still in high school could ever have. So far the newspapers had not picked up the story. Jeanine was afraid that if they did, they would somehow not let her compete.
Jack Bellingham, like Leisha, would start college in September. Unlike Leisha, he had already started his career. The practice of law had to wait for law school; the practice of investing required only money. Jack didn’t have much, but his precise financial analyses parlayed $600 saved from summer jobs to $3,000 through stock-market investing, then to $10,000, and then he had enough to qualify for information-fund speculation. Jack was fifteen, not old enough to make legal investments; the transactions were all in the name of Kevin Baker, the oldest of the Sleepless, who lived in Austin. Jack told Leisha, “When I hit 84 percent profit over two consecutive quarters, the data analysts logged onto me. Just sniffing. Well, that’s their job, even when the overall amounts are actually small. It’s the patterns they care about. If they take the trouble to cross-reference data banks and come up with the fact that Kevin is a Sleepless, will they try to stop us from investing somehow?”
“That’s paranoid,” Leisha said.
“No, it’s not,” Jeanine said. “Leisha, you don’t know.”
“You mean because I’ve been protected by my father’s money and caring,” Leisha said. No one grimaced; all of them confronted ideas openly, without shadowy allusions. Without dreams.
“Yes,” Jeanine said. “Your father sounds terrific. And he raised you to think that achievement should not be fettered—Jesus Christ, he’s a Yagaiist. Well, good. We’re glad for you.” She said it without sarcasm. Leisha nodded. “But the world isn’t always like that. They hate us.”
“That’s too strong,” Carol said. “Not hate.”
“Well, maybe,” Jeanine said. “But they’re different from us. We’re better, and they naturally resent that.”
“I don’t see what’s natural about it,” Tony said. “Why shouldn’t it be just as natural to admire what’s better? We do. Does any one of us resent Kenzo Yagai for his genius? Or Nelson Wade, the physicist? Or Catherine Raduski?”
“We don’t resent them because we are better,” Richard said. “Q.E.D.”
“What we should do is have our own society,” Tony said. “Why should we allow their regulations to restrict our natural, honest achievements? Why should Jeanine be barred from skating against them and Jack from investing on their same terms just because we’re Sleepless? Some of them are brighter than others of them. Some have greater persistence. Well, we have greater concentration, more biochemical stability, and more time. All men are not created equal.”
“Be fair, Jack—no one has been barred from anything yet,” Jeanine said.