Simon, for the first time he could remember, couldn't sleep. There were too many noises in the condo . . . noises that that had probably always been there but which he'd never noticed, because he'd slept through them. The radiator was kind of fizzling, and cars drove by nearly continuously on the street below. He could hear the silence between the sounds, even. It was odd. Silence did have a sound, something that, if you listen to it long enough, began to resemble a low rushing, as if distant clouds were rolling in . . . if distant rolling clouds had a sound. Simon knew his sleeplessness wasn't actually due to the sounds he was now being subject to—his annoyance with them was merely a byproduct of the underlying issues which were really keeping him awake. His heart was fraught with a strange imbalance. It wasn't even his heart, actually; people thought of the heart—in its abstract sense—as something concerned with love and compassion, amorousness and lust. That concept of a heart . . . well, he didn't really believe in it. Simon understood that human beings possessed a brain and that the brain dictated emotion and senses and other such things. Scientists believed that human hearts, so to speak, were really just fantasized interpretations of chemical reactions shot through synapses. All emotion and thought came down to some neurological phenomenon that masqueraded as a feeling or longing, and the human encasing that brain and those neurons was gullible enough to accept such intangible signals as mandates from the nonexistent entity they confusedly termed "the heart." Well aware of such scientific theories, Simon didn't discount them. He knew that chemicals in the brain had a lot to do with the way people worked. He, too, disbelieved in the fictionalized concept of a heart. He did, however, know that there was more at work in his and others' bodies than just a bunch of chemicals transmitting signals. The notion that people were controlled solely by chemical substances in their bodies struck him as highly impractical. The thought process itself was so individualized that it seemed irrational to write off the billions of independent thoughts thought by humans every nanosecond as chemical reactions to environmental stimuli. There were so many things going on at once in the brain—so many innumerable simultaneous processes—that it had to be virtually impossible to trace each single action or thought to its chemical, neurological source. Besides that, Simon felt, somewhere within the confines of what determined his self (not his heart) that there was something more at work in the feeling and thought processes than scientists could reason away. There was some invisible ghost at work—some mystery that couldn't be described in the boundaries of words—with everything essentially human: each thought, emotion, yearning, and feeling. Each was meticulously wrapped in some unearthly presence that could never, ever, no matter what, be torn away with factual, sterile, simple chemical explanations. These paranormal shells were what complicated every aspect of human life, and they were what were keeping Simon awake.

He knew this. He felt the irony of the situation as sharp as a bee sting. The very ridiculous feelings and longing, confused thoughts moving about in some invisible world inside him were exactly what he knew humans to be bound by; they were what rendered them both capable and incapable of greatness. The fact that he recognized them as such but had, as of recently, become beholden to them was utterly frustrating . . . though he somewhat reveled in the new things he was feeling—the emotions to which he was previously immune.

He knew it was Eve. That Eve. Her name alone fueled the empty-yet-full sense he felt within his abdomen. It was a sense he couldn't define, couldn't explain with words and which, likely, no person had ever been able to depict through use of any language. Simon was slightly amused with the sense, because he understood how impractical such feelings were.

He sat up in his bed, more out of muted exasperation than anything else. It was obvious his body wasn't as reliant on sleep as he assumed it was; he was wide awake and felt no physical desire to relax. Hot-footed spiders were running through his veins, causing him to feel more awake than he'd been in his classes the previous day. Simon looked at his clock, saw that it was about five hours before his alarm went off for school, and decided that attempting to sleep was useless. He fumbled in the glow of the digital clock for his glasses and, locating them, pushed them up onto his face. They made little difference; he couldn't see much in the darkness with or without them.

A great passion suddenly surged through Simon as he sat there, up in his bed, in the darkness of his bedroom. It was a nothingness of sorts—something he couldn't qualify or tag—something that tore through his chest with all the fear of knowing there was no meaning in life or in anything, no meaning in meaning, no nothing in nothing, worlds within worlds of misconceptions and empty hopes . . . and then, within half a second of surfacing, the feeling was gone, and he was once again left dispassionate. Once more detached from the world, as he tended to be during most instances.

His breath was nearly gone and just beginning to return. The momentary fit had frightened him; Simon had never felt anything like it. It was unlike him to feel anything so deep . . . so intense . . . so . . . so human.

He had to get up and walk around a bit, mainly because he feared that sitting still might coax the thing he'd just experienced to return in all its terrifying force. Perhaps it had been too long since he'd been out walking, and something had built up inside of him. Yes, maybe that was all it had been.

Simon turned himself and pushed his legs out of bed, feet flattening onto the floor. He sat hunched over for a few seconds, then straightened up and shook his head. Standing, putting all his weight on his feet, Simon felt his head spin dizzily for a bit and stood still to wait it out. Soon, he was pulling on pants, shoes, and sweater. It didn't matter that it was awfully early in the morning—so early that most would say it was late at night, mistaking the darkness for what it was. Simon prepared himself with hardly a thought in his head. He was almost afraid to think, really, for fear of bringing that strange fit back through his heart. It had rushed through him so fast and so unexpectedly that he was beginning to wonder if he'd felt it at all and knew he must have only because, otherwise, he wouldn't be mulling over such a thing. It didn't matter, he decided as he crossed the floor and left his room. Whatever it had been, it was gone, and there was no use thinking about it now. He just wanted to get out into some cool, dark, quiet air and be alone. In the apartment, he wasn't alone. His brother, sister-in-law, and two nieces were all sleeping soundly; their presence alone was hindering his current contemplative state. Steven, his brother, knew that Simon left quite early on school mornings. He wouldn't be bothered upon waking to find that Simon was already gone.

It was easy to slip out of the apartment without waking anyone. Simon thought of his little nieces in their beds, dreaming dreams he knew he'd had at some point in his life, their minds worried about nothing more than the friends they made at school and what they were going to learn the following day. Simon understood that he, too, had had such cares, when he'd been little.

As he'd aged, his cares had transformed into those with more depth and less surface value. Simon knew that he was different from others his age in the sense that he wasn't concerned with the things that they were concerned with; in fact, most of the people with whom he went to school were very much like his little nieces—they cared about their relationships with their friends and crushes and focused on what they were going to learn each day. He was nothing like that. Simon felt more that his focuses were not on anything particular at all. Throughout his high school years, he'd felt mainly indifference—compassion toward others, but indifference toward life in general. There had been the occasional moments of fun with a few friends, but those moments had been arranged more because people seemed drawn to him than because he'd felt the need to be with them. Simon didn't know why or when he'd really begun to understand the things he did. He'd never even cared about the fact that he little knew what natural feelings felt like until recently—until he'd met Eve and his emotional disparities had been made poignantly obvious. Simon was beginning to experience what he could only define as some sort of suffering. It was strange, this feeling . . . Something that, while he was terming it suffering, was so much more complex and intricate than that word could truly describe. He was so uncertain as to the why's and how's of this current state of strange ache that he hardly knew what to do with himself. He sensed, too, that by suddenly becoming exposed to these strange feelings he was opening himself to other, more powerful emotions, such as what he'd previously felt in his bedroom while sitting in the darkness of the night. How that and his current state were interrelated, he could hardly figure out.

He had left his apartment building and was walking down the dimly lit street. The area in which he lived with his family was populated with many young starter families, couples with small children, and recently married pairs attempting to get started on their lives together. It was a safe neighborhood, but even if it hadn't been, Simon wouldn't have noticed. He walked with little interest in his surroundings, which was actually rather unlike him; typically, Simon took interest in the way the sky looked and the way darkness and light crisscrossed into shadows in strange corners. Tonight, though, he was too burdened to pay attention to much of anything. Eve. What was it about her that had given him such distress? Simon knew that nothing so simplistic as physical attractiveness could create this sort of turbulence within him; such a thing had been invisible to him for as long as he could remember. It wasn't that he couldn't recognize beauty when he saw it. Simon had seen many pretty girls and beautiful people in general (at least, beautiful by the standards of the society in which he lived) to know what physical attractiveness looked like. It was more that Simon had never been swayed emotionally or otherwise by anything physical at all. So what about Eve had captivated him to the point where he could not sleep at night? He knew after the last time he'd seen her that she'd possessed a rare joy—an honest, innocent delight—and that it was this quality which had made her very presence sparkle with little bits of light. However, once he'd recognized her joy, he had continued to feel captivated . . . in fact, the captivation not only had strengthened over the past few days but also had twisted into something somewhat different . . . something aching—something painfully sweet. Something he both resented as well as desired to enhance. The truth was, at this point, he didn't know what of her had so enthralled him, and that in itself was the most disconcerting feeling of all. The only thing he could say with certainty was that there had been some brightness about her, some vivacity that was hypnotizing to the point that it unsettled him deeper than anything had ever influenced him before.

The world was strange, and so were its inhabitants. How could one who had lived his entire life in a state of constant pacification, with no disruptions and no cause to worry, all of a sudden, within an instant, have his life so drastically altered?

These were the thoughts in Simon's head as he walked through a darkened playground and sat down on one of the rubber swings, slowly moving himself back and forth with one foot on the ground, the other foot stubbing the wood chips with its tennis-shoed toe, his arms wound tightly around the chains. These were the thoughts which he absolutely knew could not be traced to some source that was a mere chemical reaction, because there was some mystery in all of it—some mystery so deep, so commanding, so paradoxically sweetly painful, that nothing which was a part of his own body would or could have ever produced such a thing.

Simon didn't know how long he sat there before he noticed a presence not far from him. There was a man nearby, only feet away from him in fact, and in the moment that Simon realized he was there he recognized that he had no idea whether the man had just arrived or had been there all the while. The man was immobile, seated with his back against the ladder of a metal slide. It was unclear if the man was asleep or awake, or even if he was alive. From his position on the swing, Simon could tell only that the person looked like an adult male, based on his stature and the way he seemed dressed. Simon didn't feel an urge to leave, as most people might experience when spotting a strange figure alone, in the middle of the night, on a deserted playground. Instead, he stood and slowly walked to the man. His tumultuous state of mind temporarily suspended, Simon reverted entirely to his natural condition and approached the figure with the calmness of heart that had always tempered his personality.

He felt entirely no fear upon reaching the slumped figure, and when he placed his hand on the man's shoulder and received absolutely no sign of acknowledgment, a sense of alert filtered through his calm. Obviously, this person was in trouble; nobody just fell asleep in the middle of a city park at night, and by the way this man was dressed, it was clear that he wasn't homeless. Simon saw as he lifted the man's face so that he could see it in the glow of the moon that he was clean-shaven, well-dressed, and exuding a sort of youthful beauty quite contrary to the nature of his current predicament. The juxtaposition of this man's appearance with his situation unearthed all sorts of sorrowful questions in Simon's mind, but he had little time to wonder about the answers to any of them. Taking the man's shoulders in his hands, he shook them hard, insisting that he wake up, hoping to gain some sense of whether he was sick or merely asleep. It was a good half a minute before he received any indication that the stranger was even alive, and even when he did get a sign, it wasn't a good one: the man groaned almost inaudibly and opened his eyes just barely enough to reveal a milky gaze, one that obviously didn't see Simon or any other bit of its surroundings. The irises were rolled back to the point where Simon couldn't see much of them at all, and he immediately understood what was wrong.

"Come on," Simon urged, beginning to pull the man to his feet in spite of the fact that he obviously was too discombobulated to know anything about what was going on let alone be able to regulate his own movements. "I said come on, get up. You've got to get up and walk with me. I'm not just leaving you here." Fortunately, Simon was nearly a foot taller than the stranger, so he was able to pull him from the ground with a strength he'd gained from the sense of urgency that had begun to pulse through him.

Had any observers been there to witness this sight, they would have regarded how strange the two young men looked in the blue-black darkness of the night; the one tall, gangly, and unkempt carrying the other athletic, curly-haired, striking young man at his side. They might have noticed a bizarre companionship playing out between the two in spite of the fact that the one was intent on his task and the other was entirely cataleptic. The night brought out unforeseen bonds amongst the isolated.

Luckily, Simon knew exactly where to go with his self-imposed charge. Because everyone knew Simon and Simon knew everyone, he had friends who moved in every circle and lived every sort of life imaginable. Hence, Simon knew to take him to Joe. Joe would know what to do. Joe knew far more about overdosing than anyone else, particularly Simon, who knew little of substance use. And Joe didn't live very far. As long as Simon could continue to support the weight of this man, he would be able to get him to help within fifteen minutes' time, and if he didn't have to take him to a hospital or police station or anything of the like, he might be able to preserve the man's pride as well—because Simon knew that the most difficult thing for human beings to lose was their sense of pride, and as ridiculous as he knew that was, if he could help another man to keep his sense of self-worth, he would.