Under the Influence

Chapter Two: Life Just Got a Little More Complicated

“Hey, did the new shipment of Batman comics come in yet?” I called from the back room of Crawford Comics. Rifling through the cardboard boxes of comics, I found pretty much everything except for the issues I was searching for.

   The back room (or the storage room, as we sometimes referred to it as) was filled from floor to ceiling with boxes of comics. The only pieces of furniture in the room were a few chairs set up around a round, wooden table that was good for playing Poker or Dungeons & Dragons, which was mostly what we used it for. It was actually a pretty big room, but since we kept an endless supply of comics in there, it always seemed cramped and sometimes made me feel claustrophobic.

   The back room was where we stored all the comics that didn’t sell very well, everything that we didn’t have room for in the actual store part of Crawford Comics, and all the new shipments that had just come in. There were a lot—and I wasn’t using that term loosely—and it could take me a whole week to search through every single one of the boxes.

   “Scott?” I called again. I waited a moment, but still got response. “Hey, Scott?” That time, the only answer I received was a muffled snore, then another, and finally a cough. He was asleep. I rolled my eyes at the thought of my brother choking on his own snores. Was that even possible…? I’d have to look that up later.

   I entered the main part of the store to find Scott sitting behind the counter, coughing strenuously.

   “Are you okay?”

   “Yeah, yeah, it’s all good,” he assured me, waving it off. “Just a little tired.” Even with an empty coffee cup lying haphazardly on the counter in front of him, he still appeared to be as tired as he sounded.

   “Did you sleep enough last night?” I questioned, mostly to break the silence that had uncomfortably settled between us because I already had an idea as to what the answer was.

   “Do I ever?” he replied, laughing hollowly. He reached over to grab another cup of coffee sitting on the other end of the counter, near the cash register. Wisps of steam surrounded the top of the cup and Scott hesitantly took a sip. “But I’ve been sleeping a bit more, recently.”

   Scott was like this every morning. The endless cups of coffee, the restlessness; it was pretty much part of our morning routine now. Long story short, Scott had insomnia. He had a hard time sleeping at night and if he did eventually manage to fall asleep, he had trouble staying asleep, which was why he was always so tired in the morning.

   I went with him to go see a doctor about it after it first started. The doctor told him that it was probably from stress. He advised Scott to get plenty of exercise and eat more healthy food, which sounded to me exactly like what you would tell someone who was planning to go on a diet, not someone who couldn’t sleep. The doctor said it would work, though, and if it didn’t, he should try chewing Valerian root.

   Scott tried everything the doctor suggested, but none of it worked. Not even the Valerian root. So he went back to the doctor again. This time, he was told to just relax. And that was just what he did. He hung out with his friends more often, loosened up, and even got himself a girlfriend. But the insomnia never went away, so he learned to live with it.

   But for the past few weeks, I began to see a change in Scott. He slept more and more and he started to remind me of how he was before he had insomnia. The old Scott everyone knew and loved. I hoped that his insomnia would soon disappear completely.

   Scott used to be the happy-go-luckiest, most laid-back person I knew, and still was. Well, only after he had his two cups of coffee in the morning. He was only half-awake until he drank his coffee (with extra caffeine shots, of course). After that he was fine and could, for the most part, function normally for the rest of the day and had his usual playful, grinning demeanor.