Nora at Midnight

Nora kept a notebook under her pillow. Not a regular notebook — a field notebook, the kind with a hard green cover and pages that could survive being dropped in the bathtub, which had happened twice.

Every night, after her parents kissed her forehead and closed her door to just-a-crack, Nora waited. She waited through the sound of her mom washing dishes. She waited through her dad's TV show — the one with all the talking and laughing that wasn't very funny. She waited through the click of lights going off, one by one by one, like the house was slowly closing its eyes.

And then Nora went to work.

She opened her notebook to the next blank page and wrote the date at the top. Then she listened.

October 14th. 9:47 PM. The refrigerator hums in C. Checked it against my recorder. Definitely C.

She'd figured this out three nights ago by sneaking to the kitchen with her plastic recorder from music class and playing notes, one at a time, very softly, until she found the one that matched. C. The fridge had been humming the same note for as long as Nora could remember, and nobody in her whole family had ever once mentioned it.

9:52 PM. The house makes a clicking sound near the hallway. Not footsteps. Comes in sets of three. Click-click-click. Then nothing. Then click-click-click.

Nora had investigated this one last Tuesday. She'd crawled on her belly down the hallway with a flashlight — the small one, the one that made a beam no wider than a pencil — and discovered that the old radiator near the bathroom made the sound when it was cooling down. Metal shrinking. She'd written SOLVED next to it in her notebook with a satisfying underline.

Tonight, though, Nora was after something new.

For the past four nights, at exactly 10:15, she had heard a sound she couldn't identify. It came from somewhere outside her window. It wasn't a car. It wasn't wind. It wasn't the Hendersons' cat, who sometimes yowled at the moon like he was angry at it for something personal.

It was a soft, low whoooo-oo sound. Two long, one short. Then silence. Then again.

Whoooo... whoooo... oo.

Nora had written in her notebook: Unknown. Repeating pattern. Possibly mechanical. Possibly alive.

She had a plan for tonight. Phase One: open the window. Phase Two: determine direction. Phase Three: record findings.

At 10:09, she slid out of bed. She was already wearing her socks — the thick ones with the grips on the bottom, which she had determined were the quietest socks for wooden floors. This had taken a full week of testing. It was on page twelve of the notebook.

She reached her window and pulled it open, just halfway. October air crept in, cold and sharp and smelling like wet leaves.

Nora stood perfectly still. She breathed very quietly.

10:14. Nothing.

10:15.

Whoooo... whoooo... oo.

Nora's heart jumped. It was coming from the big oak tree. The one at the edge of the backyard, the one with the branch her dad kept saying he was going to cut because it leaned too far over the fence.

She grabbed her flashlight, her notebook, and — after thinking about it — her bathrobe, because an investigator could be thorough and warm.

The stairs were the hardest part. Nora knew them by heart. Step one: fine. Step two: fine. Step three: CREAK. She always skipped step three. Step seven also creaked, but only on the left side, so she stepped to the right. She moved through the dark kitchen, past the humming refrigerator — hello, C — and reached the back door.

She turned the lock slowly. She stepped outside.

The backyard at night didn't look like the backyard during the day. During the day, it was just grass and her brother's soccer goal and the garden where her mom grew tomatoes that never turned red. But now, in the dark, everything was silver and shadow. The grass was wet. The fence looked taller. The oak tree looked like it was holding up the sky.

Whoooo... whoooo... oo.

Nora pointed her flashlight up.

And there — on the leaning branch, the one her dad kept talking about — sat an owl.

It was smaller than she expected. About the size of a football, with enormous round eyes that caught her flashlight and flashed like two golden coins. Its feathers were brown and gray and white, all mixed together like someone had stirred them up. Little tufts stuck up from its head, like messy eyebrows.

Nora stopped breathing.

The owl looked down at her.

Nora looked up at the owl.

Neither of them moved for a very long time.

Then, very slowly, Nora sat down cross-legged in the wet grass. She set the flashlight beside her, pointing away so it wouldn't bother the owl's eyes. She opened her notebook. And she began to write.

10:17 PM. Owl. In the oak tree. Small. Tufted ears. Round face, golden eyes. Sits on the leaning branch.

The owl ruffled its feathers and made the sound again. Whoooo... whoooo... oo. This close, Nora could see its throat puffing out with each call, like a tiny balloon.

Call pattern: two long, one short. Throat expands when calling. Repeats every 30 to 45 seconds.

The owl tilted its head to one side, staring at her. Then it tilted its head to the other side, almost completely upside down, like it was trying to read her notebook.

Nora smiled.

Tilts head. Seems curious.

Then something happened that Nora did not expect, and Nora usually expected things because she paid very close attention.

A second owl landed on the branch.

This one was even smaller, and it arrived without a sound — absolutely without a sound — dropping out of the dark sky like a leaf falling upward in reverse. It scooted along the branch until it was right next to the first owl. The two of them pressed together, feathers touching.

The first owl made a new sound. Not the whoooo-oo. Something softer. A little churring trill, like a purr.

The second owl trilled back.

Nora wrote very fast.

10:20 PM. SECOND OWL. Smaller. Made no sound arriving. They are sitting together now. Making a new sound to each other. Small trilling. Back and forth. Like a conversation.

The two owls went quiet. They sat together on the leaning branch, puffed up against the cold, watching Nora with their golden eyes. The backyard was still. The sky was enormous and filled with stars that Nora hadn't noticed until just now because she'd been so focused on the tree.

She lay back in the wet grass. Her bathrobe would be soaked. She didn't care.

Above her, the oak tree spread its branches across the sky like dark rivers. The owls were two small shapes against the stars. The refrigerator hummed its C from inside the house. The radiator clicked its sets of three. Somewhere far away, the Hendersons' cat yowled at the moon about whatever it was he was so upset about.

And Nora lay there, and she felt something she didn't have a word for yet. Something big and quiet at the same time. Like the world was so full of things — just absolutely crammed with things — humming and clicking and calling and trilling, all going on whether you noticed them or not.

But she noticed.

She held up her notebook above her face and turned to a fresh page. By starlight, she could barely see. She wrote in large, crooked letters:

October 14th. 10:25 PM. The world is awake when everyone is sleeping. It has been doing this the whole time.

One of the owls called out again. Whoooo... whoooo... oo. The other one answered with its soft trill.

Nora closed her notebook and hugged it against her chest.

Then she lay there a little longer, because an investigator knows when to write things down, and when to just listen.