Nora Hears Something

Nora kept a notebook under her pillow. Not because she was supposed to — nobody had told her to keep a notebook under her pillow — but because things happened at night that needed writing down.

She had a flashlight too, the small silver one with the click button on the end. And she had her glasses, which she placed on top of the notebook every night at exactly 8:15, right after her mom said goodnight and closed the door almost all the way but not quite.

Nora was an investigator.

In her notebook, she had already recorded many important findings:

Monday: The refrigerator hums in the key of B flat.

Tuesday: There are exactly fourteen glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. One is peeling.

Wednesday: My sock drawer smells like toast. Reason unknown.

Thursday: When the wind blows from the east, the window makes a sound like a tiny whistle. Frequency: every four seconds.

Each entry was dated. Each one was written in Nora's very best handwriting, which was a little bit wobbly but very determined. She had been an investigator for two whole weeks now, which she felt was quite a long time.

Tonight was a Friday.

Nora put on her glasses. She clicked on her flashlight. She opened her notebook to a fresh page and wrote the date at the top, and then she waited.

Waiting was an important part of investigating. You couldn't just discover things if you were busy making your own noise. You had to get very, very still. You had to let the house settle around you like a blanket, all its creaks and ticks and hums coming out of their hiding places.

Nora waited.

The house ticked.

The refrigerator hummed its B flat.

A car passed outside, its headlights sliding across her ceiling like a slow, shy ghost.

And then — there it was.

Something new.

Nora sat up straighter. She held her breath without meaning to, then remembered that investigators need oxygen and started breathing again.

The sound was soft. Very soft. It came in a pattern — a gentle thub-thub ... pause ... thub-thub ... pause ... thub-thub. Regular as a clock, but not a clock. Warmer than a clock. Rounder.

She wrote quickly:

Friday: Unidentified sound. Soft. Regular. Two beats, then pause. Repeats. Source: UNKNOWN.

She underlined "UNKNOWN" twice.

Nora pointed her flashlight at the wall to her left. The sound wasn't coming from there. She pointed it at the window. Not there either. She pointed it at the ceiling, the floor, the closet door, the bookshelf full of books about bugs and planets and a very old stuffed rabbit named Captain.

Thub-thub ... pause ... thub-thub.

"Hmm," said Nora, very quietly, because investigators say "hmm" when they are thinking.

She closed her eyes. That helped sometimes. When you closed your eyes, your ears got bigger — not actually bigger, she had checked in the mirror once — but they worked harder. Like they were trying to make up for the eyes not doing their job.

With her eyes closed, the sound grew clearer.

Thub-thub ... pause ... thub-thub.

It was close. It wasn't in the walls. It wasn't outside. It wasn't in the closet or under the bed or coming from the hallway where the nightlight glowed its dim orange glow.

Nora opened her eyes.

She looked down at herself.

Very slowly, she placed her hand flat against her own chest.

Thub-thub ... pause ... thub-thub.

Her eyes went wide.

She pressed a little harder. There it was — right there under her palm, under her pajamas with the small blue rockets on them, under her skin and her bones — a steady, soft drumbeat.

Her heart.

She was hearing her own heart.

Nora grabbed her notebook and wrote, very fast:

UPDATE: Sound identified. It is MY HEART. It has been beating this whole time. I just never noticed.

She put three exclamation marks after that, which she normally did not allow herself because exclamation marks were "not scientific." But this felt like a three-exclamation-mark discovery.

She kept her hand on her chest and listened. It was always there — every moment, every second, awake or asleep, writing in notebooks or eating cereal or riding her bike down the bumpy sidewalk on Maple Street. Beating and beating and beating without anyone asking it to, without anyone reminding it, without a single entry in any notebook anywhere telling it what to do.

"You've been doing that my whole life," Nora whispered. She wasn't sure who she was talking to, exactly. She felt a little silly. But also a little amazed.

She tried different things, because that is what investigators do.

She held very, very still. Thub-thub ... thub-thub ... steady and slow, like footsteps in soft snow.

She shook her hands fast and kicked her feet under the blankets for ten whole seconds. Then she put her hand back. Thub-thub-thub-thub-thub — faster now! Quicker! Like it was trying to keep up with her, like it was running right alongside her even though she was just lying in bed.

She wrote that down too.

When I move fast, it goes fast. When I am still, it goes slow. It matches me.

She thought about that for a long moment.

Then she tried one more thing. She thought about her mom, downstairs right now, probably reading her book with the blue cover and drinking the tea that smelled like peppermint. She thought about her dad, who was away on a trip but who had called tonight and made a funny voice that was supposed to be a penguin but sounded more like a duck. She thought about her best friend Amara, and how they had laughed so hard at lunch that milk almost came out of Amara's nose, which would have been terrible but also historically funny.

Nora kept her hand on her chest.

Her heart had been there for every single one of those moments. Quiet, steady, never showing off, never asking to be noticed. Beating through the scary parts and the silly parts and the boring parts and the parts so happy she thought she might pop.

Thub-thub ... thub-thub.

Like it's saying, "I'm here, I'm here," she wrote.

She stared at that line for a while. Then she added: And it always has been.

Nora yawned. It was a big yawn, the kind that made her jaw crack and her eyes water. She clicked off her flashlight. She took off her glasses and placed them on top of the notebook. She slid the notebook back under her pillow.

The house was quiet. The refrigerator hummed. The peeling star on her ceiling glowed its faintest green.

Nora lay in the dark with her hand still on her chest, feeling that steady little drum. She matched her breathing to it — in and out, in and out — and it felt like a song she had always known but had only just now heard for the first time.

Her eyes grew heavy.

Thub-thub ... thub-thub ...

And just before she fell asleep, Nora smiled. Because she had discovered something tonight that was not in any of her books about bugs or planets. Something very small and very close and very, very extraordinary.

It had been right there all along.

Thub-thub ... thub-thub ...

Nora slept.

And her heart kept going, steady and warm, like a tiny light that never, ever goes out.