One of the things I like best about doing this podcast is hearing from you, the listeners, and I hear from a lot of teens. I think a lot of young people struggle with sleep. I've never written a sleep story with teen characters before, but I thought I'd give it a try and write something for the younger listeners.I feel old just saying that, like I've written an after-school special, but I do think this story will help anyone who is having trouble falling asleep tonight, especially anyone who has ever felt like they don't quite fit in, which is almost everyone. You might not think it's almost everyone, but it is. And I set the story in 2006, 20 years ago.I think it was a calmer time. We didn't all have smartphones yet. If you were with people, you were just with them.And before we begin, as always, please make sure that you are somewhere safe to fall asleep. If you're a regular listener, you can probably say this with me. Preferably in your comfortable bed and not anywhere you need to stay alert.And if you're ready, let's get you settled. Take a moment to adjust your pillow and pull your blankets up and around you. Shift your body until it feels just right.There's no rush. Hopefully, you've made your room as dark and as cool and as comfortable as possible. And let's start by bringing your attention to your breathing.Don't change it. Just pay attention to it for a moment, like you're noticing something for the first time. The air coming in, slightly cool, the air going out, slightly warm.And then when you're ready, take a slow breath in. And when you let that breath out, take your time with it. Let the exhale last longer than the inhale.Let's do that again. A slow breath in, and a longer, slower breath out. And one more time.Breathe in and out. And breathe out like you're fogging a cold window. That slow.And now lay back and let your breathing do whatever it wants. And check in with your body, wherever your attention lands first. That's probably where you need it the most.Maybe it's your eyes and the area around your eyes. They've been working hard. Let them settle behind your closed lids.They don't need to look at anything anymore. Not even the dark. And your shoulders.Imagine the space between your shoulders getting wider, like your shoulder blades are sliding apart across your back. And feel how your chest opens when that happens. Now your breathing gets even easier.And your hands. Think about everything they've done today. They're still holding the memory of all that work in the small muscles of your palms, your fingers, your wrists.Let that go now. Let your hands forget today. Let them lie open and empty.Feel the weight of your body on the mattress, your hips, your back, the backs of your arms. Every point of contact is a place where you can stop holding yourself up. Your legs are heavy.You can feel a warmth moving through your legs as the tension leaves. Down your knees, your calves, into your feet. Your whole body is heavy, still, quiet. You're ready now for a journey to a small town on a rainy night in November. The year is 2006 and somewhere inside a high school, a handful of kids are building something together. The town is called Millfield.There's a main street with a courthouse and a post office. There's a mall on the east side of town, anchored by a Sears at one end and a JC Penney at the other. There's a blockbuster on Route 9 with a blue and yellow sign that buzzes a little when it rains.And tonight, the town is quiet and the rain is coming down hard. The kind of rain that turns the roads into mirrors, streetlights doubled in the wet asphalt, gutters running full. The strip mall is dark, except for the laundromat where a single fluorescent light shines over a row of dryers, tumbling, although nobody is watching them.The rain drums on rooftops, it beads on car windows. The town is settling in for the night, but at Millfield High School, there are still lights on. The building is long and low, brown brick built in the late 70s. There's a sign out front with removable black letters that currently reads, Greece, November 16th, 17th, 18th. The main entrance is locked. The parking lot is mostly empty. A few cars are clustered near the side door by the gym, a dented Civic with a bumper sticker peeling off, a Dodge Neon with a cracked taillight, an old Volvo wagon that belongs to a teacher. Their windshields are streaming with rain. The side door is propped open with a rubber wedge. If you walked through that door, you'd step into a hallway that smells like floor wax and heating vents and the staleness of a building that holds a thousand teenagers five days a week. There are lockers on both sides, a bulletin board outside the office with a basketball schedule and a drama club poster, slightly crooked, advertising this week's production. Two hours ago, this hallway was loud.The cast had been on stage running the show from the top, full speed, full chaos, 30 kids in various states of costume, leather jackets, poodle skirts and someone's dad's old bowling shirt, hitting their marks, missing their marks, singing at full voice, forgetting lyrics. At nine o'clock, the director told them to go home and sleep and the cast filed out into the rain, calling goodnight to each other, car doors slamming, headlights swinging across the wet brick of the building as they pulled away. And then, the building got quiet.But if you were there, if you were standing in the hallway, you would still hear some music playing faintly from somewhere. Maybe you would follow it. Past the science labs, past the dark library, all the chairs tucked in, past the cafeteria where the tables are folded up and the floor has been mopped.You'd follow it through a set of double doors, down a short ramp, a woman's voice singing something slow. You'd push through one door and then you would be backstage. The wings are dim and cluttered.Black curtains hang from tracks overhead. Set pieces lean against every surface, painted plywood flats, a wooden frame with a painted window, a section of chain link fence that's part of the drive-in scene. And the smell back here is different from the hallway.Paint, mostly. Sawdust from cut plywood. The dusty warmth of old stage curtains that have hung in the same spot for 20 years. On stage, the work lights are on. Not the stage lights. Those are hung and focused and ready for tomorrow.The work lights are bare. Practical, ugly lights bolted to the ceiling. They cast a flat, warm, even glow across the whole stage.And they make the stage feel like a workshop, which tonight it is. And there are people here. Five of them.The crew. The techies. They are the kids who built the show, who light it and run the sound and move the set pieces in the dark between scenes.Tomorrow night, while the cast takes their bows, the crew will be backstage in black clothes. Invisible. Right now, they're doing the last work of the night before opening.It's quiet. Fleetwood Mac is playing softly from a paint-splattered boom box on a wooden chair in the wings. The volume is low.The voices are low. The rain on the roof is louder than anything happening on stage. Center stage.The car is parked. Greased lightning. The centerpiece of the show and the crew's biggest build.It's not a real car. It's a frame made from two-by-fours and plywood, shaped and painted to suggest a 1948 Ford Deluxe convertible. The fins, which someone spent a whole weekend shaping with a jigsaw.Sweep up at the back. It rolls on four casters hidden underneath. The crew spent six weeks building it.And they are very proud of it. A girl is kneeling beside it with a roll of masking tape and a can of silver spray paint. She's taping off the chrome details.The bumper line. The trim around the headlights. The tape has to be pressed down tight and straight or the paint will bleed underneath. So, she works slowly. Her hair is dark. Pulled back in a messy ponytail. And she's wearing a flannel shirt over a t-shirt. There's a streak of gray primer on her jaw that she doesn't know about. She shakes the spray can.The ball bearing rattling inside. And sprays a smooth even line of silver along the bumper. The paint hisses out.A fine mist hangs in the air for a moment. Catching the light. And then settles.She waits for it to dry before peeling the tape. The line is clean. She didn't plan to be doing this.At the start of the year, she auditioned. Stood on the stage and sang. And she didn't get cast.The director asked if she'd be interested in helping build the set. She said yes. Mostly because she didn't have much going on after school.That was September. It's November now. And what she's discovered is that she'd rather be here taping off a plywood bumper than anywhere on that stage.She likes it. She likes the exactness of it. She likes that a straight line is either straight or it's not. But mostly, she likes this room and these people up in the lighting booth at the back of the auditorium. A boy is sitting behind the lighting board. The booth is a small enclosed space with a window that looks down at the stage.The board has rows of faders and buttons. Some labeled with strips of masking tape and sharpie. In handwriting that belongs to three different students over two years.A binder sits open beside it. The lighting cue sheet. Each cue numbered and described.He pushes a fader up and on stage a wash of amber light rises over the diner set. He studies it, pushes another fader, and a blue fills in from the sides. He writes something in the binder, pulls both faders down.He's tall and very thin. He wears glasses with dark frames that are slightly too big for his face. And a hooded sweatshirt with the hood down.He taught himself stage lighting from a manual he found at the public library. On stage, the lights shift. Warm, cool, right, dim.Each change is slow and smooth. In the wings stage right. Two kids are working on the sound.One is sitting at a folding table behind a mixing board. He's wearing large cushioned headphones. The cord looping down to a jack on the board.And he's adjusting levels for the backing tracks. The show doesn't have a live band. The music runs off a CD through the sound system.And it's his job to make sure every cue comes in at the right moment.  At the beginning of the year, this boy sat in the auditorium while someone tested the system and he heard that the left monitor was slightly louder than the right. He mentioned it, and the kid who ran sound last year said he was right and showed him the board. And he sat down behind it and understood it. Immediately, he wears a t-shirt that is two sizes too big, jeans with frayed cuffs, and sneakers that were white six months ago. His hair needs cutting. Next to him, a girl is wrapping cables. She loops a long audio cable over her hand and elbow, over, under, and wraps the tail around the coil and tucks it neatly. She learned it on the first day, and she does it perfectly. Every time now. She's small. She wears a denim jacket covered in enamel pins, a lightning bolt, a cat face, a record player, and a tiny Slytherin crest. And her Chuck Taylors have drawings on them in ballpoint pen. Vines and stars and tiny skulls. She did them during study hall. The Fleetwood Mac album ends, and for a moment, the stage is just the rain and the quiet breathing of people concentrating. The girl with the dark hair walks to the boom box and puts on a different CD. She turns the volume down until it is just barely there. There is rain on the roof, music playing low, the rattle of a spray paint can, the rustle of a cable being coiled, and underneath it all, the murmur of voices, just the sounds people make when they're near each other, uncomfortable. The rain intensifies, a heavier curtain of sound on the roof, and everyone pauses for a second, a collective glance upward, and then back to work. The theater feels warmer because of it, a pocket of light and warmth in a wet, dark town. A boy slides out from under the diner counter and tests the stools. He sits on each one and shifts his weight, solid, no wobble. He brushes sawdust off of his cargo shorts and puts the drill back in the toolbox. He walks over to where the girl is working on the car. She peels a strip of tape, and the chrome line underneath is sharp and clean. She holds it up. Nice, he says. He sits down on the stage floor near her and starts sorting screws from a coffee can into a plastic tray. The screws make small metallic sounds as he drops them into the compartments. He sorts them by size without thinking about it. It's something to do with his hands while he keeps her company. This is how it is with the crew. Nobody announces their affection for each other. They just stay in the room, and they sit nearby. They hand each other things without being asked. They play music the others like. Eventually, the work of putting things away begins. Paint lids pressed down, brushes rinsed in the deep backstage sink, paint swirling down the drain. The girl with the dark hair scrubs at her hands and gets most of the silver out of her fingernails. But not all of it. She'll notice it tomorrow in English, and she'll think of this room. Tools go back in the red toolbox. The lid closes with a metal click. The boom box is turned off, and the CD case zippered up. The boy in the booth powers down the lighting board. The small indicator lights on its surface go dark, one at a time, like a town. Going to sleep, he comes down and he walks to the work light panel. Everyone else has gathered their things. They're standing together near the wings, and he turns off the lights. The stage goes dark. Not completely. The exit signs glow green at the edges. And there's the ghost light. Every theater has one. A single bare bulb on a tall metal stand, left burning center stage whenever the theater is empty. So nobody walks into the dark and falls off the edge. Theater people will tell you it's for the ghosts. Every theater has ghosts, they say. The light keeps them company. He wheels the ghost light to center stage and plugs it in. The single bulb throws long shadows across the set. The car. The diner counter. The flats. Everything still. Everything ready. And they leave. Together. Through the backstage door. Down the dim hallway. Past the darkened classrooms. Past the bulletin board with the poster for the show. And at the side door. Someone pulls the rubber wedge and the door closes behind them. The streets of Millfield are empty and shining. The blockbuster sign glows blue against the rain. The town is asleep. Tomorrow night, the lights will come up and the audience will sit down. The music will start and the world that they built. The car. The diner. All of it will come alive for two hours under the lights. And years later, when they think about high school, this is what they remember. Not the classes. Not the exams. They remember the theater. The work lights. The smell of paint. And sawdust. The sound of rain on the roof. While they built something together, they didn't all stay close. Lives went in different directions. The way lives do. But all of them carried something from that room. The knowledge that there had been a place. Where they fit. Where the work made sense. And the people made sense. Nobody had to try to belong because they already did. That's a thing that stays with a person. You don't think about it every day. But it's there. And the rain is still falling. The same steady sound. That same drumming on the roof. Your heart rate has dropped. Your breathing has slowed and deepened. The muscles in your face have softened. This is your body settling. The way the theater settled when the work lights went off. Everything quieting down. Everything finding its resting place. And if you're someone who sometimes feels like you don't quite fit. If you've ever walked into a room and measured yourself against everyone else and come up short. That feeling doesn't mean there is anything wrong with you. It's just information. It's your mind telling you that you haven't found the right room yet. Not that you're the wrong person. Because fitting in and belonging are not the same thing. Fitting in asks you to change. And belonging doesn't. Kids in the theater weren't trying to be anything. They were just building a car out of plywood and painting bricks on a flat. And they belonged to each other without any of them having to perform. And that thing that makes you different. That is the exact thing that will make you recognizable to the people who are supposed to find you. And that feeling is not quite fitting. Almost everyone has it. We're not as alone in this as it feels in the night. Let it all go. Let your body be heavy. Your arms. Your legs. Your hands. Let it all be heavy. You are safe in this room. In this bed. In this quiet. You don't have to try. You don't have to perform. You don't have to fit yourself into any shape at all. You just have to lie here. Exactly as you are.