The bedroom itself was one of those things: this was his first night in it. Its window looked out on a pitch-black field of tall grass, sloping down toward the quiet storefronts and streets of Ashland, Iowa, population 428. The town was half a mile away, a little island of soft light surrounded by nothing but dark, wide-open countryside. The only things visible farther out were the porch lights of distant farms, most of them swallowed up in the night haze. That was the view from Sam’s new bedroom. His old one had overlooked Los Angeles from twenty stories up.

He pulled one of the movers’ boxes to the window and sat on it. He rested his chin on his hands, and his elbows on the windowsill. He studied the town. It was no more than a little grid of streets, like a tic-tac-toe game with random extensions growing from it. Two primary roads crossed through its heart, reaching away in four directions to the empty farmlands beyond.

Hardly anyone lived downtown, Sam guessed. The businesses were all dim and closed up. Nothing moved in the pools of streetlight glow. The residents were all up here in the subdivision, built on level ground atop this rise. Sam’s house stood at the suburb’s edge, facing south. He could see none of the other houses from his window.

The sounds of the country were alien to him. No rumble of traffic. No car horns. Just the rhythmic song of insects and frogs, maybe a few million of each out there in the dark fields. The house had unfamiliar sounds, too. There was something behind the back wall of his closet that went click, click, click, hum every so often. He’d heard it twice since they’d arrived this evening. Probably a loose flap of metal in an air duct. A house noise, Sam called it. The kind of thing you noticed at a friend’s place, but ignored at your own. Hopefully he’d be ignoring this one within a few days.

He shifted forward on the box and let his forehead touch the screen. Out at the western outskirts of downtown, he could see the school he would be attending in the fall: a long rectangular building flanked by vacant grounds. His dad had driven him past it earlier. Sam wondered how many kids would be starting seventh grade with him. Maybe just a few dozen, he guessed, all of them close friends since kindergarten. No doubt he would be the only new kid.

At least it was only July. School was several weeks away.

He closed his eyes and exhaled softly.

New house.

New town.

New school.

New life.

Heavy thoughts, all of them.

But they weren’t the reason he couldn’t sleep.