Last night, I had to finally look out my window after I had heard someone running up and down the street for about the seventh time. The running was sporadic, and it was flat-footed and artless, making a floppy, slapping noise as the person ran first this way and then, after a few minutes, that way.

I looked out and saw the girl next door that we’ve seen often at night. I believe she lives with her grandmother in the house, but I’m not sure. The girl is dark-haired and overweight, and she talks outside at night on the cell phone for the longest time, even now when it gets close to freezing at night. Twice now in the last month, we’ve had multiple ambulances, firetrucks and police cars in front of the house and parked around the side. The first time, the police had two police dogs with them that took them up the street and towards the school. (Not my idea to spy that much, by the way. Clementine was outraged that there were intruder dogs that nearby who didn’t have the common sense to introduce themselves.)

So there she was, and this time she wasn’t talking on the phone, though I think she did have it in her hand. She was making a sort of right-angle circuit of her house. She would stand some, then start walking and then suddenly run — or sometimes go from a standstill to a gallumphing run — and then go back the other way.

It could have just been adolescent agitation, I suppose, or high spirits. Or even a sort of exercise routine. But as time wore on (I went to bed at midnight and she had been doing it for almost an hour), it seemed less likely that it was anything but a drug-thing, some chemically-induced excuse for instinct, intelligence or design that made her act senselessly and repetitiously, like a caged animal pacing itself to exhaustion.

It’s not something that unusual, really, and hardly worth a blog entry because I don’t have anything interesting or conclusive to add. I didn’t know what to pray — I had a hard time even remembering that I was seeing someone in trouble. We’ve gotten so used to the things that seem hopeless, the stories that don’t seem to have anything ahead but disastrously unhappy endings. I tried to think of Fr. John of Kronstadt’s strong advice to believe in what you pray for. I hope I managed it.

***

Follow-up: In talking it over with a friend who has worked as a psych tech nurse, she said it sounded more like a mental illness like schizophrenia. I mentioned the cell phone that she carries but doesn’t speak to or listen to. “She’s probably getting instructions from it,” she said. “Unstable people often seem to have that relationship to electronic devices.”

Lord, have mercy.