I’m Nobody — not the one in Emily Dickinson’s poem, although we share the same views. Tonight, you will find me in the grim green room.

When in this room — and I’m dragged back here all too often — I feel edgy and unwell. Perhaps the full moon, creeping above the windowsill like a peeping Tom, is to blame.

Boredom presses in like bad weather from these three go-light green walls (the fourth, doubtless an equally aggressively green, is invisible). I pull a volume from the neat rows of identical books, hoping against hope that something interesting will lie between the pages. As always, the books lie blank and silent. The only real book on this shelf is The Runaway Bunny — a good book, but one I’ve read thousands of times.

I am not alone here. Would that I were! The child lies stiffly in bed, furred paws resting atop the covers. This nameless, pajama-clad child is of indeterminate sex and species. Its head resembles a stuffed rabbit’s — not a real rabbit, mind you, but a stuffed rabbit.

“Hello,” I say tentatively. Without looking at me, the child begins its nightly litany of its possessions. If I had eyes, I would roll them, but I am the least-developed Nobody in the history of fictional characters.

Once upon a time, I lived in author’s minds. I frolicked across fresh white pages, danced on the ruled lines. That is what Nobodies are for. Miss Dickinson never realized that there are more than two of us. We are legion, for we are needed.
Most Nobodies yearn to become fixed persons, the characters who run away with stories. I am the less common sort, the kind who enjoys being Nobody. I love basking half-formed in the words, feeling the ideas flow around me. When the character begins to set like gelatin in a mold, I slip out to become Nobody again. After Nobodies become TKs, they soon become Somebodies, and once one is named there’s no hope of being a carefree Nobody again.

But something terrible happened in the green room. Nobody became a character, and so I am trapped here. From time to time I almost escape, but I always snap back to this cheerless place, where the moon moves in the same arc.

—From “The Eternal Goodnight”