1Lena's bedroom turned dark all at once. The lamp clicked off, the hallway light went thin under the door, and suddenly everything was different. She pulled her blanket up to her chin and waited.
2Then — there. A line of silver slipped through the gap in the curtains. One moonbeam, quiet and pale, lying across the floor like a ribbon someone had forgotten.
3Lena slid one foot out from under the blanket and placed it right in the middle of the light. It was cool. It was real.
4She followed the moonbeam with her eyes. It reached the wooden chair by her desk, the one where she always threw her sweater. The sweater made a lumpy shadow on the wall — tall and strange-looking, like a hunched figure.
5Lena looked at the sweater, then at the shadow, then back at the sweater. Just a sweater. Just a shadow. That was all.
6The moonbeam touched the shelf next, grazing the spines of her books, her snow globe, the small clay turtle she had painted herself. She could see the turtle's chipped ear, the smear of green glaze. Still the same old turtle.
7A bigger shadow stretched behind her wardrobe door, wide and very dark. Lena's heart did a small thump. But the wardrobe door was open because she had left it open after choosing her pajamas. She remembered doing it. The shadow belonged to the door. The door belonged to her room.
8Lena breathed in slowly — all the way down to where the blanket pressed her belly — and then let the breath out. The room did not change. It stayed dark. But the moonbeam stayed too, steady and unchanged, resting its silver edge against the wall.
9Outside, the moon was simply there, the way it always was on clear nights, doing nothing more than holding its light above the world. It did not notice Lena, and yet the beam it sent was enough to show her: the sweater, the turtle, the door, the familiar dark shape of everything she already knew.
10She tucked both feet back under the blanket. The moonbeam lay across the floor, still and patient. Lena closed her eyes.
