Into the Light

By Debbie Robertson

“Mom, I’m home.”

Luz clicked shut the heavy oak door and gently dropped her faux fur backpack on the bench nearby.

A stack of mail, as usual, was piled on the table in the hall, but there was something in it that caught her eye: something pink.

Her hands grabbed at the envelope.  At school, Marissa had hinted that there might be something waiting for her….

She ripped at the flap and pulled out its contents as a shower of glitter fluttered to her feet.

YOU ARE INVITED…

“Yippee!”  Her smile beamed brightly as she opened the card.

Just as quickly, her face clouded.

“No, not a slumber party!  No, no, no, no, NO!”

 She crumpled the invitation in her hand.

 “They’ll all find out….And they’ll all laugh at me!”  Luz’s eyes welled with tears.

Slumping to the floor, Luz leaned her head back into the wall and closed her eyes.

Almost immediately, she heard the pad-pad-pad of four small feet gently making their way down the carpeted stairs that led to the second floor.  

Then a wet nose nuzzled under her elbow.  She looked down to see Mollie, her seven-year-old little gray Lhasa.

“Oh, Mollie, you always seem to know when I need you….Thanks for coming,” she said as she scooped Mollie up into her arms, holding her close.  “Let’s go outside.  Mom must be out there, and I need to swing.”

Luz’s orange tennis shoes thumped on the black and white tile floor as the two headed to the back yard.

She found her mother, as usual, hands covered with dirt and knee-deep amidst her flowers, cutting off bouquets of periwinkles and impatiens, which she would later scatter randomly around the house in makeshift vases.  

“Hi, Mom,” she said, making her way to the swing hanging from the magnolia tree in the back of the garden.

“Day okay?” her mom asked, clipping off a particularly prize white and red periwinkle, its merry face in contrast to Luz’s clouded one.

“Okay…”  Luz faked a smile and plopped down on the swing.

Her legs pumped her higher and higher, until she was almost even with the branches of the tree, and, with each arc of the swing and with each view into the sky beyond, her heart began to open again, and she even laughed when Mollie appeared in front of her with a leaf attached to one ear.

“You nut,” she murmured as she deftly jumped off the swing.  “I love you.”

At dinner, just her mom and her, they sat on stools at the breakfast bar and talked.  

Putting down her water glass, Mrs. Welles put forth, “I noticed that you got a letter today….”

Luz’s face fell.   “Oh, Mom, I thought I’d be excited, but it’s the worst ever.  It was an invitation to Marissa’s birthday party—you know, Marissa, the most popular girl in school?” 

“Yes?”  Mrs. Welles’ face was quizzical.

Luz looked like she was ready to cry.  “Mom, it’s not just a birthday party; it’s a slumber party, and—”

“And you’re afraid of the dark,” Mrs. Welles said sympathetically.  “And you sleep with a teddy bear and need to have on all the lights….”

“They’ll all laugh at me!”  Luz completely gave in to her tears.

Mrs. Welles waited, holding Luz’s hand and stroking her hair.  The kitchen clock chimed seven o’clock.

 Finally, Luz looked up.  “Mom, what am I going to do?”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” she consoled, “but I’m sure you’ll think of something.  You’ll figure it out.”  She patted her on the back.  “Now, scoot.  I’ll do the dishes; I know you’ve got some homework to do.”

Later that night, as Luz was getting ready for bed, after brushing her teeth and fluffing up her pillows all around her, she sighed.

“Okay, self,” she started, “it’s time we had a little talk.”  

She looked at her reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite the foot of her bed.  She put on her sternest face. 

“Things have got to change.  You’re ten years old, almost in middle school.   You can’t go around still being afraid of the dark…. 

 “So, no Mr. Peeples…” She snatched her beloved teddy bear from his spot by her pillow and plopped him down on the window seat across the room.

 “No closet light either,” she announced as she firmly shut the closet door.

“And definitely no night light!”  She flipped off the switch and crawled into bed, pulling the covers all the way over her head.  

Then…

She waited.

Then…

 Her heart started pounding.

Then…

 Her lower lip started quivering.

Then…

A tear fell and made a wet spot on the pillow.

“I can’t! I can’t!  I can’t!”  She flung off the covers and ran to the closet, grabbing Mr. Peeples on the way.  

On went the closet light, on went the night light, and back under the covers with her teddy bear held tight to her chest went Luz.

And so she slept.

The next day at school, there was a tight huddle of girls at the table on the far side of the cafeteria when Luz walked in. Marissa, all smiles, was right in the center of the group.

Luz’s best friend, Sara, spotted her and waved her to come over.  

“Aren’t you excited?”  Sara grabbed her by both arms and jumped up and down.  “I can’t wait!  Marissa says we’re going to have an inflatable trampoline and a food truck and karaoke and we don’t have to go to sleep until one o’clock.  Doesn’t it sound like so much fun?”  Sara’s face was aglow and her voice all in a rush.

Luz forced a smile.  “Yeah, it sounds great….” She shrugged off Sara’s grasp. “Uh, I just remembered I’ve got to check something out of the library.  I’ll see you later.”

 She turned, leaving the gaggle of girls with their “And I’ll bring my iPod!” and their “Do you think we could have a bubble machine?” chatter behind.

She made her way up the stairs to the library with a heavy heart.

That night, again, Luz gave it another try:

Mr. Peeples on the windowsill; closet door shut; night light off.

That night, again, a pounding heart, quivering lips, and tears on the pillow.

Once more, the lights blazed through the night in the bedroom of Luz Welles.  

On Friday afternoon after school, she was up in her room, packing her sleeping bag for the party.  

 “This is going to be a disaster,” she lamented as she listlessly tossed in her pajamas.  

“Sorry, ol’ pal,” she said, patting Mr. Peeples on the head.  “You’ll have to make it without me tonight.” 

His golden glass eyes were staring straight into hers.  She picked him up and held him eye level.  He seemed to peer right inside her.

She squinted her eyes and cocked her head.  “What are you trying to tell me?”

She looked deeply into his eyes.  Then she looked away.

“Hm… Maybe that will work….Yes, maybe it will.”  She nodded her head.

 Tucking him deep inside her sleeping bag, she said, “Okay, you’ll just tickle my toes all night.  Nobody will know the difference.”

She smiled.  “But I’ll know.  And that’s all that matters.”

As she hefted her sleeping bag onto her shoulder, it knocked into her bedside table.  Her Kindle rattled to the floor.  

Reaching to pick it up with her left hand, she inadvertently turned on the switch. The screen flicked on, first a winking light, and then a steady glow.

At it, too, she stared for a moment.  Its light was looking back at her, also seeming to peer inside her.

 Her body shuddered.  She blinked and jolted slightly.

 “It just might work!  Worth a try anyway.”

 She slipped her Kindle into the outside pocket of the sleeping bag, and with a lighter step made her way downstairs.

The party was just as planned, with an inflatable trampoline, TWO food trucks, karaoke, a bubble machine, and no one even thinking about going to sleep as the clock struck twelve.

 But, as promised, when one o’clock came around, Marissa’s parents stuck their heads inside the room and called out good-naturedly, “Lights out, girls.  Time for sleep.  We know some of you have softball games in the morning.”

 Marissa ran over to give her parents a hug.  “Night, Mom and Dad.  Thanks for a great party.”

This was the moment Luz was waiting for.  She screwed up her courage.  “Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, would you mind if I read for just a little bit?  We’ve been having so much fun, and I think I just need to unwind a little so I can go to sleep.  I have my Kindle, so I won’t bother anyone.”

 Mrs. Wilson laughed, “I think that would be all right, Luz.”  She closed the door gently. 

Luz snuggled deep into her sleeping bag, her head disappearing altogether and her toes losing themselves in the fur of Mr. Peeples.  She had been reading for about a minute when she stopped.  

There was something strange going on.

Through the thickness of her sleeping bag, all around the room, she could just make out other rectangular lights shining dimly forth.  She couldn’t believe it.  From each sleeping bag in the room, from each girl in the room, a Kindle hummed.

She lay there for a minute, thinking.

 Then she thought for a minute more, just lying there.

A little more boldly now, she screwed up her courage a second time in five minutes.  “You guys, I have a confession.  The truth is…I’m afraid of the dark.”  

Then…

She waited.

Then…

“Me, too,” came a meek reply.

“Me, too,” came another.

Then a chorus…

“Me, too.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too!”  Marissa’s voice drowned out the others. 

The room went silent for a moment.

Then someone started to laugh.  Soon, all the sleeping bags were shaking with laughter.  

 Heads popped out.

 Marissa was the first to speak.  “Let me get this straight.  We’re all afraid of the dark?”

Seven heads nodded.

She laughed.  “Just one more thing…Does anyone else have a teddy bear here, too?”

“Well, I do,” Luz said.

“Me, too.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too.”

Almost by a secret signal, each and every girl dove deep into her sleeping bag, and then there emerged, triumphantly, a wondrous assortment of teddy bears of all shapes and sizes.  

It was as if the whole room seemed to sigh. 

About an hour later, Mrs. Wilson came to check on the girls.  When she opened the door, this is what she saw:

The girls had rearranged themselves into a circle, all their heads into the center and feet flaring out like the petals of a sunflower.  Next to each were the soft glows of each girl’s Kindle, and in each girl’s arm was a teddy bear.

 And on every face there was a smile.

Debbie Robertson divides her year between the United States and France, loving the summer and winter skyline sunrises of Houston, Texas, and reveling in the spring and fall mountain sunsets in the Alpes de Haute Provence. Her works have appeared most recently in Heimat Review, Academy for the Heart and Mind, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Ekphrastic Review, Adelaide Literary Journal, and Toute la Vallée, a French journal. She has written plays and “operas” for children’s theatre, and parallel text (English-French) short stories.