Stars Under the Bed
by Gemma Burnham, age 14
Emma was afraid of the dark.
Most kids by age twelve usually are fine sleeping by themselves in the pitch-blackness of a bedroom. But Emma, who was thirteen, was not and would scare herself nightly into a wild panic, bursting from her room and into her parents’, insisting that she had heard or seen something. Then it would take hours for Emma to calm down enough to go back to bed. Over and over, her parents would try as patiently and as calmly as they could to explain to their daughter how there was nothing scary about the dark and she was simply letting her imagination get the better of her. It wasn’t that Emma didn’t try to follow her parents’ advice. Every time her mind started getting out of control, thinking up unrealistic horrors, she would remind herself that there was no such thing as “monsters under the bed” or “a monster in the closet.” But try as she might, her imagination became too strong and dominated her so that once again, she would find herself screaming through the house.
This was how every night went for the family. At the end of the day, as the sun slowly ducked behind the horizon, both Emma and her parents would dread the coming hours, knowing that they would be filled with angst, fear, and frustration.
One night, her mother gave her a command that would change her life. As the sun began to set and cast one last brilliant light upon the world, she asked Emma to walk to Mrs. Line’s house, their neighbor, and drop off some pastries she had baked for Mrs. Line’s family, since she had just had a baby. Emma, being the obedient child that she was, dutifully took the basket, and started out. The Lines lived about one mile away, so it was a relatively quick journey to and from the house. As Emma walked along, she admired the distant fields as they seemed to burst into flame as the sun’s rays lit them up. A soft breeze caressed her face, and she closed her eyes in joyful bliss. Every now and then, a delicious aroma wafted up from the basket she was holding, and it made her stomach gurgle.
Soon, she came upon the Line’s yellow paint-chipped house. The house seemed quiet and abandoned, so it took Emma a little bit of courage to walk up the broken porch steps to the dirty, white door. She knocked and Mrs. Line opened the door. She looked down at Emma with a smile and invited her in. Inside, the Line’s home was very neat and modern, a very stark contrast to the outside of the house.
A soft fire was burning in the furnace and the whole Line family was gathered around it. Emma realized the reason the house had been so quiet was because the family was in the middle of praying the Rosary. Three sets of ocean-blue eyes turned upon her and the children squealed with delight when they saw the basket full of goodies.
Mrs. Line invited Emma to stay and finish the Rosary with them, but Emma, though it was tempting, apologized and said she needed to get home before dark.
So, she started the short journey home. Though the sun was almost completely gone, Emma could still see the light shining on the distant mountains and setting them ablaze. As she walked, she hummed a happy little tune to herself, but as the land about her darkened, she stopped humming and increased her walking pace a bit. She was only about half a mile away from her house but still, she wanted to get there as soon as possible.
When she was about a quarter of a mile away, something caught her eye — a white flash in the sky moving at a very high speed to her right. It took a moment for her mind to realize that she had just seen a shooting star. She looked to the East where the star had disappeared and imagined it crash-landing in one of the fields beyond. Then she looked up to gaze at the night sky. How many stars there were! It looked as if someone had dropped a thousand little shiny particles of diamond that would now permanently dust the sky. Some of them twinkled daintily while others shone strong and bright. Emma knew that those that twinkled were distant stars millions of light years away and those that were very bright were planets. In her mind, she went through all the planet names she had learned in school last winter: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Of all the planets she had learned about, the one she had always longed to visit had been Saturn. It was the biggest and, in her opinion, strongest of all the planets.
As she continued on her way, she saw some deer grazing quietly to her left not fifty feet away. As she stopped and looked, the deer’s heads snapped up and stared at her with wide, alert eyes. Their muscles tensed as they prepared to bound off in their graceful way if necessary. Emma smiled and whispered, “Don’t mind me. Just continue with your dinner. I’ll be on my way.”
Carefully, and as silently as she could, she left the deer in peace.
Emma continued on. When she could barely make out her house in the distance, she saw a group of bluebonnets swaying gently in the cool, night breeze. She stopped again. She had passed that particular patch of blue bonnets numerous times in the day but never had she seen them at night. In the day, they were just a cheery patch of flowers adding to the various other colors dotting the green, silky grass. At night, though, they looked beautifully mysterious and almost magical. Emma walked over and picked a couple to bring home. She buried her nose deep into one and sniffed, letting the sweet aroma of the flower calm her.
Eventually, Emma walked up to her front porch. But before she went inside the house, she stopped and turned. She had just walked through a whole other world full of soft diamonds to light the way for the late, weary traveler, deer, and other wildlife that preferred to live in the comforting cloak of the darkness, and all the beautiful plants that took on a whole different aura as soon as the sun set. Surprisingly, Emma was reluctant to leave this dark, but beautiful world behind. She knew as soon as she lay in bed, the next time she got up, it would all be gone. The sun’s light would have outshone the stars and moon, the animals would go in hiding, and the flowers would be happy and light again.
Emma comforted herself though by knowing that this gorgeous world would turn up again after the sun went to bed and the moon and stars would become the temporary rulers of the sky.
With one last longing look at what lay behind her, Emma slipped inside the house. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table knitting and her father was reading a book. They both looked up as soon as Emma entered the kitchen. They didn’t seem in the slightest concerned that their daughter had been gone one hour longer than she usually was. Just as Emma was about to explain what had taken her so long, both her parents with wise, knowing looks, winked at her.
That night, Emma had no trouble falling asleep. Instead of the monsters and horrors that usually filled her mind, thoughts of the magical world she had been in only minutes before played in her mind like a never-ending roller-coaster ride. The same thing happened every night after that. She, with her parents, would go out and take an evening walk under the humble little moon and would try to discover new things every night. In this way, Emma soon ceased being afraid of the dark. She realized the dark contained nothing scary, rather, it was a world that hardly anybody explored, a world that was just as beautiful as the day in its own particular way. Emma no longer imagined, “monsters under her bed.” Instead, she imagined stars.
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