Dad nodded. “I think that’s the right idea. And just in case anyone gets any funny ideas, you girls should both know, if anyone leaves in the night, I’ll call the police. Right away. End of story. Am I understood?”

Jasper and I both nodded.

Somehow, we all went to bed after that, like it was a normal night. We took quick showers, brushed our teeth, and crawled under our covers. Me in my bed, and Jasper on the floor in a sleeping bag and a borrowed nightgown.

“Good night,” I whispered.

Jasper didn’t reply. She just turned away from me.

I lay there in the darkness, staring at her unforgiving back, feeling like we’d come to a wall at the end of a very dark hallway. But then I happened to glance down at the rag rug next to her pillow. And I remembered the mouse.

“Where’d you go?” I whispered. I sat up and peered at the floor around the rug, at the spot where, a few hours earlier, a tiny body had been laid. But the mouse was gone. There was no sign of him at all.

I closed my eyes and slept.

Conversation O’Clock

When I woke, it was to the sound of Jasper snoring lightly on the floor beside me. She was curled up into a tiny ball and had sort of wiggled her way over toward my bed in the night, so that she was sleeping almost directly beneath me. I peered down at her and noticed for the first time that her lashes weren’t brown but a deep dark red. I lay there like that for a minute, watching her snore. She seemed so calm, so at home, curled safely in my room. But watching her put an ache in my belly. What would happen to her? I didn’t want her to wake up. I wanted her to sleep on and on. I wondered what she was dreaming about.

It was still really early. Outside the window, it was almost dark, but I could hear birds. I slipped carefully out of bed and stepped over my sleeping friend. Then I crept across the room. And out in the hallway, I did something I hadn’t done in over a year: I made my way down the hall to my parents’ room, where I knocked lightly on the door and then went in.

They were sleeping on opposite sides of the bed, as far from each other as possible. Mom had fallen asleep with her small reading lamp on, and her book had dropped to the floor beside her. Dad had his face tucked down, under the covers, but I could see the top of his head, where the hair was thinning. They faced away from each other.