I jumped down.

“Shh! We’re sleeping,” Zoe whispered.

I grabbed my phone from my bunk and aimed the light at Zoe.

She was on her knees, holding her blanket down over a lump.

“What’s under there?”

The lump twitched.

“You didn’t.”

“He didn’t want to stay home all alone.”

I ripped off the blanket. There was Henry. “Rabbits don’t get lonely.”

“Mini lops do!” Zoe stroked Henry’s droopy ears.

“Where did you put him when we went to dinner?”

“In his cage. But he wanted to cuddle before bed.”

Zoe didn’t put up a fight when I told her we had to put Henry back in his cage. She’d either gotten in enough cuddles or was too tired to keep chasing him around the bed.

Before long, she was asleep. I could tell from the way she was breathing. It sounded almost like what you hear when you hold one of those big seashells up to your ear.

“Go to sleep, Slick.” Winnie’s voice was extra loud and scratchy in the dark.

“How’d you know I was awake?”

“ESP.”

“Really?” It would explain a lot if Winnie had the power to read minds.

“No, not really. It’s bright as day in here, and your eyes are open.” Winnie was in the bunk across from mine. She had some theory that the air would be better on the top.

“I can’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”

“That helping?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you gonna do better because you stayed up all night stressifying yourself?” This was followed by the sound of Tic Tacs rattling.

Just then, there was a thud and a groan.

“Josh?”

“I was dreaming,” Josh said, soft and slow like maybe he wasn’t fully awake. “We were at a town meeting and…we were all wearing Chef JJ wigs. Then something happened. I don’t remember what. I think that’s when I fell out of bed.” He pulled his pillow and blanket down onto the floor. “I’m gonna stay down here.”

Josh usually sleeps diagonally because he’s so tall, but the bunk beds were too narrow for that so he’d hung his legs over the end with his feet resting on the table. Not an easy position to hold in your sleep, I guess.

“Sorry I woke you,” Josh whispered.

“You didn’t wake anybody.” Winnie paused and we could hear the crunching of Tic Tacs. “Slick’s planning to stay up all night and work himself up into a lather.”

“Work himself into a what?” Josh asked.

“Oh, you know, get good and stressified so he can bomb tomorrow and get kicked off on the first day. Like pulling a Band-Aid off nice and fast, right, Slick?”

“Maybe he’s just too excited to sleep,” Josh said.

“Is that it, Slick? You excited or stressified? Which one is it?”

“I’m just worried that everything I know about cooking is slipping out of my brain as I lie here.”

“That would be stressified then,” Winnie said.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Josh said. “My mom does this thing if I’m having trouble falling asleep the night before a game. It’s going to sound kind of dumb—”