A Scary Night

I’m good at telling stories about things. Like my friends or a community of elves. So today I’m going to tell you a story about me and my best friend Angelina. 

Once, we were having a sleepover. Your typical Saturday night one, we played games and watched videos. We were young. Eight or nine. 

We were in our beds, trying to fall asleep, but failing, because we were talking and giggling. All of a sudden, we heard “I’m Olaf, and I like warm hugs!” 

We froze. “What was that?” I whispered. 

We brushed it off and started talking and giggling again. 

“My legs! I can’t feel my legs!” 

We froze again. “Seriously, I’m actually scared now.” Angelina said. 

We stopped talking and started trying to fall asleep, for real this time. 

“Look, the sky’s awake.” 

This time, I said “Okay, I’m going to go.” 

I took a deep breath, and found my reading light. I flipped it on, and stepped out of the bunk bed. I walked down the creaky bunk bed steps, and out onto the floor. I tiptoed towards the noise. 

“My legs! I can’t feel my legs!” 

I shivered, bouncing the light back and forth. I approached the noise. It was coming from the stuffed animal bin. I sifted through it until I came across a stuffed Olaf right on the top. This one could be activated by pressing a button where it would say different things. I dropped it back in the bin and hurried back to the stairs. I climbed them and got back in bed. I turned the light off and said, “It was an Olaf stuffed animal.” 

Angelina laughed and said, “It scared me, that’s funny.” 

But I didn’t laugh. Or smile. “To make it talk you have to press a button. How could we press the button from up here?” 

Her smile evaporated as she put it together. “I-I don’t know.” 

I nodded and said, “Well I think we’re okay now. Let’s just try to pretend everything’s okay. That’s how I get through hard stuff.” 

Angelina nodded. We got close and managed to fall asleep. 

Just because I always laugh at it, what can’t compensate is that no one else was in the room. And still it talked. And I shiver to imagine what happened that hot summer night. Sorry. I’m bad at being scary, aren’t I?