The Grumble

Maya

There was a monster in our hallway. It was walking toward Lily’s room.

And it was wearing my pajamas.

Maya

Hi. It’s Maya. Welcome to Maya and the Fog.

Leo

And Leo.

Maya

And Leo. Who —

Leo

For the record. I don’t nap.

Maya

That’s the whole problem, Leo.

Okay. Before we start, I have to tell you something. This one’s different. In the other ones, the monster was in the room. Under the bed. On the floor.

This time it was closer than that.

So if you have a blanket — get under it. All the way. I’ll tell you when it’s okay to come out.

Leo

She had a bad dream.

Maya

Leo was asleep. For most of it. Leo also says I had a bad dream, and that people don’t grow claws, and that Moose growls at everybody.

Moose has never growled at me in my life.

So… you decide.

This one’s about the day I didn’t take my nap. It happened on a Saturday. It happened one hour at a time. And it happened because of Leo.

Leo

Allegedly.

Maya

Okay. Here we go.

Maya

So. What you have to understand about naps at our house is, there are rules. Lily naps twice. I nap once, after lunch, one o’clock, every single day. And Leo —

Leo doesn’t nap. Because Leo is eight.

Leo

Eight-year-olds don’t nap. That’s just facts.

Maya

It was a Saturday. Foggy — but the daytime kind of fog, where it’s white instead of grey and you can sort of see the palm tree. We had lunch. And Mom said the thing she says every day at one o’clock.

Mom

Maya. Nap time. Go on up.

Maya

Mo-om.

Mom

One o’clock. You know the deal. Leo, dishes.

Leo

Have a nice nap, Maya. I’ll be down here. Being awake. Like a big kid.

Maya

I am a big kid.

Leo

Big kids don’t nap. Lily naps. You nap. I have never napped in my entire life.

Maya

That’s not true. I’ve seen pictures.

Leo

Those pictures are not admissible.

Maya

But here’s what I decided, going up the stairs. I decided that today, I was going to be big. I was going to go in my room, and get in my bed, and not nap. On purpose. I was going to lie there with my eyes open for the whole entire hour, and then come downstairs, and Leo would see.

So I’m in my bed. Blanket up to my chin. Eyes open. I’m looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. There’s forty-one. I count them. Then I count them backwards. Then I count them by twos, which is hard, because there’s forty-one.

Mom comes to check. I hear her on the stairs. I shut my eyes and I do my sleeping breathing — slow, and a little bit loud, like Leo does when he’s faking.

Mom

Good girl.

Maya

I open my eyes. I’m not asleep. I’m winning.

And Moose comes to the door, like he does every nap. Moose naps with me. That’s our deal. He gets on the bed and lies on my feet and we both go to sleep.

Except he doesn’t come in.

He stands in the doorway. And he looks at me. And he does this thing with his head, like — like he’s listening to something. Then he lies down in the hall. Outside the door.

Moose. Come on. Come up.

He put his chin on his paws and he watched me. The whole hour. Like I was a squirrel.

And here’s the thing nobody told Leo. There’s a rule at our house that’s older than Mom’s rules. Nobody wrote it down. But Moose knows it. Every dog knows it.

Everybody has a Grumble.

It lives somewhere behind your tummy. And it sleeps when you sleep. That’s what naps are for. Naps aren’t for you. Naps are for the thing inside you.

Leo

That’s not a rule. That’s a feeling. You’re describing a feeling.

Maya

It was a feeling.

Until about twenty to two.

Maya

Twenty to two. I’m still in bed. Still winning. And I yawn.

That’s not how I yawn. My yawns are little. That one was long, and low, and at the very bottom of it — right at the end — there was a rumble. Like a truck going by on another street.

Leo

It was a truck going by on another street.

Maya

It was inside my mouth, Leo.

Two o’clock. The clock in the hall goes bong, and Mom comes up to get me.

Mom

Okay, sleepyhead, up you — Oh. Oh no. Look at that face.

Maya

What face.

Mom

Uh oh. Somebody didn’t nap. Somebody’s turning into a little monster.

Maya

She was joking.

She wasn’t wrong.

So I go downstairs. And my eyes itch. Not like sleepy-itch. Like there’s sand in them. And everything Leo says is so annoying. Every word. He says "hi." Annoying. He says "want to play Lego?" Annoying. He breathes. Annoying.

Leo

I remember this part. You threw a pillow at me for breathing.

Maya

You were doing it loud.

Three o’clock. Bong. I’m on the couch. Moose is on the couch. And from my middle — from right behind my tummy, where the Grumble lives — there’s a sound.

Leo

That’s your tummy. You’re hungry. Eat a cracker.

Maya

It wasn’t my tummy.

And I know it wasn’t my tummy, because my tummy has never made Moose move.

He gets up. Real slow. And he goes to the other end of the couch. And he sits there, looking at me, with his ears back.

Leo

…He did do that.

Maya

Four o’clock. Bong. My hands feel heavy. Like somebody filled them up with sand. I pick up a crayon and it feels like a log. And Leo asks me something, and I answer, and —

Leo

…Why are you talking like that.

Maya

Like what?

Leo

Never mind. You sounded — never mind.

Maya

I didn’t hear it. That’s the scary part. I said something, and it came out of my mouth, and I didn’t hear what it sounded like. But Leo did.

Leo

It sounded like you. But lower. Like you were talking from the bottom of a well.

Maya

Dinner. Spaghetti. My favourite. And I’m not hungry. I’m starving and I’m not hungry, both at the same time, which doesn’t make sense unless you’ve been there. My fork is heavy. I put it down and it goes —

— like that. Like it’s made of iron.

Mom

Somebody’s very tired.

Maya

I’m not tired.

And under the table — where Moose sits every single dinner, under my chair, because I drop things —

— he’s not there. He’s under Leo’s chair. Moose has never sat under Leo’s chair. Leo doesn’t drop anything. Leo’s a neat eater.

Leo

Thank you.

Maya

It wasn’t a compliment.

And then I look at the window. You know how, when it’s dark outside and the light’s on inside, the window turns into a mirror? I look at the window. And there’s the table, and Mom, and Leo, and a girl in my chair with my hair.

And her eyes are grey.

Not blue. My eyes are blue. Hers are grey. Grey like the fog. Grey like the water in the bathtub after you’ve been muddy.

I blink. Blue.

I look again. Grey.

And I’m sitting at dinner, with spaghetti, and I’m thinking things I don’t want to think. What if it doesn’t go back? What if I go to sleep tonight and it’s still in there? What if it’s the one who gets up in the morning — and it puts on my clothes, and it goes to my school, and everybody thinks it’s me? What if nobody can tell?

Leo

I could tell.

Maya

…Yeah. You could.

Maya

Mom came in to say goodnight.

Mom

Lights out, you two. Big sleep tonight, okay? You’ll feel better in the morning. Door open or closed?

Maya

Open.

Mom

Open it is. Night, kids.

Maya

So it’s dark now. Leo’s asleep.

Baby Lily’s down the hall, in her crib, making her little sleepy noises.

And Moose is —

Moose is in the hall again. Lying across Lily’s door. Not mine. Lily’s.

And I can’t sleep. I’m so tired my bones hurt and I can’t sleep. And here’s why. I’m not the one in charge of sleeping anymore.

I can feel it standing up inside me. Slow. Like I’m a coat. And it’s putting me on.

The hall light makes a shadow on my wall. It’s my shadow. It’s always been my shadow. Except tonight it’s taller than me. And its fingers —

Its fingers are too long.

And there’s a sound. Click. Click. Click. On my blanket. And I look down at my hands, and my nails are grey. And they’re clicking.

Leo

Maya. Stop scratching.

Maya

I wasn’t scratching.

It was.

And then my feet swing off the bed.

I didn’t do that. I want you to know I didn’t do that. I’m lying there and I watch my feet swing off the bed and put themselves on the floor, and I’m inside, going — no. No no no —

— and I stand up. It stands me up. Like a puppet. And it’s heavy — my whole body’s heavy, like it’s full of wet sand — and it turns me toward the door.

Moose growls. From the hall. At me. Moose has never growled at me in my life.

And I’m thinking — what does it want? It’s been awake since one o’clock. It’s been getting bigger all day. It’s hungry, the way I was hungry at dinner, the starving kind, and it turns my head, and it looks down the hall — at the room at the end — at the one door in the house that Moose is lying in front of —

— and I understand what it wants.

And my feet start walking.

Out my door. Into the hall. Bare feet on the wood, slow — one, and then the other — and my nails clicking, and my breathing is wrong. It’s too slow. I’m scared, and when you’re scared you breathe fast. This is slow. In. Out. Like something that’s never been scared of anything.

And through Lily’s door, I hear her. One little sleepy — "ba."

And it turns my whole body toward the sound. The way Moose turns when he hears a squirrel.

Moose is lying across the door. And it steps over him. My foot goes right over my own dog. And my hand — my grey-nail hand — goes up, and it touches Lily’s door.

And the door opens. One inch.

Maya

Moose is standing in the gap.

He’s not growling anymore. He’s just — standing. In the one inch. With his whole body. And he’s looking up at me, at my grey eyes, with his brown ones.

And he will not move.

Leo

He didn’t move.

Maya

He didn’t move.

Maya

And here’s the thing I didn’t know. Leo was awake. Leo had been awake since "stop scratching." And Leo had followed me down the hall, in his socks, without a sound, because Leo can be sneaky when he wants to.

Leo

I’m very sneaky.

Maya

And I hear him behind me. And it turns my head — slow — and Leo sees me. He sees the eyes. He sees the shadow on the hall wall with the long fingers. He sees my hand on Lily’s door.

And he doesn’t say "physics."

Leo

Maya. Come back to bed.

Maya

…I can’t.

Leo

Okay. Okay. Then I’m going to tell you a story.

Maya

And this is the part where Leo saved my life. Because there is one thing in this world that has always, always put me to sleep. Since I was Lily’s size. And Leo knows it, because it’s his.

The airplane story.

Leo

The airplane story is fascinating.

Maya

The airplane story is the most boring story ever told by a human person.

Leo

It’s about lift.

So. An airplane has four forces. Lift. Weight. Thrust. And drag. Lift is what pushes it up. It comes from the wings —

Maya

And my hand comes off the door.

Leo

— because the wings are shaped like this, flat on the bottom, curved on top, so the air on top has to go faster —

Maya

And my feet turn around. Not because I told them to. Because they’re bored.

Leo

— and when air goes faster it gets lighter, that’s science, that’s actual science, and the plane gets sucked up into the light air —

Maya

And the clicking stops. I look at my hands. My nails are pink. Well — one of them’s still grey. The thumb. But it’s going.

Leo

— and thrust is the engines, and drag is the air pushing back, and if the thrust is bigger than the drag, and the lift is bigger than the weight —

Maya

And my shadow on the wall is getting shorter. And the fingers are getting normal. And I’m back in our room, and Leo’s got the blanket up —

Leo

— then the plane goes up. And it needs a runway. A long one. And sometimes a second runway —

Maya

And I yawn. And it’s a real one. A little one. A Maya one. No rumble at the bottom.

Leo

— and that’s why the wings are shaped like that.

Maya

And that’s the last thing I heard.

And the Grumble went to sleep with me. It had to. That’s the rule.

Maya

In the morning, I woke up, and the first thing I did was go to the bathroom mirror.

Blue. Blue eyes. Pink nails. All ten.

And Moose was on my bed. On my feet. Like always. Like nothing happened. Like he hadn’t stood in a doorway all night with his whole body.

Leo

You sleepwalked.

Maya

I know what I did.

Leo

…Your eyes were grey.

Maya

I know.

Leo

I’m going to keep telling the airplane story. Just in case.

Maya

Okay.

Mom

Morning, kids. Nap today, Maya?

Maya

Yes.

Mom

Well. Okay then.

Maya

So. That’s what happened.

Leo

That’s what she says happened.

Maya

I nap now. Every day. One o’clock. I don’t even fight it. I go up and I get in and Moose gets on my feet and I’m gone.

Leo

Because you’re five.

Maya

Because of the Grumble, Leo.

But here’s the thing.

Leo doesn’t nap. Leo hasn’t napped in three years.

So I’ve started watching his shadow. In the afternoons. When the sun comes in the window.

It’s a little tall.

Leo

…It’s not tall.

Maya

It’s a little tall.

Leo

I’m going to go take a nap.

Maya

Good.

See you next time. In the fog.