The Overnight Guest

by Heather Gudenkauf

“Okay. ’Night, Mom,” Josie said, but Lynne stopped her by tugging gently on her ponytail. “Not so fast,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re too big to give me a hug and kiss good-night too, are you?” Josie peeked over at Becky, who was waiting in the doorway, intently examining her fingernails. Looking back, Josie wished that she would have given her mother a long embrace. That she would have taken the time to remember the tickle of her mother’s curtain of hair tumbling over her as she pulled Josie close. But she didn’t. Josie gave her a quick hug and slipped away before her mother could kiss her forehead like she usually did each night.

“Good night, Dad,” she hollered as they hurried past the living room and tromped up the stairs. “G’night,” he called groggily. Later, Josie would say she wished she would have taken the time to go to him, leaned into him as he lay back in his shabby recliner, felt his evening whiskers rasp against her face and said good-night.

“I can almost grab them,” Becky cried, lifting her free hand toward the sky. Josie pressed her lips together to keep her laughter inside, but she’d never felt so free as she did in that moment, soaring into the air, the fingers of her left hand interlocked with her best friend’s, the fingers of her right hand extended to the sky. The stars felt so close. Like a pile of jacks to be scooped up in her palm. A fistful of stars. In that moment, such a thing didn’t seem impossible.

She checked her watch; 1:00 a.m. Wylie hated these quiet moments. It felt like the entire world was asleep except for her. The moment the dove-colored light peeked between the edges of the curtains, she would relax. She would close her eyes, and for just a moment, she would be like everyone else.

There were so many things to be afraid of, but the dark wasn’t one of them. The girl didn’t mind the dark one bit. There were three kinds of dark. In the morning, there was the gray-edged dark that gradually slid into blues and pinks and meant that most likely, her father would be going to work soon. It was always better when her father was away though it made her mother more anxious.

Then there was after-dinner dark. This was the time after she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She would sit on the sofa between her mom and dad and watch one of the movies that they pushed into the little machine that sat beneath the television. After-dinner dark was made up of hazy purples and navy blues and gave her an all-is-right-with-the-world feeling. Watching TV together, sometimes sharing a bowl of popcorn, told the girl that her family wasn’t all that different than the ones in the movies.

But after-dinner dark was also the most unsettling time of day. If her father was in a bad mood or her mother sad, there was nowhere for her to go. She had to listen to the angry words, the tears, and the sharp slaps and punches. In these times, she would go to her favorite spot beneath the window and look at books in the fading light peeking through the gap between the shade and pane of glass.

Night had finally found her unprepared, and Wylie felt she might suffocate. Until now, she had learned to control light and dark. She couldn’t outrun it any longer. She squeezed her eyes shut.