The Girl Who Argued With the Moon

Beatrix could not sleep.

She had tried counting sheep, but the sheep kept wandering off. She had tried closing her eyes really tight, but that just made her see little sparkly dots. She had tried lying perfectly still like a log, but then her nose got itchy, and everyone knows you can't be a log with an itchy nose.

So Beatrix did what she always did when she couldn't sleep. She climbed out of bed, dragged her blanket to the window seat, and pressed her forehead against the cool glass.

And there was the Moon, fat and golden, hanging just above the rooftops like a lantern someone had forgotten to put away.

"Good evening, Beatrix," said the Moon.

Now, some children might have been surprised to hear the Moon talk. But Beatrix had been having conversations with the Moon since she was four, so she simply said, "Evening."

"You should be asleep," said the Moon.

"You should mind your own business," said Beatrix. But she said it in a friendly way, because she and the Moon understood each other.

The Moon chuckled, which made its light wobble just slightly across her bedroom floor. Then it said, "I was just thinking about something, Beatrix. Would you like to hear it?"

"Depends," said Beatrix, because she was the kind of person who liked to know what she was agreeing to before she agreed to it.

"I was thinking," said the Moon, "that everybody in the whole world is exactly where they are supposed to be. Right now, at this very moment. Everything is precisely as it should be."

Beatrix sat up straighter.

"No it isn't," she said.

The Moon blinked — or at least, a thin cloud passed over it, which looked very much like blinking. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said, no it isn't. Everything is NOT precisely as it should be." Beatrix pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders. "Because today at school, Marcus took the last chocolate muffin at lunch even though he SAW me reaching for it. He looked right at me while he did it. And then he smiled."

"Perhaps Marcus was meant to have that muffin," said the Moon gently.

"He was NOT meant to have that muffin. I had been thinking about that muffin since breakfast. I had a relationship with that muffin."

The Moon seemed to consider this. "Well, but in the grand scheme of—"

"And ANOTHER thing," said Beatrix, because once Beatrix got started, she was like a snowball rolling downhill. "My little brother Alfie broke my favorite crayon today. The Midnight Plum one. That is the best crayon in the whole box, and you can't just BUY Midnight Plum. It only comes in the big box, the sixty-four box, and Mom said we aren't getting another sixty-four box until Christmas."

"Ah," said the Moon. "But perhaps—"

"That's TEN MONTHS without Midnight Plum. Ten months! Do you know how many pictures I'll have to draw without any Midnight Plum in them? They'll all look wrong. I'll draw a sunset and the whole sky will just be missing its most important part."

"Beatrix—"

"AND," she said, because she was on a roll now and there was absolutely no stopping her, "Mrs. Patterson said my story about the dragon who ran a bakery was 'very creative' but that I needed to work on my spelling. But the dragon's name was Xylophoneus, and I don't think ANYONE can spell Xylophoneus, so that is not really a fair criticism."

The Moon was quiet for a moment. Its light pooled softly on Beatrix's bedroom rug, making the pattern of flowers look like they were glowing.

"Are you quite finished?" asked the Moon.

"I have more," said Beatrix. "But I'll pause."

"How kind," said the Moon. "So you're telling me that the world is NOT as it should be. Because of a muffin, a crayon, and a dragon named Xylophoneus."

"When you say it like that, you make it sound small."

"I'm not trying to make it sound like anything. I'm just repeating what you told me."

Beatrix frowned. She stared at the Moon for a long time. The Moon stared back, because that is what the Moon does.

"It's not just those things," she said, quieter now. "It's that... today felt all wrong. Like I kept reaching for things and they kept sliding away. And everyone just kept going like it was fine, and I was the only one who noticed that it WASN'T fine."

The Moon's light shifted, warmer now, more golden. "I see," it said. "So you weren't really arguing with me about the muffin."

"I mean, I AM arguing about the muffin. That was genuinely unfair. But also..." She pulled her knees up to her chest. "Also the other thing."

They sat together in the quiet — the girl and the Moon — while somewhere down the street a dog barked twice and then stopped, and somewhere farther away a car hummed past, and somewhere even farther than that, a train called out in its long, low voice.

"Beatrix," said the Moon, "can I tell you what I see from up here?"

"You can try."

"I see your house. And I see Marcus's house, six streets over. He's asleep right now. And he's got a stuffed elephant tucked under one arm that he would be very embarrassed for anyone to know about."

Beatrix almost smiled. Almost.

"And I see your brother Alfie's room, just down the hall from you. He's got something under his pillow. It looks like a piece of paper."

"So?"

"It looks like a drawing. A drawing he made for you. I think it's a purple dragon."

Beatrix was quiet.

"He used every purple crayon in his own box to try to get the color right," said the Moon. "I don't think he quite managed it. It's more of a Violet Grape than a Midnight Plum."

Beatrix pressed her lips together very tight.

"And I see Mrs. Patterson's desk at the school. She has a stack of stories she's taking home to read again, just because she liked them. Yours is on top. She circled the name Xylophoneus and wrote 'wonderful' next to it. The spelling note was on a different page entirely."

Beatrix's eyes were getting hot and blurry, which was annoying because she was trying to be mad.

"That doesn't mean everything is where it should be," she whispered.

"No," said the Moon. "Maybe it doesn't."

Beatrix looked up. "Wait — you're agreeing with me?"

"I'm saying that maybe you were right, and maybe I was right, and maybe that's allowed."

Beatrix opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again. "That is a very frustrating answer."

"Yes," said the Moon cheerfully. "It is."

Beatrix sat there for another long moment. Then she unwrapped herself from her blanket, climbed down from the window seat, and padded quietly down the hall.

She pushed open Alfie's door, just a crack. He was asleep, sprawled sideways across his bed the way he always slept, like he'd been dropped there from a great height. She tiptoed over, carefully lifted the corner of his pillow, and slid out the piece of paper.

It was a dragon. A lumpy, lopsided, absolutely wonderful dragon, colored in with every shade of purple a small boy could find. Across the top, in wobbly letters, it said: SORRY ABOUT THE CRAN. FOR BEETRIX.

He hadn't even spelled her name right.

She looked at it for a long, long time.

Then she put it back under his pillow — gently, so he wouldn't wake up — and tiptoed back to her own room.

"Well?" said the Moon.

"Well, NOTHING," said Beatrix. But she was smiling.

She climbed into bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, and closed her eyes.

"Goodnight, Moon," she said.

"Goodnight, Beatrix."

"You were still wrong about the muffin, though."

"Goodnight, Beatrix."

She fell asleep in seconds.