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floor, on my back, with my head and shouldershidden inside the closet and the rest of me out in the room.
    “Amanda?” Josh sounded very scared.
    “Ohhhhh,” I moaned loudly.
    I knew when he saw me sprawled on the floor like this, he’d totally freak out!
    “Amanda — what’s happening?”
    He was in the doorway now. He’d see me any second now, lying in the dark room, my head hidden from view, the lightning flashing impressively and the thunder cracking outside the old window.
    I took a deep breath and held it to keep from giggling.
    “Amanda?” he whispered. And then he must have seen me, because he uttered a loud “Huh?!” And I heard him gasp.
    And then he screamed at the top of his lungs. I heard him running down the hall to the stairway, shrieking, “Mom! Dad!” And I heard his sneakers thudding down the wooden stairs, with him screaming and calling all the way down.
    I snickered to myself. Then, before I could pull myself up, I felt a rough, warm tongue licking my face.
    “Petey!”
    He was licking my cheeks, licking my eyelids, licking me frantically, as if he were trying torevive me, or as if to let me know that everything was okay.
    “Oh, Petey! Petey!” I cried, laughing and throwing my arms around the sweet dog. “Stop! You’re getting me all sticky!”
    But he wouldn’t stop. He kept on licking fiercely.
    The poor dog is nervous, too,
I thought.
    “Come on, Petey, shape up,” I told him, holding his panting face away with both my hands. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. This new place is going to be fun. You’ll see.”

6
    That night, I was smiling to myself as I fluffed up my pillow and slid into bed. I was thinking about how terrified Josh had been that afternoon, how frightened he looked even after I came prancing down the stairs, perfectly okay. How angry he was that I’d fooled him.
    Of course, Mom and Dad didn’t think it was funny. They were both nervous and upset because the moving van had just arrived, an hour late. They forced Josh and me to call a truce. No more scaring each other.
    “It’s hard
not
to get scared in this creepy old place,” Josh muttered. But we reluctantly agreed not to play any more jokes on each other, if we could possibly help it.
    The men, complaining about the rain, started carrying in all of our furniture. Josh and I helped show them where we wanted stuff in our rooms. They dropped my dresser on the stairs, but it only got a small scratch.
    The furniture looked strange and small in this big house. Josh and I tried to stay out of the way while Mom and Dad worked all day, arranging things, emptying cartons, putting clothes away. Mom even managed to get the curtains hung in my room.
    What a day!
    Now, a little after ten o’clock, trying to get to sleep for the first time in my new room, I turned onto my side, then onto my back. Even though this was my old bed, I couldn’t get comfortable.
    Everything seemed so different, so wrong. The bed didn’t face the same direction as in my old bedroom. The walls were bare. I hadn’t had time to hang any of my posters. The room seemed so large and empty. The shadows seemed so much darker.
    My back started to itch, and then I suddenly felt itchy all over.
The bed is filled with bugs!
I thought, sitting up. But of course that was ridiculous. It was my same old bed with clean sheets.
    I forced myself to settle back down and closed my eyes. Sometimes when I can’t get to sleep, I count silently by twos, picturing each number in my mind as I think it. It usually helps to clear my mind so that I can drift off to sleep.
    I tried it now, burying my face in the pillow, picturing the numbers rolling past … 4 … 6 … 8 …
    I yawned loudly, still wide-awake at two-twenty.
    I’m going to be awake forever,
I thought.
I’m never going to be able to sleep in this new room.
    But then I must have drifted off without realizing it. I don’t know how long I slept. An hour or two at the most. It was a light,