Samantha thought that her three-year-old daughter Julia was making up the ‘monster’ under her bed. But one day, she saw something run across the room in the middle of the night and discovered that Julia wasn’t lying.
While most of Manhattan was fast asleep, including little Julia and Jacob Wells, their mother Samantha was wide awake. She would finally grab her cup of tea, sit in front of her laptop, and wait for the words to come.
She was a children’s book author, and even though she would often write about the importance of ‘early to bed, early to rise,’ she wondered what the children would think of her own lifestyle.
‘Barely to bed, early to rise,’ she thought and sighed.
The cup of green tea was full, cold, and forgotten for the third time that night. Thinking of ways to overcome her creative block, she decided to try moving to the other side of the dining table. ‘Maybe a change of location will help,’ she thought.
She set her laptop up, and before resuming to write, she glanced around the dark room.
It was then that she noticed something unexpected. She checked the clock – it was 2 a.m., and the lights in Julia and Jacob’s room suddenly went on.
Julia had recently learned how switches work, so this had to be her. Samantha quickly walked up to the room and opened the door, startling three-year-old Julia.
She was standing up in her crib, and as soon as she saw Samantha, she cried out, “Mama!” and stretched her hands out to her, wanting to be picked up.
Samantha held her and asked, “What’s the matter, sweetpea?”
Julia tightened her arms around her mother and said, “There’s someone under my bed, Mama. I’m scared. What if it’s a monster?”
Samantha smiled, thinking she knew what this was about.
Ever since she had made Julia sleep in a different bedroom instead of next to her, Julia had been making creative little complaints every night. Julia hoped that Samantha would feel compelled to carry her back to her old sleeping spot, right next to her Mama.
Samantha had been hearing about this possible ‘monster’ under the bed for the past few days.
“Sweetpea, I promise you there’s nothing under the bed.
It’s completely safe here. If there was a monster, Jacob would’ve heard it and woken up, too.”
Julia looked at her nine-year-old brother Jacob, who was fast asleep, hugging his favorite toy truck. Samantha sat with her for a while, narrating her favorite story of ‘Julia the Warrior Princess.’
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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