Anna And The Way Things Were

    Anna crept from her room, stepping carefully over the creaky floorboards and holding her breath. Really, she may as well have skipped over to the top of the stairs for all the notice anyone downstairs would give her, but she wasn't supposed to be up and that called for creeping.
    The lights from downstairs brightened the landing. Anna sat on the very top step and lay her head against the wall, listening to the cheerful chatter of many conversations all woven together, occasionally cut through with a bright tinkling of laughter. There were the sounds of silverware clinking against mama's nice dishes, and of chairs scraping against the floor as people moved about, and it all floated up the stairs to the quiet nine-year-old who, though unable to pick out individual conversations, felt a bit like a spy. She pulled her knees to her chin, cotton pajama pants covered in an assortment of dancing puppies in party hats, and hoped that no one would pass by the stairs and catch her up.
    Soon another pair of feet tiptoed down the hall- Ellie grinned at the sight of Anna and hurried over to sit beside her. Anna shushed her quite unreasonably, but Ellie only snuggled up to her older sister and wound the sleeve of her own pajamas into a spiral, thrilled to be sitting in the golden light of their mother's party.
    "Do you think they'll eat all the cookies mama made?" Ellie whispered after a few moments of quiet listening. Anna was enraged by the very thought. "Of course not," she said uncertainly, "or the sparkling cider, either. There was some left over last time." They fell back into silence, Ellie reassured, Anna suddenly a bit worried. Today their mother had made perfect little chocolate cookies with pink frosting flowers on top, and they hadn't eaten a single one because they were meant for the party. Sometimes, the morning after mama and daddy's parties, they would sneak downstairs and eat leftover cookies and sparkly drinks for breakfast, which was possibly the best part of the whole ordeal.
      After a good ten minutes, when Ellie's little head rested against Anna's knee and Anna wished she too had somewhere softer to lay her own head, a harsh whisper shot up the stairs- "hey, you two!"
     The girls didn't bother looking for who it was- they shot up and scrambled down the hall to Anna's room, hearts beating wildly, leaping onto the bed with flushed cheeks and matching grins.
     "Let me sleep in your bed tonight," Ellie begged after they caught their breath. "Oh, alright," Anna agreed. They crawled under the covers and giggled for a bit at nothing at all really, and then Anna listened as Ellie's breathing grew steady and even.
      Anna stared at the ceiling, trying to match her breathing with Ellie's. The sounds of downstairs were muffled behind the closed door, and Anna imagined she was underwater, and the party was far above her. She pretended she was a mermaid, and that she could stare up through the glassy water and see people dancing and laughing on the shore. She began to swim up towards the sunlight... past imagination, into a dream.