Alejandro hated bedtime. It wasn’t that he didn’t know he needed the rest but rather, the thought of missing out while he was asleep. I mean, there are always more games to play, and toys get lonely, and more recently, his dreams had been lackluster. So, he fought it every time the sun sank in the sky. On this night, he found himself having a sleepover at his abuela’s house. His parents were out of town and Alejandro was due for some tiempo de calidad. Together, he and his abuela had done all the things one could do with a grandparent in a day: help with the garden, make tamales, and watch telenovelas—so many telenovelas. The day was over and his sweet abuela was ready to turn in for the night but not him. Alejandro was determined to conquer sleep and he made that abundantly clear. 

“I’m not ready for bed, abuela,” he argued. “Let’s stay up for a few more minutes.” 

“No, chico,” she said ushering him into her spare room. But Alejandro planted his feet so hard on the ground, that his body wouldn’t budge when his abuela tugged on his arm to get him into the room. 

Abuela snapped with wariness in her voice, “Para, detenlo ahora mismo!” Still, Alejandro didn’t move. She was at her wit’s end of ideas on how to get her stubborn grandson to sleep, exhausted with this nighttime ritual. So, she decided to leave Alejandro to his own devices and learn “the hard way.” 

El descanso es importante, nieto, she’d been known to say.

Semi-compliant Alejandro eventually made his way into the spare room and onto the bed. His toys from earlier were resting on the top of the covers. Still standing firm in his refusal to meet sleep, he laid on top of the covers with his toys to show his abuela just how serious he was about not sleeping. The young boy refused to close his eyes. Instead, he soared his toy plane, deployed his toy soldiers, and even saved a Lego city from a dinosaur attack. It was another restless night at abuela’s house in an uncomfortable bed. It also didn’t help that the sheets his abuela had found him from her hallway closet were itchier than usual and reeked of mothballs. Determined to stay awake until the sun made its grand appearance in the sky, the boy assumed the position of a corpse, flat, still, but still very much alert. It was hard to keep his toy storylines alive in the dark, and as the moon began to shift behind the night clouds, the room began to get darker and darker. So, there he was, restless and now bored—forced to assume a sleep-like position on his back.

The tiny two-bedroom apartment walls began to vibrate in sync with abuela’s monstrous snores. She had always been the first one to close her eyes at night in their house. Sleep came so easily to her, so effortlessly. Maybe it was because of her age, or maybe it was because she was the oldest woman in the village who still worked a regular job. Not because she had to because abuelo had left her a fortune after his passing, but because she had been lonely in the house after losing the love of her life. 

The snoring coming from abuela’s room was now louder than ever, sounded like an old, broken-down car trying to start again. At this rate, Alejandro thought he’d never meet sleep, and that made him happy with glee, but the dark room made it nearly impossible for him to stay awake. “Who needed sleep anyway?” he thought to himself. Flat on his back, he tried to get his pupils to adjust to the pitch-black room, staring blankly but hard at the popcorn ceiling. Even though he was adamant about not sleeping, he knew he’d have to oblige eventually.

“Tia Mari always suggested counting sheep. I guess I could try that,” Alejandro whispered under his breath. With a huff and confident deep breath, he began to count, imagining cumulus cloud reassembling as mammals prancing before his eyes. “Uno, dos, tres,” Alejandro started to count, “cuatro, cinco, seis…” And with that, a big crashing sound came from the roof. 

Startled and sure the loud noise must’ve awakened his abuela, Alejandro scooted to the top of the bed, cowered behind a pillow that once hugged his neck. A large, silhouetted shape shadowed the room. Even in the pitch-black space, the odd shape was pronounced and hard to miss. 

“Umm, who’s there?” Alejandro mustered up the courage to ask. He was now holding the pillow he was at one point hiding behind, like a weapon, ready to beat whomever or whatever to death with its housed feathers. 

At first, the big mysterious shape didn’t answer. Instead, all Alejandro could make out were sounds of what sounded like a newborn calf trying to gain balance on hardwood floors. The animals’ hooves scraped on the bedroom floors in a way that somehow no longer frightened, but intrigued Alejandro. So much that he positioned himself on the edge of the bed to steal a peak at whatever was struggling beneath him.

As he leaned closer, his eyes wider than ever, Alejandro sat astonished at what he saw before him. It was a sheep! An oveja, tap dancing in front of his grandmother’s weathered dresser was in the room with him. 

“Boo!” Alejandro shouted out, trying his best to scare the fleece off the poor animal. 

“Boo, back,” said the oveja, now standing on two legs, chubby, full of sass and all human-like. 

The boy didn’t know whether to scream or laugh, so he just stared then asked, “Whaa— wha— what are you doing in my room?” 

With a devilish smirk, the plump sheep responded, “You rang, didn’t you?” 

“Rang what,” the boy said, wracking his brain for a recollection that matched the oveja’s accusation. “Ah, oh, yes,” Alejandro began, “I guess I kinda-sorta did. I was about to start counting sheep to try to fall asleep, but that still doesn’t explain why a sheep randomly appeared in my room.” 

“Well, you summoned me with the counting. Like a tooth fairy, I appear at night but not for teeth. I come in the night to help little restless kids like you when they can’t sleep.”

Perplexed but excited to have a partner to conquer sleep with, Alejandro said, “Tell me more.” 

“The name is Logan and umm, well, I’m here. You’re, here. I’m awake. You’re awake. The sky’s the limit, we have as much time as we want before the sun comes up.” 

“Ooh, cool, cool. Bueno!” Alejandro said, thinking long and hard about how to wisely spend this time when his plan finally came to him. “Let’s play cars, watch movies, eat junk food, jump on the bed—” 

“Woah, woah, woah,” Logan the oveja said. “Hold your horses— I mean sheep. Let’s settle on one thing and we’ll see where the night takes us.” 

The young boy took a deep breath and nodded his head in agreement. Then the oveja said, “Now, close your eyes, and I’ll meet you in your dreams.”

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