It was some time in the middle of the night when I woke up.  The room was bathed in fuzzy blacks and grays, and tiny spots crossed my vision as I blinked the sleepiness out of my eyes.  I opened up my mouth to yawn, but promptly slammed it shut when the reason for my awakening became apparent.
I could hear footsteps.  In my bedroom.
My heart rate instantly skyrocketed and I sunk down into my bed, pulling the blanket up to my chin.  Even with my eyes squeezed shut, the steady rhythm of footsteps was impossible to ignore, and one sentence played on repeat in my head: There is a person in my room.  There is a person in my room.  There is a person in my room.
A break-in was the sort of thing I’d always fantasized about, marked in my head as one of the terrifying yet fascinating events of the world.  I’d always had a strange obsession with disaster, and I found the idea of an intruder to be entertaining at the least, if not almost fun.  In my daydreams, I fabricated multiple possible circumstances and imagined how I would react to them happening.  My responses ranged from karate-kicking the robber in the stomach to secretly dialing 911 with my toes, and some were as outlandish as tying the guy’s shoelaces together.  All, however, were heroic in some way or another.  In my daydreams, I was never the girl who cowered under the covers with her teddy bear, but then again, the image we have of ourselves in our heads rarely matches who we really are.
So there I lay, snuggled under the covers, with a mixture of fear and embarrassment coursing through my head.  C’mon Sofia, I told myself, man up.  This is not the story you want to tell people when you say someone broke into your house.
It took all of my courage to peek my head over the top of the bed, and I nearly let out a small shriek when I saw the head of the intruder.  The man was pacing, treading lightly from one side of my room to the other.  His body was masked in darkness so that only his head was visible. 
All of the courage I had worked up flew out of me, and I retreated to my position under the blankets.  At this point, it seemed that the best course of action was to plan my last words.  Maybe if I went out with some sarcastic quip, the whole thing wouldn’t be quite as pathetic.
The figure continued to pace for what seemed like hours, while my heart threatened to burst out of my body.  It felt like the only noises in the world were my short breaths and the footsteps of the intruder.
The most disturbing part of the whole ordeal was the person’s behavior.  What kind of criminal breaks into a house just to walk back and forth and stare at a thirteen year-old girl?  A very creepy one, that’s for sure.  It sounds odd now, but at the time it would have been more comforting for the murderer to pull out a knife and laugh maniacally while asking me if I had any last wishes.  The phrase “silence is deafening” had never made any sense to me before, but lying there in my bed, it felt as though the silence would eat me alive.
Trying in vain to slow my breathing, I faked falling back asleep.  It seemed I was harboring some crazy belief that an intruder wouldn’t attack if they thought their appearance had gone unnoticed.  The only problem was that in order to look like you’re sleeping, your breathing has to be deep, rhythmic, and decidedly not the short, raspy breaths of a panicking girl.
Nevertheless, I curled myself into a ball and hugged the blankets tight.  This did nothing to calm my nerves, unfortunately, and even with my eyes closed, the motion of the figure danced behind my eyelids.  
And there were still the footsteps.  The soft, rhythmic footfalls were a constant reminder of the unwelcome presence in my bedroom.  Even with a pillow secured over my ears, the tapping would not go away.
Finally, it was too much.  The tension and the stress of the situation were strangling me and something needed to be done.  I would go crazy lying helplessly in my bed.
I raised my head slowly to check if the intruder was still there, as if he would have suddenly disappeared despite his continuous footsteps.  As expected, the man was still pacing, just the same as before. 
Now, you must know that I’m not an impulsive person.  My every action is usually calculated and purposeful.  But taking a deep breath, logic seemed to fail me, and I softly whispered, “Hello?”
Yes, hello.
In every horror movie I’ve ever seen, I’m the one critiquing the characters for all of their stupid decisions.  Don’t split up in the haunted house!  Don’t run upstairs for safety! Don’t say ‘hello’ to the dark room!  If there’s one thing I learned that night, it’s that I’m not very good under pressure.
What I expected to get out of greeting the intruder, I don’t know.  After all, no one goes through all the trouble of breaking into a house just to snap his fingers and exclaim “Darn it, you caught me!” as soon as it’s apparent he’s been noticed.  No, that doesn’t even happen in the movies.
As it turned out, my query did absolutely nothing, good or bad.  The person just kept pacing, and I continued to freak out.
By this time, I was getting pretty darn tired of the situation.  The goosebumps that covered my arms, the uncontrollable shaking of my hands, the slamming of my heart in my chest; I wanted it all to stop!  Without consulting my brain, my arm shot out and poked the man right in the head.
Plastic?
My breath came out in a whoosh as everything hit me at once.  There was no one in my room!  The so-called murderer was, in fact, a balloon blowing back and forth in the wind from my open window.  The footsteps were created by the string rubbing against my bookshelf.  It was the night after my sister’s birthday party, and sometime during the day one of the balloons must have crept into my room. 
I let out a long sigh and sat up in bed.  Placing my head in my hands, I allowed my heartbeat to gradually return to normal.  My fear had evaporated completely and all that was left was an overwhelming sense of embarrassment.  Less than one minute earlier I was cowering in my bed, clutching the blankets, and shivering because I was convinced a balloon was going to hurt me.  There is absolutely no way to make that sound heroic.
But even if it is a less than impressive story, it did teach me a lesson.  The fantasies we have of ourselves in our heads?  They’re just that: fantasies.  When faced with a situation where a big decision actually has to be made, tapping into your inner ninja may not be the most realistic idea.  What you can do, however, is keep your head and try to stay cool.  I can tell you right now that “hello”, while polite, is not the way to handle a break-in.
Maybe if I remember that the next time I’m in a similar situation, I won’t fall back asleep with my cheeks tinged red from blushing.