Claire Ericson sat quietly at the dinner table, her stubby six-year-old fingers picking through her sixty-four-pack of crayons while rain poured outside in the Oregon autumn afternoon. After about six different blues were tossed aside with a grumble from the small girl, her mother walked over and tilted her head.
"Are you still trying to draw your imaginary box, sweeite?"
A set of shocked eyes darted up from the box and stared at her. Claire spoke with a serious tone, "It isn't my box, and it isn't imaginary, but yeah, I'm trying to draw it. None of these blues are right."
"Claire," she placed her hand of her daughter's, "the box wasn't there when you brought us outside. It isn't going to appear again, no matter how many ways you draw it."
"The box is real, and I want to remember it."
"You won't in a few weeks, just remember that."
But Claire didn't forget the blue box that appeared in her neighbor's yard. She continued to remember, telling herself that the blue box was real and that something was inside every night before going to bed and every morning before going to school or out to play. For two years this continued, and then this strange little girl who had only glimpsed at the box, she moved to London with her parents. She was given a Polaroid camera to document her new surroundings.
Three weeks later, she found a better and longer-lasting use for it. That day three weeks after she was given her camera, she was following her parents to the London Eye when she saw something familiar, something she had done a drawing of. It was the strange blue box. Claire took a picture of it and stuck it in her back pocket before her parents could notice. This was the start of a habit that would assemble sixty different photographs over the next ten years of her life. The sixty-first photo would be the last she took of the box, and it would be the first time she met the Doctor.
It was Claire's going-away party. She was headed for college the next week. New York University, to get a proper artistic experience and education. At about half-past nine, she had wandered away from a drunken uncle with her camera and gone outside. Shortly thereafter she ran headlong into something wooden and blue. She looked up and saw that what she had run into was the box she had been taking pictures of for the past ten years.
Needless to say, the girl was shocked and flabbergasted. She found the door of the box and then she pulled it open. Slowly, cautiously, full of anxiety and excitement all at the same moment. After stepping inside, Claire Ericson made a very curious discovery.
The box was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.