-----
She had just turned seventeen. And she was a completely different person. Or so her family thought. She wasn't really that different, but she had diverted her attentions to more productive things.
Sarah still didn't have any close friends, and she was still a loner. She still spent hours in her room or in the park. And she was still an avid reader. But now she read other things. Currently she was devouring book after book by Jane Austen, and before that it had been Dickens. And of course, hours were spent on homework. She still never went out, but she never complained about watching Toby.
Not a completely normal teenager, but normal enough.
Presently, she was helping her father and stepmother with the weekend project of moving Toby into his own room. He had long outgrown the crib, and it was decided that he was a big enough boy now to have his own bed. They had also decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to completely clean and rearrange their own room. The task of moving Toby was practically complete, and now Sarah stood with the vacuum cleaner, ready to sweep as they moved all the furniture to the center of the room.
They had just finished the moving a tall dresser, when her stepmother frowned and bent to look at something on the floor.
"Why, what's this?" she asked. "Something of yours, Sarah?"
Sarah looked at what she held, and impulsively tightened her grip on the vacuum's handle. Suddenly her blood ran cold. She was sure it was draining away from her face even as she stood there.
It was a perfect crystal, a clear sphere just the ideal size for holding in one's hand. It caught the light, but reflected nothing.
It's a crystal, nothing more. But if you turn it this way--
"Sarah?"
Sarah frowned, as if considering. "Oh that," she said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Yes. Toby must have gotten it sometime, and then lost it under the dresser."
Her stepmother was holding out the crystal to her.
"Oh, just put it up with my other stuff in the attic," she said, shrugging.
"All right," she said cheerfully, handing the crystal to Sarah's father, who put it in a pile with other things that were going up to the attic later.
They resumed their cleaning.
-----
Sarah sat at her window, looking out at the yard, which rolled down to the park that their line of houses sat against. The sky was dark overhead, and only a sliver of the moon hung in the sky.
She had been in a dream all day. She was still in a dream.
But was it a dream?
-----
Every day after that brought the question. Every day after that brought the pendulum of her thoughts. Every day was vacillation. Trying to remember? Trying to forget? It ruled her thoughts completely. The crystal, the crystal. One day it was only another part of her game, a part that just hadn't gotten packed away with her room. The next day it was undeniable proof.
Finally, one day when her father and stepmother had gone out, Sarah couldn't stand it anymore and went up to the attic. She had to at least touch it. She opened her old boxes and poured through them, her eyes not seeing anything that wasn't the crystal. She found nothing, which only panicked her more. If it had disappeared....
But then one last seed of logic told her to look in the newer things.
Surely enough, she found the crystal still nestled in the pile of her stepmother's clothes that her father had carried up almost a month ago.
Holding it in her hands as though it might do something at any moment, Sarah carried it downstairs. She found herself in Toby's room, where he was sitting in the floor playing with some toy trucks.
She knelt down to him and rolled him the crystal. He immediately dropped the truck and reached for the crystal with both hands. Toby picked it up gleefully and smiled at her.
"Oh no. No, no, no, no..." she heard herself muttering.
A vision, a memory, suddenly. Toby on the ceiling, Toby on the stairs, Toby catching the crystal... She got Toby, did he still have the crystal then? Still? Still have? But that would mean....
Sarah put her hands to her head. No! If it hadn't been a dream, it would have been so much clearer! She would have remembered it for longer! Or maybe she would have, if she hadn't tried so hard to convince herself to forget. Things like that simply didn't happen to people.
Quickly she scooped up the crystal from Toby, who let it go as eagerly as he had picked it up. It out of sight and out of mind, he returned to his trucks. Sarah locked the high gate behind her, and flew into her own room, shutting the door. She stared at the crystal from every angle, she shook it, she shouted at it. What she was trying to accomplish she wasn't sure.
A sign, perhaps, any sign that would confirm that she hadn't gone insane. Of course--the thought came to her--there was one way that she could check for certain. All she had to do was--No! She wouldn't, not again.
She slumped at her desk, stared at herself in the mirror. Stared at herself staring in the mirror. Stared at herself staring in the mirror staring in the crystal. Suddenly, in a rage, she stood up and threw the crystal at the mirror as hard as she could, shattering them both.
