Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or any of the characters contained within this story, which is not for profit in any way.
A/N: I don't claim to be an expert or to have any of the details correct, but the Chocolate Festival that Sara remembered so fondly in the last chapter was based on a true event that I believe is held annually. I don't know the time of year for instance, or anything specific, so I took some artistic liberties. But rest assured, I will someday make it there. : ) And this chapter is rather odd. I'll try to post the next chapter soon to make up for the utter weirdness that is this one.
Delays
It's odd, the things that go through your mind when there's nothing else there to inhibit them. Like the fact that Sara really loved physics. Much more than other things, like statistics. In statistics, you always had to worry about being on the wrong side of the numbers. Growing up the way she had, Sara had always had to fight to be in the lonely and small percentage that beat the odds.
But in physics, everything just was what it was. Everything acted under a strict set of rules under the conditions that surrounded it at the exact moment in which it existed, and there were no good or bad numbers. Numbers just were.
Sara recognized this feeling, where her mind went blank and random thoughts would pop up to fill it. The same thing had happened when she'd fallen off her bike at a friend's house in the sixth grade. She'd been riding in the cul-de-sac, waiting for her friend to come out, when she'd hit a rock or something and gone down hard, sideways. Her head had been the first thing to hit, and it had bounced on the curb. In the daze caused by a mild concussion, Sara had stood up in a hazy, surreal state of mind, where thoughts in her head passed very slowly. Though her arm and knee were scraped up badly, she barely even noticed.
And then a guy who lived in the house in front of where she crashed came jogging up to her and asked if she was alright. And then he'd asked if she wanted to come inside and sit down for a minute until she felt better.
And only one thought jumped, screaming into little Sara's delirious head: you shouldn't talk to strangers. And you especially should not go into a stranger's house.
She was about to pass out, could barely stand, and the words formed slowly, but she managed to tell him no, that she was okay, and her friend's house was just a few yards away.
They had made their way to her friend's house, with the man repeating his question several times and Sara continually refusing. She had healed and been fine.
But, in retrospect, Sara had always wondered if that little, screaming thought had saved her from an awful, awful fate. Because that man had been oddly persistent to take a strange, injured child into his house alone.
Only Sara couldn't figure out why she had that delirious feeling now. Whenever she tried to think about it, she couldn't hold onto the thoughts. And yet she didn't seem to have any problem at all holding onto the random thoughts in her head.
And right now, she was thinking that she shouldn't be swimming alone. It was dangerous; you should always have a partner.
Such an odd thought, but as she'd learned in the sixth grade, those random thoughts could be the most important, so she tried to follow it.
She couldn't quite force her eyes open to look for a swimming partner, so she tried to feel around with the one hand that seemed capable of movement. Her fist curled around dirt or . . . not dirt exactly. More like mud, or highly saturated sand. Sand . . . was she at the beach maybe? No, she couldn't be, because that wasn't salt water. If it was, it would be burning those cuts. Cuts . . . that came from where? Suddenly, Sara was in a lot of pain. She couldn't remember what had happened, but she knew it had been bad, and the water was starting to accumulate in the small space around her.
And once again, Sara Sidle was fighting to stay on the right side of the numbers.