Once upon a time there during a very dry summer was a very sweet young girl, too young to even speak, with tiny blond curls like goose down and grass green eyes. She lived in a large crib with wood bars all around, next to a window, and was never taken out by the people she wanted to love her. At first she cried, which only brought trouble, so she lay, with puffy eyes and a pouting mouth, in the corner of her crib.

But those big eyes never stopped gazing out that big window. She wasn't sure what this love thing she needed was, but she knew about sunrise and sunset, stars and the moon. She babbled cheerfully at birds who came to the window and thought maybe, just maybe, love was the way she felt about the little red and black beads that crawled across her window and sometimes came to see her, tickling her skin sympathetically.

Soon though, even the ladybugs could not make her forget the bad things that kept happening. One day the little girl noticed that ladybugs stuffed their real wings inside their hard shell to keep them safe when they were not needed. She wanted to know if there was any way to stuff the bad things in a shell until they weren't so bad, but she had no way to ask. So she assumed their must be because she couldn't bear the idea of having the bad things any longer. After strained deliberation she decided a box might be easier, because ladybug shells were easily crushed by bad things.

So the brave toddler closed her eyes and imagined herself a box. She worked from the inside out, building walls around herself. The box was wood like her crib and each edge was sealed with strips of shink metal, creased to the box's shape.

When she had checked every corner and made sure of every edge she struggled over the rim and down towards her body, regretfully. She snapped the lid shut, stuck a key in the front and turned it, like the desk across from her treasured window. She put a slot in the top like a piggy bank, and imagined the bad things as black goo and shoved it through the slot. It was as though she had been swimming in that goo and had just learned to breathe.

For a little while the girl looked better, her cheeks were rosier and she smiled a little bit. But the bad things happened again and stole her smile away. More goo crammed through the little slot and she was able to stop frowning for a bit. Still there were bad things. The little girl was sad, and though she tried not to she cried, but just one tear slipped out before she regained herself.

The little tear slid off her cheek and onto the blue mat that lined her crib. The wet spot twinkled reminding her of the window on a rainy day, the kind of day when she could see her reflection in the window. She thought, it would be wonderful if that reflection was real, it had never been touched, always managed to disappear when bad things encroached upon the young girl's world. She was a little jealous, but glad that someone escaped the bad things, so she imagined more to the reflection. They were twins, but the reflection's eyes and hair she imagined as brown because her box and crib were brown and had never hurt her. She made the reflection bigger than herself, so it could defend itself, and pigtails like the older girls in the house. But most of all the little girl made sure the reflection had special glasses so it would never see the bad things. The little girl invested quite a lot into her little friend, the reflection, and in return the reflection told her stories. Stories about what she did instead of being around for the bad things, stories about ladybugs and summer birds.

In the fall, after the two had become best friends, the girl worried that the bad things were responsible for the terrible changes in her window. She had tried not to let any of the goo escape when she shoved it into the box, but she couldn't be sure, since the bad things were getting so much bigger. She thought it was all her fault, and hid in her corner to cry. She was tired of being.

"Hello? Is anyone home?" called out a young woman, "Sis? You there?"

There was no answer.

"How can anyone live in this mess?"

"Oh my god!" screamed the woman as she lifted the near skeletal remains of a baby girl out of the crib. "You're alive??" she gasped, "only barely, though, huh? Let's get you out of this horrible place." She kicked dirty clothes out of the way, rattling empty cans as she fought her way to the door.

"I should have come sooner, but she told me you were dead. Well, I guess she's a little right there. Off to the hospital with you." She paused in front of the window, "Hmm, pretty view. Say good-bye my little helpless one. Good riddance too." The reflection saw her friend being moved and went to her.

As the little girl came back around under the care of doctors her body healed. But inside, where they couldn't reach, it still hurt. Even though things were different, and the bad things were all in the box they haunted her still. The reflection told her stories of all the things she would do when she had a body that could do them, in an effort to distract her friend, but it was no use. The little girl was so hopeless that she couldn't imagine so well anymore, and the box began to fall apart because of it. Dark goo began snaking it's way through her mind and crawling out through her to hurt others. She cried and screamed, clawed and bit. The doctors were at a loss.

The little girl did not like herself anymore, because of what she seemed to be becoming. She was being bad, and she knew where bad things must go.

"I will go in the box, and hold it shut."

Her reflection was horrified, but let her friend do what she must. "You will stay here. I listened to your stories, and I want you to take my body now. Wake me when we can destroy the bad together."

So the reflection gave the girl a boost and a blanket, and vowed to guard the box well. When the doctors came that night with a bottle the baby smiled for the first time, because this little girl knew she could change things.