Time Windows Read Online Free

Normal!
    Â 
    "You've been a big help," said Helen. "Go on out for that bike ride. Maybe you'll meet the neighbors."
    Somehow the neighborhood held less promise now. Miranda couldn't take her mind off the dollhouse up in the attic, waiting for her as she ate her sandwich.
    "It's getting too hot up there," protested Helen.
    But Miranda carried the fan upstairs and set it to work stirring the heavy air around. She wanted to be alone in the attic. She knelt at first in front of the house and looked through the windows into the tiny rooms. Nothing unusual there; just the inside of the house and, beyond it, the corner walls of her own life-sized attic room. Then she picked up some of the crumpled newspapers and stuffed them into the dollhouse attic. She knelt in front of the house again and looked in through the little windows. Okay, nothing weird there; the balls of paper lay in the dollhouse exactly where she'd put them.
    But now for the real test. She removed the papers from the house and arranged them carefully on the floor about three feet from the front of the structure. Then she stationed herself behind the house and lowered herself onto her knees. "It was only the heat before," she assured herself, resting her arms on the dollhouse attic floor and peering out through the tiny windows at the spot on the floor where she had put the balls of crumpled paper.
    She drew back with a sharp exclamation of horror. Instead of the wads of paper, a little girl stood in front of the dollhouse, bouncing a red-and-blue ball and trying to hit it with a small wooden bat. Miranda flung herself backward, her heart pounding. A wave of terror washed over her and pulled at her stomach like a salty undertow.
    I'm going to die!
screamed a voice in Miranda's head. Was that her voice? The terror was pure, unadulterated. She wrenched her eyes away from the dollhouse windows, and her own attic swam once again before her eyes. She rose shakily to her feet. The wads of paper were in front of the little house just where she had placed them.
    Miranda was sweating, but her mouth felt parched. She kicked the paper across the floor. It was true! Somehow, it was true. When she looked outward through the little windows of the dollhouse attic, her own attic disappeared. The place she saw was another place, a different attic. Even with her back to the little house now, she could feel it there. She felt compelled to turn back to the dollhouse, to walk behind it. The terror was still churning in her stomach, but it was milder now. She forced it down and rested her elbows again on the ledge of the dollhouse attic. She looked out through its tiny windows.
    In the big attic the little girl tossed the ball into the air and lunged after it with the bat. She appeared to be seven or eight years old, and she wore a striped blue dress with long puffed sleeves and a starched blue sash tied in an oversized bow at the back. Her long blonde hair was pulled into two pert braids tied at the ends with blue ribbons. On her feet she wore shiny black shoes that covered her ankles and were fastened with a long row of tiny black buttons. Miranda drank in all these small details with the same sudden thirst with which she'd taken in the details of the room beyond. The terror was gone now. In its place Miranda felt a need to see everything.
    The walls were bright with whitewash. The low bookcases lining the walls under the windows were also white and filled with toys. The little girl swatted at the ball, and this time she managed to hit it with her bat—
thwap!
— and went running after it, squealing with laughter.
    Miranda found herself smiling and standing up to go over to the girl, her lips forming the question: "Who are you?"
    But her question fell on an empty attic. As soon as she stood up, she was alone in the attic once again. And the attic was her own.
    She crouched again, but when she looked back out through the little windows the child was gone. And the attic she saw