I'll tell you a little about myself.

I live in a little house down by the beach. It’s quite nice, it’s got a pleasant view. Nobody really comes around here that often, though. People say the house is haunted. And it’s true.

It’s because I live here.

See, I normally just look like myself, but to tell the truth, I’m really rather anxious around other people. I… I just can’t bear attention, as much as I crave it. So I hide. I learned early in life that hiding in corners, or behind objects, doesn’t really work – someone always looks. Instead, I hide in plain sight.

But… it was just recently that I had my hopes to get out. See, the way my existence here works, is that I can’t leave the boards that make up the floor unless I am invited across the threshold. And… my tendency to hide rather affects that.

Very rarely, someone comes by who makes me want not to hide the way I usually do. I don’t know what it is. There’s just a gentleness about them that catches my eye and soothes my fear of people.

One came by just yesterday, you know. Oh yes. A little girl, in fact. She just pushed open the door, and I was sitting there in the living room, not quite taken by surprise – I had heard her singing as she approached the door. Kind of nondescript, not especially cute, you know, just a kid. And… well… I made sure to try for a moment when she wasn’t looking at me, and revealed myself.

I don’t know what I looked like. I haven’t looked like myself in front of other people for so long – and I won’t have anything to do with mirrors… do you understand? But she heard something behind her, that was me, and turned around. The loveseat was gone, and there I was in its place. (Clothed, I might add. It’s part of the natural ability.)

She didn’t seem very surprised. She was… friendly, right? She called herself Ellie, she asked my name. She told me my hair looked funny – I tried it with my fingers, it was indeed a little off, so I just fixed it. And she laughed and asked me to show her how to do that. I said I didn’t think I could, it was a special trick that only I could do. And she said, “You’re nice… will you be my friend?”

I said yes. Of course I said yes.

And, well, she sat right down in the wooden chair there by the other window and started telling me about herself – she’s from Waltham, her parents are academics, so she said. I asked where they were, and she said they were right down the shore from us, she’d run ahead while they were sitting and enjoying the beach.

Well, I shrugged then, and didn’t think much of it. I offered her some fruit, you know, there’s a fig tree that grows right next to the porch and it has a few branches that bear fruit right where I can reach them – I don’t typically need fruit in my diet, given my nature, but it does taste good. Ripe figs, mmm.

So she ate the figs I had in the bowl – all except one, which I ate myself. She asked where they came from, and I told her – the tree was right outside the window there. So she asked if she could pick some for her parents. I said yes – it’s not like I eat that many, anyway. I said yes. We went out to the porch, with the bowl, and she started to pick the figs and fill it up again. It is quite a large bowl, too, so… I went inside to get the chair for her to stand on, because she was little and some of the ripe figs were up higher than she could reach, and I sensed she was enjoying the picking as much as having them – it wouldn’t be the same if I picked them for her. You know how kids are.

Anyway, I came in through the door, and it closed behind me, and I heard a woman’s voice call out, “Ellie, where are you? Ellie?”

And before I could step back out, the girl had run off. With the bowl, with the figs.

And, you know, it hurt. It wasn’t like either the bowl or the figs were important. But I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to be invited out of here. And she left, a little while before she might have been able to be persuaded to ask me to follow her – that counts.

But I’m still here. Alone, again, with only my figs and my thoughts for company. And let me tell you, the figs are better company.

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Not far away, although moving farther every minute, a girl sat in a car with her parents, a hand-carved wooden bowl full of figs in her lap. She didn’t understand what her parents had said, about adventures, or success, what a “mimic” was, or what she had got away with. She had met someone nice, a little strange, made a new friend, and gotten a bowl of figs. Life was good.