My neck hurts. My arm throbs in pain. My back is stiff from this position. Even my face hurts for staying with the same expression for so long. But nevertheless, I remain in this position for a while longer; I’ll only have to wait until Alison gets home from school. Then, I can get out of this mess, and play for a while!

Alison is the nicest girl I’ve ever met. Every day when she gets home, she runs up the stairs (I can tell that she runs because of the pounding on the floor; I’m quite skilled in using my senses) and greets me first, over that slobbering, unsophisticated brat of a dog she has. Truthfully, I don’t even know why she deals with that idiot. She should just kick him out—after all, I’m enough to satisfy her needs of a playmate. I know so.

Anyways, when Alison comes home, she comes over and gives me a kiss on the cheek—her lips are incredibly soft!—while patting my head. She comments yet again on how pretty my blue eyes are, and how they look just like glass; I’d blush if I could.

Afterwards, she takes my special brush—a pretty silver little thing, with the softest bristles one can imagine being combed through one’s hair—and runs it through each and every one of my golden locks. I’m especially proud of my hair, that golden sheen it has, and the way that it’s curled in such pretty ways. She always hums a pretty melody while she does so, that melody that’s played every time she opens that music box her grandmother gave her when she was five. She still has it, you know, and puts it with all of her other treasures.
Once she’s brushed my hair with a hundred and fifty strokes (she counts aloud for both of us), she takes me downstairs, holding my hand all the while, and bring out a tea set at the small miniature table she has set up. The tea’s very, very cold, and it always gets all over my clothes and all, but Alison will give me a new set of clothes to change into afterward. She gets a bunch of her dolls to sit and drink tea with us, but I think that’s foolish—she has me, so why does she need those dolls that can’t even talk, or have pretty hair like me?

“How many cubes of sugar would you like?” she would ask me, and I’d remain silent; she already knows I want two! But she drops in four, just to make it extra sweet for me, I know.

“How has your day been?” she would ask me, and I still wouldn’t answer—she knows that my answer is always the same: ‘boring,’ so I needn’t repeat myself. She understands, though. I can tell, especially by the way she smiles at me.

But I hate it when she claps her hands and says that tea time’s over, ‘cuz that means I have to go back to that dingy hold of a place and wait until the next day. Alison’s really smart, you know—she has the best grades in her class, and always does her homework dutifully. The last time she talked to me, she said she was going to be a doctor—I don’t know what that is, but apparently, you have to study a whole lot for it. No matter, I’m pretty enough not to study and still get treated well by Alison.

So, I’m up here, at the very top floor with the slanted ceiling, waiting, waiting. Not far from me, I see that music box Alison got from her grandmother. At first, the music kept playing over and over again because the lid was open, but its been some time since it stopped--I don't know why though. Oh, and the pretty silver decorations it had is all black and dirty now. I’m sitting on top of a box and its awfully uncomfortable; I wonder when Alison will come back to get me? Perhaps she’s already become a doctor!
She hasn’t come to visit me in a very, very long time—the cold season where little white balls of cold drop in through the crack in the roof has passed at least ten times, I’m sure. But I understand. She must have a lot of…pa…pa…patients! Yes, that’s what they’re called (I heard from Alison one time). But I know Alison will come back to me; see, when she first met me, she said, ‘You’re my bestest friend!’. So she has to come back to me—it’s the rule.
The last time I saw her, she was getting scolded by that mean mother of hers, who was saying, “Alison, stop talking to a doll for Pete’s sake!” but who’s the doll she was talking about?

So I’m waiting, waiting, for my best friend to come pick me up. Ohhh, when she shows up I’ll be so mad! But as long as she gives me five cubes of sugar in my tea I won’t get mad. So I’m waiting, waiting.