“If I had the Mona Lisa, I’d set fire to it,” he declared. He didn’t really mean it, but he wanted to upset her, get even with her for judging his blood-splattered shirt and torn jeans. But the remark did not inspire feelings of resentment in the girl; instead, she was reminded of her Grandmother’s Tiffany vase. Since she was a toddler, she’d coveted the brilliant, blue crystal and waited for her cells to multiply and bones to grow until she might one day be tall enough to touch the light trapped within the vase.
On her fourth birthday, while Grandmother was cutting the cake, the girl wandered into the foyer and reached for the vase. Her fingers met the cool crystal and in her excitement she pressed against the vase till it fell from the table and shattered on the hardwood floors. The trapped light lay free on the floor surrounding her, mesmerizing her so that she never noticed her tearful Grandmother or the blood that ran from the wound in her foot.
She noticed the same light trapped in the eyes of the boy who was speaking to her now. “Yeah,” the boy continued, “I’d light that bitch right up.”
