Ruby soberly peered into the window.  Another stupid family vacation. Gosh! Ruby HATED these family vacations.  They were always driving to stupid places, such as Mount Rushmore, and the Crazy Donkey-or-something-like-that monument.  They were SO BORING! Couldn’t their family possibly go on a better vacation?  Like a shopping spree in Paris?  Or a cruise in the Bahamas? This year they were going to stupid Washington D.C.

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Ruby made a zombie face at the window.  The window smiled back. Strange, strange, strange.  This vacation was going nowhere.  Even the windows were acting strange. Ruby slumped back and turned her iPod to the highest volume to drone out her brother’s talking.

Inside of her room, away from the hustle- bustle of the hotel, Ruby tripped over one of her brother’s misplaced cars when she was walking.  She accidentally stroked the hotel mirror with her pinkie finger.  Strangely, it sunk in!

Ruby pulled her hand out in fright, and found a bird on her pinkie.  The bird, however, looked very strange.  It didn’t have the glint in its eye that regular birds had.  It even sang differently.  Ruby had no idea what to do.

She sunk her hand back into the mirror, to try to return the bird to where it came from, and felt an urge to step into the mirror completely.  It seemed to pull her deeper into the mirror.  Her hand sunk in, then her arm.  Finally, all that was left was her head.  The mirror sucked her in one last time, and Ruby was swallowed.

Ruby couldn’t breathe.  She was being spun around.  The world seemed to loop-de-loop around, and around.  The world around her was a whirl of color, with some purple and green.  She spun around, and around, as if she was in a tornado.

All of a sudden, she came to a long row of multi- colored portals.  With a whoosh, she was blown one of the side portals.  The walls whirled around, rapidly, again.  It was worse than even the scariest roller coaster that Ruby had ever ridden.