What Do You See?

Her eyes were what really fascinated me. Who knew that a five-year-old could have eyes like that?
In shape and color there was nothing abnormal about them, nothing unique beyond the usual uniqueness of a child's eyes. They were not that much lighter than the brown eyes most of the other students in the class had. Yet...there was something about them...some expression I suppose that made it seem to me that she wasn't really seeing what the rest of us were seeing, that she was seeing something bigger, deeper, brighter perhaps, that the rest of us could not. The rest of her face and her words and behavior didn't contribute to this "vibe," so call it, that I was getting off her. It was just the eyes.
In the following weeks after the first day of school, whenever I was in the classroom I could not help but keep a surreptitious eye of my own on her, wondering what she was seeing. It would not have shocked me to see her tuned out from the world the rest of us lived in, enjoying - or perhaps trapped in - the other world we couldn't see. Her words and behavior remained, however, frustratingly normal, and I wondered all the more strongly what it was about her that I was seeing that no one else seemed to. Maybe it was just me - but what would have provoked that strangeness I couldn't fathom.
Over time I thus continued to look for that strange sight that seemed to characterize her, all the more closely for my doubts. She, like any other five-year-old girl might, was doing just fine in the classroom and, like many of her sweet little classmates, was becoming an indefatigable crusader of a tattletale. And over time, I could not help but notice that the helpless depth I had been inexplicably drawn to in her eyes was fading - indeed, was very nearly gone. Nothing had changed per se, not in her voice or manners, not in her face or expression; still, I had seen something, and that something I was no longer seeing.
It made me wonder whether anything had changed behind her eyes.