Chapter 1
At first, it was her alone against the world.
The only weapon she had to fend her sanity with were a single unsharpened pencil and a blank piece of paper.
Alice was sitting, once again much like every thursday and tuesday in the hall, waiting for her next class, staring at the mentioned paper and trying, so hard, to live a little.
Ironic, in a way, she was nearing the end of her teenage years, yet she found it far more exciting to live in a reality her own mind has created much rather than the one she was born in.
In her defense, it was what she has called her ‘life project’, and what has gotten her in the Creative writing programme.
She would look around at all those people having fun, and living, and learn second handed from them. Read their smiles and try to understand just how people work, without experiencing life on her own. And, to be honest, it worked quite well for her, anyways. Her words were sincere and she could convey just about any emotion accurately. Almost any - but one.
Alas, that’s how most stories start. They have got to start somewhere, no?
Mine starts with this picture - Alice, sitting in a hall, with headphones in her ears and completely blurring out the loudness of the reality (except for that one song she played for the 14th time already. She called it the Mother of her inspirations, but, clearly, it wasn’t working so well for her this time around).
In my opinion it was all a little too much. The sounds were overwhelming - a bit like in those filler parts of the movies. Loud music, an occasional trump of the thunder hitting the ground somewhere in the distance and the raindrops using the hall’s roof as the piano to their symphony. People everywhere, footsteps adding to the rhythm of the real world, chatter and each on of them telling a different story.
Seeing it all together gives you the feeling of being stuck in time - there’s so much happening, it’s rather confusing and soul-consuming, but you can’t seem to care because you’re a part of it, and time seems to stop existing, but the world keeps on spinning nevertheless. It’s the first time you’d feel the ground moving underneath your still feet.
And you think - the atmosphere is so thick, it could eat you alive and no one would notice.
Back to the lonely girl whose leather boots are now nervously tapping along to the melody of the song as she glares holes into the paper. It’s been thirty minutes, and she still has nothing! Nothing!
Alice is my story, and in a way, I’m hers, too.
She doesn’t realise it just yet, but what she seeks, and what she can’t grasp just yet is love. It’s the biggest story she’s missing out on, and the one she’s doomed to find, sooner or later.
A story that could spice up her bare paper, but a story she’s not capable of writing just yet.
But here’s a thing with Alice - she’s a sweet girl. One of those that smiles at each person that walks by, but never says a word. One that knows many, but doesn’t linger in any of their memories. She simply floats around. People would say she’s rather plain.
Let me tell you this - she isn’t. She just never stays long enough to show her colours.
The thing with us, writers, is that we notice things, and we know a lot about everything and everyone, but we keep to ourselves. A mystery to many. We’re open books, but with simple covers, so not many are intrigued enough to try to open us. Very plain on the outside, but a whole abstract painting on the inside. Vivid colours over each page, and words, words, so many of them.
Because artists give life to blank pages, and we keep on living through them, living numerous times.
Alice is much like that. She writes, and lives in those words, and sometimes loses herself there.
But I’m here to show her that maybe she doesn’t need to keep running away. Maybe it’s my turn to make her life a story she’d want to get stuck in.
So I know the girl, and I can see past her dull gray eyes, and I know that if there’s one thing that she can’t do - it’s turning down a challenge.
And I gave her one, but so did her professor, along with a due date. She’s in dire need to write a story about growing up, and facing the real world.
She’s in to start living.
And that, everyone, is how my story starts.
