A L I V E [h.s]

Chapter 1

December just started and the snow already covers every single inch and corner of London. It is this time of year to cuddle in bed with my books, my pillows, my blankets and some of my aunt's homemade hot chocolate.

Either I'm reading, watching a romantic film on my laptop or just sitting on a chair by the window watching people walking, arguing, laughing or kissing. I've always liked to stare at people on the street and imagine their stories.

I've been new in town since I moved to London two months ago. Yes, I live with my aunt, Claire. I was born in Bristol, I used to live with my parents in a small house in a little neighbourhood. When I turned five my mother died on a car accident when she was driving her friends to a party, all of them survived except for my mom. I was five years old, so I couldn't really understand the situation, I obviously cried, but I surely didn't feel as bad as my dad did. A few weeks after my mother's death he started to drink, he could spend hours and hours on a bar close to our house. He drank more and more through the years and the day of my seventh birthday, due to a deep depression, he decided to commit suicide. My aunt was the only one there to celebrate my birthday, so when the police and ambulances arrived, I went home with her. I didn't know what was happening until my aunt told me a few days after his death. She explained me the situation and what my father did. She told me he just wanted to stay with my mom and be happy forever.

Nowadays I still live with her. She has a small café a few buildings away. I love going there and help her cleaning and serving coffee and tea to the costumers. She is basically the mother I've always wanted to grow up with, so I always dedicate my free time to help her as much as I can. Smoking is the only bad habit she's been into after her sister's (my mother's) death. I sometimes go to the shop in front of the café to buy some tobacco for her. She doesn't smoke that much, two or three cigarettes per day. She always try to hide from me to smoke so I can't see her. The only thing I've done of that kind is to get drunk when she had to stay in the hospital for an attack she had for smoking. Since then, she started smoking less and I actually thank her for that, but I'm also waiting for her to stop. Apparently my life's been full of tragedies since I was little, but that's not a reason for me to do such mistakes as hanging myself or live sad and depressed. My aunt's always telling me that people who suffer this much at the beginning, are destined to be the happiest at the end. I think about her words every day and that gives me a reason to get up happy every morning.

I don't have many friends, not just because I've been living in London for two months, I've never had many friends actually. Just Gabrielle, she used to be my best and closest friend when I was a child and until we turned sixteen, when she moved to Germany with her family. We take every chance we have to mail each other, sometimes she calls me, but we can't really talk much, the calls are not cheap from there. I miss her more than anything and this is one of the reasons I help my aunt. She sometimes give me some money so I can earn it to go visit her someday.

Apart from her, I don't have many friends, just some people I know from the café, none of them are my age, but I get on well with them anyway. There is this man, Mr.Moore, he's been coming since we opened the café. He works in a toy shop near St.James Park. He's almost fifty years old and one of the sweetest men on earth. He brings a little wooden ballerina toy every Wednesday and gives them to me. I keep them right next to the little lamp on my desk, in my bedroom. They're all beautiful and have a different pose and color, I treat them as if they were my babies, I put them in order and sometimes even clean them when I clean my room, they're something like a treasure to me, they're my perfect image for freedom and beauty. Sometimes I like sitting on my chair and look at them, just look at them and try to draw them. My favourite one is the one with the black dress. I give it the meaning of how imperfection can be beautiful.

I'm basically a small dreamer with big dreams in a whole, huge world of reality. My name is Eleanor and this is my imperfect, yet perfect for me, story.