The City Of Erro

Arianna

Chapter One

Arianna

My life has been a rollercoaster. Seriously. I don’t mean to sound cheesy or anything, it’s just solid fact. One second I’m in one country, and the next I’m somewhere completely different. Of course, that’s only been my life for the past few months. It hasn’t always been totally mental. I’m sorry; let me start from the beginning.

I never knew my parents. They were gone for as long as I could remember, although I’ve never really been all that sad about it, as you’d expect a thirteen year old to be. Of course, I’ve never really been a stereotypical girl- at least for the past couple of years. Never been obsessed with makeup or shoes or clothes, never will be. I don’t know why, though. It’s not that I’m a tom-boy, because I’m really not. It’s either that I’d had more self-defiance than that or that I just didn’t care. I choose the latter.

A few months ago, I was awoken by my grandmother. Nan’s the only family I had left.

“Get up, Arianna. You’re so lazy. Of course, that’s not unlike other girls your age. I swear, if I was their legal guardian, I’d-” and the complaining trailed off as Nan pretended to wring someone’s neck in the air. Forcing a smile (I’m rather good at that) and sitting up, I greeted my grandmother and pushed the mass of messy red hair out of my face.

Nan then decided to leave me to get dressed in my small closet-like bedroom (in which I could only fit a bed, to be honest) and hobbled out of the door, clutching onto her walking stick as if to dear life.  Waiting anxiously until I saw her short, curly strawberry-blonde hair disappear from my view down the stairs, my hand shot under my red pillow. Finally, I touched what I was searching for; my stolen top-of-the-art Z-Phone. I scrolled down the list of messages. Typically, there weren't any new ones. I don't know why I bothered to steal it in the first place, to be perfectly honest with you. Nobody texted me.  I didn't text anyone. Actually, I didn't know if it was stealing. Persuasion was one of the only things I was good at. I asked the shopkeeper to give it to me, and, to my surprise, he did exactly as I asked without hesitation. I didn't even have to pay for it. Lots of strange things like that tend to happen to me. For example, one time, I was fighting with a girl in my class called Aviennalyn (ridiculous name if you ask me) and I merely said 'why don't you go kill yourself?' I didn't think she'd take it literally, but the next day, the bold writing of 'thirteen year old girl commits suicide in her bedroom' was blaring out at me from every direction. Everyone suspected I had something to do with it, including the teachers, so they kept their distance from me, which suited me just fine.

As you can tell, I wasn't popular at all. People chose to stay away from me during break and I never had a partner when we were doing paired work. I suppose it was because everyone wanted to distance themselves from 'Arianna, the weird girl in 9F.' Frankly, I couldn't have cared less. I was used to people calling me names, and 'weird' was probably the kindest one. Although I was used to it, though, it didn't mean that I stood for it. Many people got injured for calling me names. Bad things happened to those I didn't like.

Earlier on in my life, I had loads of friends. Primary school was probably the best time I'd ever had. That all changed after my grandfather died. Nan couldn't work, and the only money source was my grandfather. I loved Granddad. He used to read storied to me every night before I went to sleep as a child. Nan was lucid and carefree back then, too. Devastated after my after my grandfather's death, Nan practically deteriorated. He left her the house and all his money in his will, but that wasn't enough to compensate for bringing me up. My Nan worked at a local B&B to sustain our living, but she was slowly getting older and her osteoarthritis was getting worse. My luxuries were considerably decreased after that, and that made me less likeable for all the other children in the class. That's when I decided that those kids were only friends with me because of my money and toys. Not because of the fact that I was a nice person. God, I sound like Nan now.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Little did I know that my life was about to change forever.