"Checkmate"- she said with a thin smile, that she put up just to annoy Kate. "Why am I not surprised?"- Kate asked with a low and sarcastic tone. Alice loved playing chess, but when you know that you are going to win, moving the pieces onto the black and white board becomes bland and distasteful. Like a painting losing it's colours the game lost all of it's meaning to Alice. It was only the reflection in Kate's black eyes that kept Alice going. The reflection of a white king fallen at the hands of a black queen.
Kate's gaze turned to Alice. "Come on, we are going to be late for class and I would rather not listen to that old hag telling us how bad this is in the next 15 minutes." "Shall we go then?"-asked Alice, sarcastically.
They got all of their things from the chess table and rushed to the classroom. On their way they saw the teacher talking to a colleague, and managed to pass undetected. "We do so much shit and yet we are invisible!"- said Kate with a light tone and a slight laughter. Alice just laughed and nodded in agreement. They entered the room and sat on their chairs, waiting silently for the class to begin...
The lesson finished and so were all the other for that wednesday.
Alice got her backpack and old blue coat and went onto London's streets to head home. As the sun was slowly setting and the crisp shadows of the town's buildings tightened around the city, broken only by the light of the street lamps, Alice searched through her bag to find her housekeys. She unlocked the door and entered the main hallway of her tiny apartment.
Finally taking off the tie which has been choking her for the past 5 hours, she could freely breathe again.
Not an hour has passed since she got home, and yet she recieved a phone call from Kate's number. She picked up, expecting some silly question for tomorrow's homework. "Hi, Kate! What's up?" "Alice..." replied the voice from the other side of the phone. "Mrs. Blansh? Is everything allright? You sound a bit worried."- Alice said, already not knowing what to expect.
"Alice...Kate,Kate is dead."
