Where the Roots Begin

Chapter I

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

-Maya Angelou

"Same as always, please" Alessandra said as she reached the end of the queue.

"Here you go", the man said, handing her the bag with what was going to be dinner. "How's Atticus?" He asked.

Alessandra moved in with Atticus when her parents were murdered.

"Good, good".

Everyone in small Onixyade knew her guardian, or at least thought they did. Everyone saw him as a respectable citizen, a charismatic man. Alessandra saw who he really was, though.

As she walked home, passing the dull brick houses and the sick-looking trees, she was thinking of what to write today in her blue notebook. She mentally organized her story; it gave her a feeling of order. She usually felt the ideas like water, flooding her head, as if she didn't write, she would drown in them. The images came to her, the story of an old kingdom called Antupainkia, whose queen ruled for centuries. She dreamed about her adventures, her romances, her friendships, her problems and feelings of hopelessness, not being able to save everyone in an unfair world. How she kept those feelings so hidden, so buried, no one ever noticed as they ate her from the inside. No one but the knight.

She was fair, and kind, but in Alessandra's dreams, and her first drafts -the ones she couldn't even remember writing, the ones where her hand had moved by itself- her ending wasn't a happy one. She tried to change it, tried and tried, but she always got to the same end. She tried, until she stopped trying, and she never wrote the end, not completely.

At least she tried not to, but sometimes she couldn't help herself. Couldn't stop herself. And then she wouldn't be able to fall asleep again, or to think straight the next hours. She would only think of the Queen, and would feel the uneasiness of her death chasing her for the rest of the day.

What did it mean, though? Was it her own way of reflecting her life? Was that same ending waiting for her?

If that was the case, who was the knight?

Nevertheless, not writing felt even worse.

Her fingers ached for a pen, but she had to do her history research, her math homework, and study for her chemistry test. Maybe she wasn't going to have time to write today, after all.

Maybe tomorrow, she thought. Maybe after I finish my essays, or maybe...

She felt the drowning feeling, which usually came with thinking she wasn't going to write in a while.

One day at a time, she reminded herself. She couldn't afford to think otherwise.

"Hey Ale!" she almost didn't hear Sophie calling.

"Oh, hey! Sorry I was distracted" she apologized automatically.

"I noticed. Have you started the research? I can't find anything useful in the libraries". Sophie Atkins was from her class, and they had been really good friends when they were younger. Not that they had had a fight, but Alessandra stopped having time for friends when she moved in with Atticus about eight years ago. They still talked and laughed, after all she was the only friend Alessandra had, but there was something missing. Something they lost long ago.