Idalia --- TEAM 10 FANFICTION

Chapter 2

Even though she had already been to the Team 10 house, Idalia couldn’t help but marvel over the sheer size of it---out loud for her new “team” to hear.

‘This is amazing,’ she commented, opening one of the large cupboards in the kitchen. Her eyes widened at the amount of food squashed into just that cupboard alone. She was well aware of the camera following her as she walked through the house, marvelling at it like a new born baby or something. But right now, Idalia was too excited and ecstatic to care.

‘What, have you never seen food before?’ somebody questioned jokingly, eliciting laughs from most of the others there in the kitchen. Idalia felt an uncomfortable stab of discomfort in her ribs and she tried not to squirm awkwardly. They were only joking, that was all.

‘What’s a Pop-tart?’ asked Idalia, picking up the shiny silver package with her nails (which were far too long and in dire need of being cut) and examining it critically as she turned around to the giant camera that was following her. She very almost jumped.

‘Dude, you don’t have Pop-tarts?’ asked Chance/Anthony (Idalia still couldn’t tell them apart, to be blunt) as he took the Pop-tart from her and tore open the silver packaging. He discarded it on the floor carelessly as he put the Pop-tart in the toaster. ‘Man, you haven’t lived.’

Idalia was unsure of quite how to feel about being called ‘dude’ and ‘man”  in the time space of a second. It was one thing about America she was positive that she’d never be able to get used to.

‘They were never at the shop or in the markets where I lived,’ said Idalia with a shrug. ‘Anyway, we are the inventors of good pizza. Nothing can compare.’

‘Fried chicken?’

Idalia shook her head. ‘That was made by the Scottish, I think, not your people.’
Chance/Anthony gave her an impressed look. ‘You never mentioned that you were a genius.’

‘I paid attention in school, if that’s what you are referring to,’ replied Idalia, jumping slightly as the Pop-tart shot out of the toaster with the speed of a bullet. ‘Dio mio!’

Her school experience was not the best, Idalia could say that. Since she was a kid, she was determined to make her name known, but as she was always rather shy, reserved and introverted, the only way Idalia knew how to come about it was to study. She had very few friends---Giovanni was all, basically---so there was nobody there to take up all of her time. Every day after school she would go to the local library and read and study a book on a certain topic---a different one each week. When she was five or six---as in, when she first began going to the library weekly---Idalia would learn languages as she wasn’t sure what else to do.

They said it was easier to learn and “absorb” languages at a younger age. One’s accent would do little to effect their ability to pronounce various words and this rung through for young-Idalia too. She learnt German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and even Irish (she thought it was cool; Idalia was only six at the time of learning that) before her seventh birthday, when her father told her that it was unnecessary and to focus on her English or “the language of the upper-class”.

She didn’t listen to him until she was nine and fluent in two more languages: Japanese and Norwegian. It was when her teacher found out and sent an email to an Italian talk show claiming that she had a student fluent in ten languages (which was a lie; Idalia only spoke nine). Her parents received a letter requesting to have Idalia on the show which they shot down.
From then, she just worked her way through the alphabet and gave herself different topics to study each week after school.

Despite finding most languages easy, Idalia always found English to be rather difficult, even if she was learning it in and out of school since her fifth birthday.