Alice Stays Home

Ch. ONE Something in the way

The bell screams. Another day sacrificed on the altar of compulsory school is over. Herds of teenagers leave the classrooms. They pour into the corridors bumping into each other like buffaloes stung by bloodthirsty horseflies.

The scent of youth blocked between the walls of the classrooms from 8.30 am to 2 pm is finally released: a toxic cloud that smells of sweat, shoes worn too often and armpits crying out for deodorant. School is too small a box to hold me. This city is a trap I'm stuck in. I was born with a paw caught between its metal teeth.

"Lai. Stay," my teacher barks.

I hate it when they call me by my surname to tell me off. It's as if all of my ancestors were unnecessarily summoned.

"Blinded by Light on the road to Damascus," I say without turning around.

I was about to exit the classroom, caught before merging into the flock.

"Always in the mood for drama, aren't we?" she says and I can feel her gaze in my back. I keep the words on the edge of my mouth, I'll poison her if I say something.

I'm a snake in neat clothing, trained to look harmless.

"Why did you write those horrible things in your assignment?" As I turn my head she's holding my work like a severely wounded body, still bleeding. She shakes it. The rustling of white paper sounds like fluttering wings of a pigeon landing on a window sill.

"What do you mean?"

"What you say about your sister is monstrous, besides it doesn't seem to me that you tried very hard. You had two whole hours and all you came up with are these ... two improper lines. It's unacceptable."

I move fearlessly towards Miss Ingemito's chair – her defence line – looking her in the eye. There sits the champion of tradition, as likeable as a wart on your big toe, dressed in threadbare sweaters resting on her shoulders, with a narrow collar on the throat that make the blue tubes of her veins swell along her neck. Her glasses are always in a precarious balance on the tip of the nose. This is not a woman but a catalog of bitterness.

I'm not afraid of her, I have promised myself to have an I-couldn't-care-less attitude. I'm not afraid of the marks pigeonholed in the register log. I pity them. They are feeble ink prisoners that weigh but little with me.

"You gave us two hours to ask ourselves what we would do in case we just had one hour left to live. Isn't that nonsensical?" I look straight into her eyes. I find myself floating in her watery gaze.

Miss Ingemito doesn't know how to get angry. There are people who don't know how to love, others who don't know how to catch a compliment, as if they were dealing with a fish flicking away from their bare hands, and I even know people who can't lie: unbelievable!

And then there is this polite little woman teleported from another world (the lost planet of Prudoria) unable to show anger. She tries to quiver her upper lip, to puff, to look daggers. It's all for nothing, the result is always awkward. It takes talent to wear emotions.

"I'm going to have a word with your parents." Her barking has now turned into a squeak. Does she think it's an animal karaoke?

"Go ahead, have a chat with them." I put my hot head inside the cold cap. Distorted guitar solo goes off in my mind. Another battle won for Alice Lai, rebel twig.

I go out the door and he is there waiting for me. Sitting on his scooter. He would polish it with his tongue if he could. His name is Franc, like the old French currency no longer in use. It fits him perfectly. He's a has-been, like all the people you've had a relationship with and don't want to see anymore. Not even in the second row of a blurry group photo.

The only problem is that I'm still his girlfriend. Every time his mouth pronounces the sentence (You're my girlfriend) I find myself gasping for air. I need to put an end to this. Now.

He welcomes me with his eyes overflowing with love, while I feel like throwing up. Instead of butterflies, I have dragons inside my stomach.

"Alice, honey!" he spreads his words as if they were sawdust. And I feel suffocated.

"Don't call me that. I've told you a thousand times. I warn you, next time I'll smash your head in."

"Can I at least give you a kiss?" He glides over the threat. "I've been waiting for you for an hour."

"You had nothing better to do?"

He smiles. When he feels attacked he takes shelter behind a barricade of teeth.

"On the news they say the epidemic is getting worse," he says.

"Yeah, so?"

"Are you in a bad mood again?" he says as he puts on that annoying high-pitched voice I wouldn't even use to entertain a seven-minute-born baby. "They pissed you off at school again."

He reaches out to stroke me. I'd rather be touched and breathed in the face by a leper. I avoid him.

"Listen Fra, we need to talk."

That's what you say, right? That's the big opening phrase.

We need to talk: it's the hand of the hangman arranging the noose around the doomed man's neck.

He smiles again, this time with more conviction. "I love it when you call me Fra. It's cute."

"Yes, of course, cute. Let's talk"

"About?" he says suspiciously.

"You and me." I already feel the thrill of liberation. Air enters my lungs again.

"I'll take you home and we talk?"

"No, let's talk now and then I'll go home." I cut through the red tape.