Dawn comes like a thief. It takes away all my dreams, the warmth of my bed, the black light of the night that protects me.
Outside there's a dawn chorus of birds celebrating the spring. We could never make such a racket even on the last day of school. When there was still school, of course.
Now that people hardly use cars anymore, the city has changed its soundscape. For example, I can hear my neighbor's cell phone vibrating so well I yell at him to pick it up so he doesn't wake up the whole neighborhood with his damn silent ring tone! He tells quietly me to get lost and then answers the phone.
It's not raining anymore.
Today we stay home.
I've decided: I won't wash, I won't get dressed, I won't comb my hair. Nobody will say anything to me anyway.
I dreamt that Skià was telling strange stories about Greek mythology. Not bad. But I hope he doesn't quiz us on it tomorrow.
No, it wasn't a dream. And joking won't change a thing about what I'm thinking, still curled up in bed: I haven't felt like this in a zillion years.
I dreamt I was Coronis. That's true, yes. But the memory of my dream crumbles between my neurons and fades away. All that's left of the dream are the sheets drenched in sweat. Yuck. I get up to change them right away.
No, the sheets aren't drenched in sweat.
They're soaked in blood.
Yeah, it happened again. This business of being a woman can be a pain in the ass sometimes (copyright Andrea, who sometimes laughs at things that aren't funny at all).
I get up, I check and no: it's not normal.
Shivers run down my spine.
It's my back that was bleeding. My T-shirt is stained around my shoulder blades. It looks exactly like the one good old Carrie had in good old Stephen King's book.
Shirt off. Mirror.
Nothing. There's nothing on my back. No sign of a wound.
I call mum who doesn't pick up, and I get more and more annoyed.
I leave her a voice note where I explain the whole thing. Obviously the words come out wrong.
I put on my Nirvana T-shirt. It goes well with everything. Even with fear.
I open the window. There's hardly anyone on the street, and the few walking around are careful to distance themselves from the others.
I'm not sure how I feel about it. I wonder if I'll ever want to be close to someone else again. To hug them, touch them, kiss them. Or maybe I'll come up with a new motto: "It's better to live alone than die together." Who knows, maybe we'll all just be desert islands?
I fly down the stairs so fast that if I put a foot wrong I will have to be reassembled, like Lego.
I hug, touch and kiss Bob, who fills me with happiness all day long.
He made hot lemon tea and a stack of pancakes. The butter and hot maple syrup are already on the table.
With my mouth full I tell him the news about the mysterious Skià, obviously keeping my most intimate thoughts to myself.
Bob, hears me out, he's never in a hurry to speak his mind. He listens, very carefully.
Then he tells me something I didn't expect.
"Why don't you try to draw him?"
"What do you mean?"
"The mask, his black pupils, the mouth, the guitar, everything."
"Why should I? I can see him whenever I want."
"Drawing has nothing to do with seeing, if you ask me. When you draw, make a portrait or represent an object, or a landscape, you have to go over every single detail, even the smallest one. It's a total embrace. You do it with your eyes, that's true, but not only. You do it with your heart. And indeed it's the closest thing to making love that exists."
"This is the kind of speech grandparents don't usually make, Bobby."
"I don't know. I became an adult in 1967, the summer of love. Then came 1968, the spring of protest. And in 1969: the erotic year, as the singer Serge Gainsbourg called it."
Okay, now I'm totally embarrassed.
"Who was that guy... Ghein-something?" I just say to change the subject, and he sounds like a character from Lupin the Third to me.
"He was a kid in Paris during the Nazi occupation. He was Jewish and, like all Jews, he had to wear a badge in the form of a yellow star of David sewn onto his jacket. People were ashamed of that piece of cloth. He wasn't. He wore it with pride, with cockiness. You know what he used to tell the Nazis? 'I'm the sheriff, and you're all bandits.' He became the greatest French singer of all time."
Now that I'm over the awkwardness from before, I explain the thing about my back to him. He says mum's coming home tonight and we can tell her everything in detail and not to worry.
I walk up the stairs heavily because of the pile of pancakes I gulped down and with the added weight of a doubt: he seemed happy for a moment when I told him my back had bled. But maybe not, maybe it was just to calm me down. Anyway, I'm sure he wasn't worried at all.
Before I go up, I tell him I didn't know he could draw well.
"And indeed my drawings suck, my young Padawan, which is why I can't wait to see yours."
Once I'm in my room, I shower, brush my teeth and comb my hair. I open the storage and pick out clothes like I'm going out on a date.
"Storage" is what I used to call my little walk-in closet when I was a kid. I still call it that, after all it's the place where I find the answers to my doubts about what to wear and who I'm supposed to be every day.
Music.
Today I'm in the mood for classical music and I play Jack White. Love Is Blindness. So I can shout a little.
Windows wide open.
Paper and markers.
I miss too many things to be happy, but my heart's pounding and I tell myself it's good to be here, still in one piece, today.
As soon as I finish sharpening my pencil, I get a message from Andrea.
"What the hell happened to our breakfast together, Alice, dude?"
YOU ARE READING
Alice Stays Home
General FictionAlice Lai is 15. It's the last day of school before the lockdown. She must now stay at home, an empty apartment where she spends a lot of her time by herself. Her parents work on endless shifts at the hospital (her mum's a doctor and her dad's a nu...
