Alice Stays Home

Ch. TWELVE Heart Shaped Box

I don't fall for that.

            And I'm not amused.

            Any cheap hacker can activate the camera or the mic on my tablet or my phone, listen to what I say, see what I'm up to. They did it in the first season of Money Heist and it didn't surprise me, and I was, like, still in middle school then.

            So, dear Skià, if you want to impress me, you should try harder.

            I'll find my grandma's brush box myself. Thanks, anyway.

            And if you want to spy on me while I'm doing my things, I won't call you a pervert, everyone is entitled to their hobbies, right?    I have a cousin who collects green bugs, you know, those stinky little creatures around the house? I don't know if it's worse than spying on a girl, but it's a hobby.

            I say it out loud, just to be clear, so if Skià can hear me, he has no doubts...

            I've been looking for those brushes for years. Grandma kept them in a red heart-shaped box of chocolates. And with the brushes there was a picture of her as a girl, she was beautiful. A silver bracelet, maybe. A postcard from Hawaii. And two of my baby teeth.

            We all have a treasure to find on a faraway island.

            I get a message. It's from mum who tells me two things: first, that they've decided that we should never leave the house again unless for essential matters (like what?), and second, that she and dad are coming home tonight and we're finally having dinner together.

            Well, it's about time. I was almost convinced they'd rebuilt their lives somewhere else (better than here, that's for sure) and that the hospital was just an excuse.

            So I can't go out anymore. We'll see about that. We'll talk about it later.

            Now I have to finish my crow, that's the only thing I care about at the moment.

            When you draw, you draw - as Bob says.

Nothing else matters.

            But then I change my mind. I put the phone in a drawer, leave the apartment, go up a flight of stairs, open a small metal door and I'm in the attic. A little light filters through a filthy skylight so I'm able to stay away from the cobwebs. I arrive at a rotten wooden ladder, climb up a few steps, open a trap door, which is not too heavy I admit, and I come out on the roof of the house.

            Our building has a flat roof, and in the corner there's a turret eighteen feet high where the TV antennas are. On one of the walls of the turret there's a metal ladder, the kind that gives you vertigo in movies. I grab onto the rungs and climb up. Without looking down - that's the rule - because everyone knows that if you look down sooner or later you fall. The ladder is on the side of the street and all it takes is a moment to lose balance and end up spread on the sidewalk without even having time to think how stupid it was to die like that (or to tell yourself as you're falling , so far so good...). I think they put it there to stop any kid from wanting to climb it.

            Except I'm not just any kid.

            So here I am - on the very top of the roof.