Alice Stays Home

Ch. TWENTY-TWO Then You'll Think You're Happy Now

He'll give you breathing holes

Then you will seem happy

You'll wallow in the shit

Then you'll think you're happy now

NIRVANA – SAPPY

OK, time to move out.

I've always told everyone that what I can't carry around the world in a small bag I really can do without, I don't need it.

Of course, when you're fifteen, you talk a lot of rubbish.

I really am no Zen traveler. By the amount of stuff I have I would need a van, and I'm just going downstairs.

What if I leave something vital up here that's impossible to live without, what do I do then? Sure, I can go up and get it. It's not dangerous.

Yes, it is, because if I go up while my parents are in the hospital I already know that the drooling monster of nostalgia will attack me and tear me to pieces.

I miss everything.

Even the future.

I pull up my shirt in front of the mirror. No wings, no scars. Even the pain that caught me unawares, like a surprise test at school, hasn't showed up in a while.

I even miss the things that were hurting me.

Anyway, that chick in the mirror isn't bad. She should find out more about combs. Maybe walk in a car wash, the kind with the two huge rotating blue brushes. But, yeah, she's not bad at all!

I take my shirt off, smell it, throw it on the bed.

I put on a new one, which is old. It was Bob's.

It's red with Ernesto Che Guevara's face on it.

He was fighting for the revolution in Cuba.

I'm battling with things at home to take with me.

That's how the world goes in 2020.

But all in all - me and Bob - we can make a cool duo. Maybe when I'm old, I'll remember 2020 as the year I was happy.

I grab a big backpack from the closet.

It's sooo heavy. What's in it?

I open it and I find something that I thought had gone lost. A cannonball stolen from a castle during last year's field trip to Rome. It's made of stone, just under the size of a soccer ball. My classmates and I took it and I carried it around all day until we got back to the hotel in the evening.

Because the least we can do is to steal a cannonball when we go to a castle. That's exactly the kind of students we are. I use the plural because my class still existed back then. Now everybody's home, and so long.

The great thing is, I completely forgot that ball was in my bag. I thought it had gotten lost after the field trip.

I put the cannonball on the desk so mum and dad will think of me when they get back from the hospital. If they get back, who knows with their ridiculous working hours.

(When I came back from the trip and showed it to them, hell broke loose, and they made me promise that I'd return it the next time I went to Rome. Sure, I can hear myself already: "Hello, I've come to return your cannonball...")

But enough of this, there's a lot of work to be done.

Music for moving out: Marilyn Manson. "Sweet Dreams."