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Chapter 2

The picture above is important to the chapter. At the beginning of each of Alexander's chapters, there will be a sketch that will have been drawn by him (though, all the pictures will be drawn by me, the author of the book. Please do not reuse without giving me credit <3).

"The oxygen, then, is taken from the air through the pores of the lungs and deposited into the red blood cells' hemoglobin. The freshly oxygenated blood, now denoted as red, returns to the left atria via the pulmonary... Alexander!" My tutor exclaims, finally looking up from the detailed diagram of the heart that he had been reviewing for the past hour. I glance up at him, taking my eyes off the picture I was doodling. My heart begins hammering as I, as inconspicuously as possible, place my hand over the small drawing, hoping he cannot see.

"If you have not been making annotations on the circulatory system, how on Earth do you expect to succeed on the examination that will be administered to you in the upcoming days?" Mr. Makario sounds quite fed up with me, as he always does when he feels I am slacking. I look down at the white sheet in front of me, blank except for my name, Alexander Oglethorpe, at the top and the title, Sirculatory System, with a detailed underline underneath it.

"And Alexander!" He exclaims again, rubbing his head, trying to remove the growing pain behind his forehead that I have undoubtedly caused... again. "You did not even spell Circulatory correctly. It is spelled with a C, not an S. We have been over this again and again. And the E faces the outside of the paper, Alexander!" He is now standing over me as we both look down at the paper in shame.

"But sir," I plead, erasing the offending letters and replacing them as best I can, "The paper has two outsides! How am I supposed to remember which one?"

"It should not be hard to recall which side, Alexander! It is the same side every time! I cannot work like this today. Advise the king and queen of my early retreat, I am in deep need of a promenade in the garden." I nod, trying to feign being upset. But being let go an extra hour early? That is the greatest news I could have been given! "And Alexander," he says, turning back to me one more time before he leaves the room, "Next time you begin to partake in such crude primordial symbols that the Rights like to call 'art', cover it before I look at you. And in addition, the left ventricle should be a tad larger, in proportion to the right."

My face flushes scarlet as Mr. Makario walks out of the room and I realize that I must go to my parents and tell them myself what has happened before they hear the story from anyone else. I roughly put my pencils and pens away, shoving the textbooks and diagrams into the sidebag I carry for schoolwork, close the laptop aggressively and throw it inside as well. As I pass the board on the way to the door, I look up at the various letters and words written up there, trying hard, really hard to concentrate on them, make any bit of sense of them. But as I watch, they all seem to blend together, switching sides and sounds. My brain grows tired of looking at them.

Some Left I am.

I walk the long, empty halls of the castle. Though, if my parents were to hear my calling it a castle, they would certainly reprimand me for it. After all, it is nothing of the boisterous and leud castles that I have seen in textbooks describing the Before, where the kings and queens cared more of showing off their wealth than making sure their subjects were well fed. Compared to those, our "castle" is quite modest. The many rooms and halls we have are not for show: There is someone who lives or works in each of the rooms every day.

But whether or not the halls are as long as they were Before does not quite concern me at the moment. They might as well have been three times the size for how slowly I pass through them, dragging my feet against the thick carpets, dreading the audience I was to have with the king and queen. Turning into the hall that holds our rooms, I glance longingly towards the direction of my own, wishing I was heading there where I could lock myself for the next hour and be away from prying eyes and ears. But alas, I continue on past it and arrive in front of my parents' quarters.