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Prolog
Have you ever felt yourself lost, completely lost in the walls of your apartment, in the streets of your town where you have lived all your conscious life, in the whole universe? I have, now I am lying on the floor with empty bottles around me as I strangled all the content out of them, some kind of pills as I believe they could burn down all the damage I have done to my body and empty boxes of pizza and some packages of food, it is my method to kill any human emotions about regret, sadness and self-blame at least for couple of hours. The walls of my apartment are so cold and lifeless that I wish I could escape from here, the ambience is suppressing. I hate this place it is striking in me total desperation, unworthiness to life and the longing to erase myself from the face of this planet. I foster abhorrence to every corner of this lodging. Only yesterday I was over the moon, the whole idea of moving here brought me excitement and a particular feeling. And what about now? I wish I had never moved, I wish I had never made a deal about this flat. However, I can’t move back, there is no step back as the decision had been made and its reverse would denote disaster. I am alone, I mean not alone on daily basis. I have parents, a brother, a cat by my side, but loneliness is inside. It is like being on the deserted island with people around you who don’t notice you, who are similar to each other that is creepy. Sometimes we don’t need the hell big amount of people around us in order to feel secure, safe and being at the right place. Few human beings are able to change your life and all about it in one day, in one hour. But I have only one who is able to revive me, the thing is he isn’t here anymore. Sometimes we only need the very one human being who we wish to watch every day without a cessation whose presence makes everything to be right. In my decadent and confused world this person was a remedy to heal, a placebo to take every day without recommended dose, a drug which in the end causes consequences. That will be my story about, which consequences attachments implicate. The story which has shaken my world and maybe it will shake yours, you never know.
Chapter 1
That day I was completely worn out like any other days though. My current job was innervating me to death. Day by day I had the same routine waking up early in the morning and finishing working at ungodly hour for the salary I couldn’t even afford a pair of new pants. In my thoughts I was quitting it every single day but the following morning I turned back there again.
I put on weight, my health was in a mess and the purpose of life had gone away with the summer breeze long ago. The only thing which was driven me to existence was to be independent from my mum I meant in the independence of not taking money from her and my severely ill friend who I happened to substitute, I couldn’t abandon people without support who mean a lot to me, so I grinned and bore it.
Anyway let’s get back to that actual day, the day that didn’t forebode anything. Actually, nothing particular happened but later than I realized that it was a harbinger of my complete change.
I had to fill in again, so there were two boys’ names written in my timetable and I was thinking: “So, okay, what are you going to do with two children? What might they know? What level could they have?” With those contemplations going on I was climbing the stairs when I suddenly saw those “children” who turned out to be 19 years old. For a second I was frustrated as I hadn’t anticipated at all such grown up kids, then I pull myself together and said – whatever.
I noticed immediately the arrogant looks on their faces and the scent of coolness, they spread out of themselves. Their looks were alike hipsters. One was wearing a shirt and jeans with a vans bag and tattooed, the other one had a simpler look but still there was something in his eyes which questioned everything.
I was also offered to keep those guys for myself as it was their first lesson and they had no idea who Alice was, so I didn’t mind and asked them if they were okay with it. They looked puzzled but agreed in a heartbeat due to my abilities to hold the lesson engaging and absorbing. Moreover, I usually got on well with my students. So I asked them to call me just by name and stay away from all these formalities (the thing I actually do with any new student who is closer to my age) and add me on Facebook in case I need to provide them with additional information. Generally, I used this scheme with all my teenager and adult students as I reckon that as long as you are a friend to them, they are friendly in your regards and the learning process is much easier and funnier in that way. Otherwise you are doomed to be hated or represent total indifference to your personality.
“So, okay guys, we’ve finished for today. If you have any questions or anything else to ask, I am always there for you or you can call me, whatever you want, I am willing to help all the time.” I said.
“Okayyyy”. was the answer and I could clearly see their bewildered faces and started thinking how the idea was wrong to offer them such ways of reaching me outside the classroom hours on the very first day but I didn’t care much as you remember I didn’t give a shit in the world about most of the things that time.
They ushered from the room thanking me for the lesson and telling their goodbyes while I was comprised by irksome thoughts:
“I am sure they will go to Alice immediately when she comes back to her working schedule again, I wasn’t convincing at all and this stupid proposal about adding me on Facebook, they are 19, who wants to have a teacher among his friends at this age! It is embarrassing”.
Then my thoughts reversed to the unnoticeable fact of how handsome they both were. However, I was trying to suppress those dreary thoughts. I knew where such cogitations led me – to a dreamy possibility of being in a relationship with one of them. It was out of question as the last experience of being in a romantic encounter with a student had shown nothing but the waste of time. Still, I was all about to describe my first impression of those guys.
Both of them I saw as arrogant types who knew what they wanted from life, living it to the max and didn’t care what on earth was happening with others, those hipsters types, pejorative and pretentious but at the same time with a complex worldview and value of system in their eyes.
One of them had black pitch hair and the same eyes colour. He wasn’t bulky but possessed some muscles which made him look more masculine in the comparison to his friend. He was wearing a dark blue sweater and jeans, nothing extra particular but still in the latest fashion. He had an enchanting smile and something deceptive in his facial features but it didn’t push you away from him but quite the opposite it appealed you in every way. At the same time I saw a ubiquitously simple boy in him under his mask of steadfastness. Actually, later it turned out to be the truth.
The second one was the strange type you might see on the internet, kind of a tumbler boy, so mysterious, so innocent, so mesmerizing you became weak at the knees. He smelled as tangerines on New Year’s eve. Could you imagine a person who would possibly have a scent of a fruit in a way not even spreading it, you smelled it on your subconscious level of perception. His uneven face was so perfectly sculptured with flawless pale skin which brought you the sensation of early autumn, when the sun shines but doesn’t bring the warm anymore, when the leaves are already yellow with scarlet pimples spread around but not wrinkled yet. The stage when rain sprinkles into your face with pleasant fatigue and recklessness. Every his movement was delicate and subtle but at the same time feverish with harsh squish as though you were facing an angel with devilish inclinations. He didn’t look at you or stared he glared in a way he wanted to show that he was capturing everything at his sight. So, when you looked at him, you did not experience butterflies in your stomach, there were tarantulas that were scraping inside you trying to find a way out but without a mere range of success. Did you know that the most species of tarantulas were brown? So, was he. He had a brownish walnut hair colour, as had been mine before I used too much hydrogen peroxide on it and I guessed the chemicals didn’t only have impact on my hair but on my brains as well. Looking at his hair immediately induced the desire to stroke it until the end of this world. Its waviness made you all your demons went out and officiated macabre activities.
His name didn’t summon for something unusual or clamorously famous, it was a typical name you could hear in everyday situations but for me it was ephemerical, something beyond common use, I was enchanted by it so hard that each time I looked at the list of absence in order to spell it correctly, in order to glance at it and feel the vibrations coming out of it. I longed for saying this name every day, in each situation I could. My heart was pounding like mad when I said it again and again. You might think that I was off my rocker. In reality, yes, I was, as you didn’t meet something extraterrestrial in your boring routine life every now and then.
However, he wasn’t my type at all, such subtle in the appearance boys need the same types of girls, which I was not even closer to it. Furthermore, I was into muscled boys who had some interest in keeping themselves fit, not those anorexic-model like ones. Besides my “not giving a fuck to anything in this world state” didn’t leave me at all. Coming back home I declined any thought I could have on the subject of these two boys. Plus my stepfather’s alcohol addiction always got me back to reality. In a short, he had hardships which he poured into vodka or something else in order to release stress but this “remedy” quickly took him into its possession and all his aggression and view of world unjustness to him reflected on me, mum and then on my younger brother, a.k.a. his son.