Alexis comes into this world screaming. (In this way, she’s like everyone around her.)
When Alexis is two, her sisters loom over her and whisper of deep dark futures. Sometimes she’s included. Sometimes she isn’t.
Alexis is four, when she realizes(someone tells her) that maybe her overexcitement is a bad thing.
Alexis is six, when she stops dreaming of fake horrors, and starts dreaming of real ones.
(No one as young as her should know how to use a sword. She improvises)
When she asks her sisters, she realizes that she isn’t like them, either. (She’s not unique, in this new small world,but for everyone around her, close enough.)
Alexis is seven, and the looks at school have turned from sight to sound, and she learns how to clamp her hands over her ears without anyone noticing
Alexis is eight, when she loses two of her friends when they drag her around in fights,(that almostquitemaybe involve her) and maybe it occurs to her that she should be stronger
Alexis is nine, when it all becomes too much for her. Her sisters leave, with a note that simply states, “You have to leave too”, and the paper is every so slightly cried upon. (Its her tears). Its no longer sound but touch at her school, things that belong to her (mine those bâtards) go missing and reappear not where they were. (For once, something goes wrong, and it's not her fault.) Hairs fall out when she hasn’t even touched them, and her mother gets louder. Her father gets quieter, her brother gets angry, and Alexis cries.
Alexis is ten when she falls in love. Later she’ll say it was infatuation, or a delicate emotional time, but he’s her only friend, so it happens anyway. (Besides its expected of her, but not expected of her, so she tells no one.)
Alexis is eleven, and she’s all alone again. She gets used to it. She also finds a notebook and sketchbook, and she never puts those down.
Alexis is twelve when she ‘’accidentally” kicks the leg of the classmate who tried to trip her.
Maybe it's somewhat incorrect to say her brother got angrier. Alexis gets angry too. But not angry enough to overpower the sadness, and tears fall from her eyes, but they stop flowing - except they don’t. Its something like diamond, and this covers her whenever she enters the school, like a dozen shining spikes, and they vanish whenever she comes home. She wipes two or three rebellious drops away from her eyes with her fists( weakweakWEAK), and she knows that who made her cry does not deserve them. (The sadness stays. The anger wins)
Alexis is thirteen when she cleans her room, and discovers a note, in faded ink, that says “You have to leave too”
And she does.
The calendar says she is thirteen, the weight in her heart says she is older. The backpack has three sketchpads, two notebooks, and an air of finality.
When she arrives at the camp, and the captains say to meet each other and make nice, Alexis finds the nicest looking person (she’s kinda cute, but that won’t matter until about five minutes after you stop talking to her) ,reaches out her hand, and says “Hey, I’m Alexis, but you can call me Kick”, because she wants a new name, and Eklund doesn’t seem good enough, so she works with Kick.
(The goodbye note is written in her neatest handwriting.)
