I know I keep delaying the mass update of my stories—I think it's been a year for some stories—but this will most likely be the last new story before I update everything. Then my main story will be published. Until then, enjoy every new pop-up story I write.

I liked solitude.

It was like freedom from the oppressing world, and it gave me a sense of security. In my own little world, alone, I felt as if I could be myself without anyone judging me. However, this same solitude is what deemed me to be "anti-social".

I didn't trust anyone. After my mother died and my father gave me away to my grandparents, I didn't know whether I should share my trust to anyone else. They might betray me like my father did, and I don't think I could handle that. Everything was fine, until my grandfather died about three years later. I completely shut down afterwards. I stayed silent, keeping to myself, and I scared off anyone who tried to come near me. A good tactic, at first; I was given the title of "Ice Queen".

I really didn't mind the name. In fact, I embraced the name. With the word 'queen' in it, I felt as if everyone regarded me with such high esteem. It made me feel as if I was superior to others; I liked the feeling the name gave me. And I, Alena Nixon, would not fall victim to yet another person and their tricks. I've isolated myself from everything and everyone as I see fit, but there are certain moments where I feel connected to others. Like my grandmother.

She's been with me since I was young, and she's been patient with me ever since. I haven't been the best behaved child when my father left me, and I appreciate how she always tried to connect with me. Then when my grandfather died, everything fell apart. We relied on each other—I relied on my grandmother for a home, clothes, and food; my grandmother relied on me for emotional support. That's when I realized that I couldn't shut my grandmother out because we depended on each other.

Which brings me to my main point: I haven't felt a real connection with someone since before my mother died, excluding my grandmother. I wish I could have a non-familial connection with someone, but I'm afraid they might hurt me. I've already lost so many people… I can't have that happen again.

~.~.~

Some of my fondest memories come from when I was still in middle school, eighth grade to be specific. I had acquired the name "Ice Queen" two years prior, and everyone seemed to forget my name and call me that, aside from the teachers and faculty members. When I talked to the teachers about it, they told me go to the counselor. When I talked to the counselor about it, she told me go to the principal. And when I talked to the principal about it, she shrugged it off. She told me to ignore it and continue with my day. Such help they were.

After lunch we always had an hour of recess. For the first few days, I went outside with the other children, though I didn't do anything with them. They played their games, whether it was football, basketball, soccer, races, hopscotch, or jump rope, and I stayed on the sidelines. Eventually, one of the teachers gave me permission to go wherever I wanted during recess; I chose to go to the library.

Our school library was almost as big as the local library, but it was small compared to other school libraries. Since our middle school isn't connected to an elementary school or a high school, it's fairly small. However, the two biggest rooms/areas are the cafeteria and the school library, the cafeteria being about twice the size of the library. To be honest, size didn't matter to me. A library was a library.

"Excuse me," I called, getting the librarian's attention. She turned to me with a smile. "Could you point out where the dictionaries and encyclopedias are?"

"Well, we don't have any encyclopedias, but the dictionaries are in the back." She stood up from the desk she was sitting at and pointed to the back. "Where that flickering light is."

I focused on that spot until I saw the single flickering light. "Oh, okay. Thank you, ma'am." I made my way over there and saw a whole shelf of dictionaries—the shelf was small, so there were roughly five dictionaries (one of the dictionaries were drastically worn out). I was sure they'd all have the same words in them with very little alterations, but I'd still go through all five of them.

I grabbed all five dictionaries and sat them on the long table. Opening the first one, there were about fifteen introduction pages before it actually started defining words. Once it did, though, I couldn't look away. Analyzing every word carefully, I realized how… inferior my knowledge was compared the people who made dictionaries. There was still more for me to learn, and I was determined to learn as much as I could.

A voice broke me out of my concentration. "Hey, you're the Ice Queen, right?" I could tell that my expression dropped, whether it was subconscious or not. I looked up and saw Emilia Miller in front of me. She's a Brazilian girl with brown hair and tan skin. Being in the same grade as me, I knew that she was not only smart but also athletic. Very athletic. She's in the school's soccer, boxing, and kickboxing team, despite her being a few months younger than me.

Seeing her in front of my face reminded me that she was the one who had given me the rather annoying name two years ago.

"What do you want," I asked. I had no time for this, seeing as how I now had fifteen minutes until recess ended. Time seemed to fly by as I was engaged in reading the dictionary.

"Nothing really. The teachers told me you'd be up here, and the librarian gave me your location. I'm just here to make sure you arrive to class on time." She took a seat at the table and stared at me. I felt unnerved by the way she was looking at me; I couldn't continue reading.

"Excuse you! Can't you find something to do until recess is over?!"

She shrugged. "I guess…" Emilia took her backpack off her shoulders and grabbed a thick book with a green cover. She grabbed a couple of fine-tip lead pencils, ballpoint pens, and a few erasers before opening the book. At first I thought she was writing something, but as I looked closer, she was drawing. I never knew she drew.

"Huh, look at who has nothing to do now," she teased. She knew I was watching her. I quickly grabbed the dictionary and continue my analysis of it, but I peeked at what she was drawing occasionally.

Emilia paid so much attention to detail, retracing every line about five times until it looked the way she wanted it to look; I didn't know what she was drawing. My curiosity distracted me from my reading as I got more interested in what Emilia was drawing.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

That was the bell. Immediately, I grabbed the books, placed them in the bookshelf, and proceeded to leave the library. I thanked the librarian on my way out and headed to my next class, mathematics. I enjoyed going to that class because of two reasons: it was a fairly easy class and it was my last class. I could go home after it ended.

"Alena, wait up!" I froze in my tracks, letting Emilia catch up. When she did, she looked to me in confusion. "What's wrong…?"

"… You called me 'Alena'…" I was shocked. Emilia Miller, one of the ignorant people I know, didn't call me by the name she had given me.

She arched one of her brown eyebrows, more confused than before. "Isn't that your name…?"

…

Going to the library during recess became a regular thing for me, and for Emilia too. After that day, we started going to the library, meeting each other in "our location". Then we started going together. I knew someone was going to question about it one day, but no one ever did, and it's been a few months now. Emilia and I were leaving recess to go to our secluded place in the library and nobody cared, as long as we weren't hurt and made it to class on time.

I tended to think of Emilia as a buzzing fly. You know they're there, especially when they come around to annoy you, but they eventually find a place to settle for a while. Then they start flying again, buzzing everywhere. You can either let them keep on buzzing and flying and annoying you, or you could kill them. Emilia, being a very energetic girl, couldn't sit still even if she was paid. And she talked about a lot of things. However, she found her settling place when drawing. It seemed as if she wouldn't annoy me anymore when she was drawing, and I was initially fine with that. But I became used to the buzzing fly that annoyed me, and I liked it as much as I liked the tranquil fly that settled down.

"Sad, adjective. Definition: affected by unhappiness or grief; sorrowful or mournful. Expressive of or characterized by sorrow. Causing sorrow," I recited from the dictionary.

I could see Emilia grimace as I looked at my book. "That doesn't sound like a good word to associate with… What's the next word?"

"Well, the next few words are just variations of sad, like 'sadness' and 'sadly'…"

"And after that…?" I looked away from the second dictionary. Emilia was still looking at her drawing, which was now becoming clearer. She was drawing herself and someone else; she was almost done herself but the other person was simply an outline. I was mesmerized by her artist talent. It was amazing that she could draw herself from memory.

"How do you do it," I found myself asking. She stopped drawing and looked up, now staring right at me. Initially, she looked to me with a bit of wonder, but now her eyes showed understanding and respect. If she really looked into my eyes, I guess the same thing would be visible.

"Do what," she responded. I pointed to the paper and she gave me a confused look. "Draw people?"

"Draw yourself."

"Oh, well, it's easier than drawing others. Since I have a perfect memory, all I have to do is look at myself a couple of times. Like in the mirror or in pictures, then I'll know what detail I have to put in. With others, it's a different story. I have to really analyze them, studying what they look like with their different emotions. It takes a while, but I can start drawing them once I'm certain I have all the detail I need."

"That's amazing!"

"Thank you." Our conversation ended there. She continued on her drawing and I continued reading the second of five dictionaries. I peeked from the book to get a look at her drawing a couple of times, and she must've caught on to what I was doing. Before the bell rang, I took one last look at Emilia's drawing. However, she was looking at me that time. Her eyes showed a mischievous look, and it was as if she was wondering something.

I opened my mouth to speak, but…

Ding! Ding! Ding!

… the bell beat me. I shut my mouth and did my normal routine. Before I left the library, I thanked the librarian, this time waiting for Emilia by the front entrance. She caught up with me ten seconds later and we walked to class together. Since our math teacher recently changed the seats in our class to be arranged alphabetically by last name, we sat next to each other.

I finished the worksheet he handed to us, as well as everything else in the book, and turned to Emilia. She seems to have done the same thing because she was drawing in her book. I wanted to say something to her, but ultimately thought against it. I might've broken her concentration or got the teacher's attention.

She finished drawing herself by the end of class.

…

During the last days of school, we had to rehearse for graduation. We arrived at school normal time, received breakfast, and then rehearsed. We had a two-hour break halfway through, and then we finished rehearsing. As the valedictorian, I had to practice my speech. I wasn't required to remember it, but I would've if I didn't realize how professional it looked to have documents with me. Without them, people could've perceived that I was making it up on the spot.

Once the break started, I went to the library while everyone else went to the gym. I was surprised to see Emilia in our secluded spot, drawing in her book. She was still drawing the same picture, now being on the second person. I never paid attention to who she was drawing because I didn't care; she could've been drawing a family member.

"Well, well, well, I didn't think that Ms. Valedictorian would show up," she mocked, stressing her voice as she said 'Ms. Valedictorian'. "Aren't you supposed to be practicing your speech or something?"

"I already did that… What's the matter with you?" This isn't the first time Emilia's acted weird. In fact, she's been acting this way for about three weeks. Some seventh graders came into the library and mocked me for being alone. Emilia defended me from them, but she expressed her disappointment at the fact that I couldn't and didn't defend myself. I guess she was still upset…

"What's the matter with me?! You can't be serious… Alena, you've been ignoring me since those little kids called you a loner. I may have distanced myself from you for a couple of days, but you haven't been talking to me since." I don't remember it like that. Sure, I wasn't talking to Emilia, but that was because she wasn't talking to me. She's tried to, but I was too ashamed to speak to her.

"Wait, Emilia, I didn't—"

"Whatever! I don't want to hear it!" She closed her book, stuffed it into her backpack, and started walking to the front entrance of the library. She turned to me as she made it to the doorway. "I thought we were friends, but I guess you really are the Ice Queen. No… You're more than that… You're the Ice Bitch. Adiós, Queen."

As Emilia left the library, I realized something: I lost another person.