This story is for Lilith. My dear little fellow.
You tell me that I am like Luisa Rey in Cloud Atlas, and you are the little Javier. Our friendship would never be loss even if now I am in a big city, working hard and fighting for my own future. You always tell me that when you watch MF, when you see Alex on the show, you feel something special. And I understand you, little nerd. I wasn't as great as you back when I was in school, but I know the weight of the burden you are carrying at such a young age. For you, Lils.
Chapter 1
"Alex, come down for dinner!" Claire Dunphy, Alex's mother gave a shout from downstairs, "Where's Haley again?"
The girl sat on her chair in front of her desk, reading Shakespeare's Hamlet attentively. Filtering all the noises and hustle from outside, she was now in her own world, immersing herself in knowledge. Alex just finished her additional math homework that she put upon herself, and now she was going through the classics. Hearing her mother's shout from downstairs, she rolled her eyes and shouted back, "I'm studying!"
Fairly soon, her mother shouted back again. "Don't put too much pressure on yourself! You are thirteen!"
It seems that they never succeed in understanding her. She was the middle one, and she was just naturally... a bit invisible in her family. Her grades. The thing that makes her proud. The thing that distinguished her from the rest of her family. The thing that make her special. How could they just want her to give up on her very own talent? The rest of the family got their own thing, and Alex has her thing, too.
It's just not easy to comprehend.
The girl trotted down the stairs and grabbed for a piece of bread. She started eating in a resonable speed.
"How's school?"
"Good. I got two A pluses today."
"Ooo, fancy! And... How's your new friend, Anna?"
That question poked her in somewhere. Anna was just a girl. A popular girl. Anna approached her at the first place, and Alex was so hopeful. So hopeful that she thought she could get into the popular circle. There were one day that she sat at their table for lunch and it was fabulous, but when that bucket of grossgusting mixture poured down from her head she knew that it was just another trick, another humiliating trick of theirs. She did not cry, for she told herself to be strong.
"...Good."
Alex always tell herself that she is too good for them when something like this happens. No one in this world seems to understand her, and she is just so... alone.
Alone, facing the world, with weights on her shoulders telling her to be good, to be excellent. Alex told herself that she is going to go to a good university, and she must start preparing now. Fight, fight, fight, fire off the ones blocking her path. She must be stone-hard, strong enough to be a nerd who eventually, would be on top of them all.