It was a dark and stormy night when Alexia decided to move out. Seriously, it was. In fact, it was pouring rain as she left the clothing store where she worked. Alexia had forgotten her umbrella at the dorm, and her motorcycle provided no shelter from the downpour. She swore as she realized that her neatly braided hair had started to come undone, resulting in wisps of hair sticking to her face and getting into her eyes.
Alexia continued to mumble about her bad luck as she started her bike and began to pull away from the curb. She was startled as she felt a sudden gust of air rushing past her, and quickly found what had caused it.
She smiled, her eyes following the costumed figure swinging on spider webs only a few feet above the Manhattan traffic. Suddenly, Alexia's hair problems were much less important, as she remembered her first day in New York, and her brief encounter with Spider-Man.
She remembered how lucky she was just to be alive.
Alexia's sudden zest for life quickly faded as she returned to the dorm she shared with a few of her fellow New York University students, a bunch of boy-crazy blond girls who acted as if they hadn't yet graduated junior high school.
"Nice hair", one of the girls commented, bending over the bathroom mirror applying what was probably her fifth coat of make up, "You look like a drowned rat."
"Gee, thanks. Good luck with your customer service course. I'm sure you'll make a fine gas station attendant," Alexia retorted sarcastically.
The girl gave Alexia what she probably considered a menacing look, but ended up more like a pout.
"I don't see how you could be a model. You probably don't even know the difference between Nike and Gucci," the girl said.
Alexia shrugged.
"I model the clothes, I don't design them", Alexia replied, as she walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a soda out of the refrigerator.
"You're just an ugly idiot", the girl continued, trying to get a rise out of Alexia.
"Then I guess there isn't much difference between us," Alexia said, beginning to get annoyed.
The girl smirked at this.
"At least I have a father", she said.
Nearly shaking with anger at the mention of her father, Alexia muttered a rather nasty expletive as she went into her room and slammed the door, flopping down on her bed.
Alexia had grown up in a shabby neighbourhood in L.A. Her father had been a B-grade movie producer, who had left her mother as soon as she told him that she was pregnant, afraid that it would hurt his career. Because she had never completed high school, Alexia's mother had been forced to take many low-paying part-time jobs to support them. She encouraged Alexia to learn as much as she could, in school and otherwise. So when Alexia graduated, she applied to several universities, and was accepted into all of them, but she chose NYU. Ever since she was old enough to read, Alexia had wanted to move to New York. She loved big cities; the sounds of people coming and going, the concrete canyons of Manhattan, the constant excitement of 'the city that never sleeps'. As she had discovered in her short time there, NYC was not the giant wonderland she had dreamed of, but Alexia was not discouraged, and still felt that she belonged there.
Without even realizing it, Alexia had fallen asleep, and woke up suddenly as her alarm clock blared a familiar song from the local rock radio station. She got showered and dressed quickly, eager to get out of the dorm. She'd had enough of her dorm mates; she was moving out.
Alexia drove to a diner a few blocks away, buying a newspaper from the vender across the street. After ordering her food, she opened it to the classifieds, hoping to find an affordable apartment close to campus. Ten minutes later, she had found nothing that wouldn't force her to sell her bike just to pay the rent. She was just about to give up and ask for a transfer to another dorm, when a small ad in the corner of the last page caught her eye.
Room avail.
$450/Mth. Util. Included. Call 212-959-6759
Well, it certainly wasn't a room at the Trump Hotel, but it was all she could afford at a moment. After paying for her food, she called the number from a payphone near the university. A man with a thick foreign accent answered and gave her directions to the apartment, then started complaining about how the other tenant, also a university student, never paid his rent on time. Before he could continue, Alexia assured him that she would pay her rent on time, said goodbye, and hung up. Checking her watch, Alexia realized that she had better get to class, and decided that she would visit the apartment after class.
