Sixteen year old Angela Ziegler sat in front of her desk, legs crossed on top of the chair, and twiddled her toes inside her socks. She absently flipped one out of two thousand pages of the book on her table, and reflected upon the fact that if Lehningher's Principles of Biochemistry was this thick, she could only imagine what an advanced biochemistry book would look like.
"The flux through the glycolytic pathway must be adjusted in response to conditions both inside and outside the cell."
God, this is so unearthly boring.
Leaning back against her seat, she stretched her arms upwards, grimacing at the pain that shot through her stiff back muscles. It had been a long day of a long week and her brain wasn't really cooperating with her studies. Sighing, she forced her eyes back to the paper.
"The rate of conversion of glucose into pyruvate is regulated to meet two major cellular needs," She read out loud, trying to keep her focus. "The production of ATP, generated by the degradation of glucose, blah blah blah fatty acids."
Inwardly groaning, she rested her forehead against the page, eyes closed, rationalizing that perhaps if she stood on that position for long enough, knowledge would flow from the book and into her brain by osmosis. Her attempt was unsuccessful, and after a full five minutes, she straightened back up and glared at the metabolic pathway map stuck on her wall.
More like diabolical pathway map, she thought sourly, abruptly slamming the book shut. Pushing the wall with her feet, she rolled the chair backwards, until it bumped on her bed and she hopped into it and under the covers, giving up on the studies altogether.
She turned her laptop on, opened a tab with youtube and stared at the bar for a second.
"chopin prelude op 28 no 15", she typed in and hit play.
She hit open a news website and skimmed through the headlines for a moment, none in particular catching her attention. Increasingly aggravated, she logged into a couple social networks and scrolled through them for a couple minutes.
"moonlight sonata third movement," she switched once the previous song was done playing.
Yeah that's some good vibes you got there, Angela.
She closed her eyes and took one long, deep breath, feeling anguish well up inside her chest. She rubbed her face with both open palms, the tenseness in her muscles evident. She focused on the movement of air in and out of her lungs, counting from eins bis zehn and back.
God they were dead and chopped I can't –
And now the images were coming, branded at the back of her eyes, of arms and legs and body parts on metallic trays, the strong smell of formaldehyde burning her nostrils, the skin on her hands trapped inside rubber gloves and sticky with sweat. The sleeves of her lab coat folded up to the elbow, holding a scalpel with one hand and tweezers with the other, pulling apart the skin from the fat and the fat from the muscle and the muscle from the bone –
Sixteen. She clenched her hands into fists. I am sixteen. I am sixteen and I am absolutely not ready –
How the skin looked dry and the muscles looked washed out from the conservation process, giving every body a mummified aspect. A particularly horrific, vertical cut of the skull came to her mind, the inner nose and mouth visible in one side, opaque eyes spit in half on the other, tongue lolling out, trachea and larynx hanging.
"mozart requiem lacrimosa"
She asked herself what an adult would do – what her parents would do. The thought hurt and it didn't help; she found herself growing more distraught. The next best question, of course, was how her classmates dealt with it, and she didn't need to look very hard to find that answer – with alcohol, of course. Alcohol, loud music, sex, things that could drown out the deeply disturbing things they were all going through.
Perhaps it's just me though, she reflected. Perhaps they aren't suffering much at all with it. Perhaps I am just far too young and too green and too sensitive. God, I need something to take my mind off this.
She was lonely, there was no denying that. She had always been a people person, one that loved to bask in human warmth and share laughter and hugs and kind words. But that had been before – before. She found herself suddenly out of place when she fell into grief for her parents, and then out of place when she buried herself in books to forget it, out of place when her academic performance far bested her peers, and now she found herself out of place because she was a child in a class of men and women.
The forced solitude did her harm, though she was too proud to admit it to herself.
"things to do when you are alone at home and a minor" Google search.
God, I'm pathetic.
Anguish, squeezing at her chest and stealing the breath out of her lungs. She questioned her choices, questioned if she was cut out for this at all. She was quickly running out of patience with herself.
"good free games" she abruptly typed in, following a couple links to a download page.
League of Legends. Huh. Looks promising.
Her room had optic fiber – the download took less than five minutes to be done, and then she was staring at a game screen, confused but content with the challenge of figuring out the interface. She skipped the tutorial – hands on was the best way to learn after all – and jumped straight into a match, guiding her character through the map, hitting the buttons at random to figure out what they did.
On the first minute, she died to a tower.
On the fifth minute, she died to a minion.
On the eighth minute, she died to a tower again.
On the twelfth minute, a teammate profusely cursed her for invading his solo lane.
On the eighteenth minute, she died to a mob in the jungle.
On the twenty-third minute, she was getting the hang of it, but she still died to a bot-controlled enemy champion.
On the thirty-seventh minute, she killed her first enemy, and she pumped her fist in the air with the thrill, grinning.
On the forty-eight minute, they were taking the base and she died to a tower again. She cursed as she waited for the respawn, promising herself to take a hero with a bigger health bar and more regen for the next game.
The match ended at the fifty-second minute with their defeat, her face twisted in a frown. There were still many things she didn't quite understand – inhibitors, super minions, item building – but she was deeply competitive and the thought of losing really made her tick. Straightening her back, she switched the mouse to her left hand and gave the tutorial page a quick read, just enough to answer her major questions. The rest, she was ready to figure out by herself – almost ready.
"brahms hungarian dance no 5" she turned on, because the right soundtrack was everything.
Satisfied, Angela Ziegler switched back to the game window and grinning, hit play.