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She sits underneath the window on the far side of the room. Alice only has one class with her, but she's always wearing a mask. During lunch, she lays on the grass. listening to bad music and staring at the empty sky. It's like she lives in her own little world, with a large moat and no drawbridge. Maybe she knew she was being followed and tried to sway Alice. It didn’t work.
Something's off about her. There's something worse about Alice, who watches her do all these things. She's simply infatuated with the girl. She spends her class time wondering what she will do next.
Alice is sent to find the girl, Sam, after she's been gone for too long. She isn't in any of the girls' bathrooms. She goes back to class to see if the girl has returned; she hasn't. After checking the library and cafeteria, she gets desperate. Surely she wouldn't be in the boys' bathroom, but she was.
She was leaning over the sink, obscuring the mirror, but seemed to be picking at her face. Alice waits a moment before entering. both anxious to go into the bathroom and embarrassed that she was scared.
The girl groans; there's a snap, and she sighs. She almost sounds like she's crying. She steps away from the sink, shaking her hands like she's calming herself down.
They can see each other in the mirror.
Alice almost vomits. Blood is dripping from her chin. There are metal clamps that are partially pulled off and only connected by metal wiring. She was pulling off her braces.
The girl jumps and shouts. hitting herself in the face and dropping pliers into the sink. The girl turns to look at her, her hand covering her mouth.
She yells at Alice to get out. Her voice is obscured and garbled. Alice shouts back, and it turns into a screaming match. When the girl starts threatening her with the pliers and coming up with increasingly terrible threats and swear words, Alice leaves with a promise to keep this to herself.
She doesn't remember the excuse that she came up with for the teacher. Sam comes back a few minutes later. Her lips were stained red. A cloth mask spills from her pocket, and the tips of pliers poke out. They make eye contact, and Sam takes her seat.
After class, Alice rushes to the bathroom. She looks in the trash can, and there are the braces. She pockets them. not entirely sure of what she would use them for or what she would do if she got caught. She took them to have. .
It's not uncommon for her to do this, she's quite adept at finding odd things. She keeps them in shoe boxes or jars in the back of her closet. Her favorites are a butterfly wing, a jar of broken glass, a limited edition pressed coin from the zoo and a cross necklace she found in a toilet. She wore it to school once and a boy kept looking at her chest where the cross kept being rolled between fingers. After that it stayed in the shoebox.
Alice sets the braces next to a box of doll parts. She sits on the floor and thinks about the girl. trying to pinpoint the exact reason she's so infatuating. Nothing she can think of feels right. She lights a candle, hoping the lavender scent will clear her head. She runs her fingers over the flames and lets them sit for a second too long.
She doesn't understand her emotions but she gets bored thinking about it. Instead she grabs her own pair of pliers and takes off one of the squares that already looks to be falling off. Setting that to the side she starts weaving paper clips together. She threads a strand of her own hair through the metal square then weaves that through the breaks between the paperclips. Making a very lovely and very uncomfortable bracelet.
She lays on the floor with her head falling out of the closet. Alice stares at her hand against the ceiling. The bracelet around her palm with the metal part facing her. The calming scent of lavender floats through her room. Her day continues and she spends most of it pulling her sleeve over the bracelet to ward off any odd questions.